I feel like most people have dated someone shitty, whether they were shitty from the start, or blindsided you with shittiness somewhere down the line. Conversely, and maybe even more likely, I bet most people have had their friends date someone awful.

Communication between friends is important. But is it your responsibility to tell your friend the person they’re with isn’t right for them? Is the proper response to your friend listing off all the reasons your partner sucks and that you have terrible taste to listen to them openly and objectively? Criticism can be hard to take. People don’t like to be told they’re wrong. It’s a natural reaction to get defensive, or to shut the complainant out. It’s easy to side with the person who’s jerking you off and to ignore the friend who’s trying to cut out your jerkoff supply with their paltry concerns.

I’m terrible at listening to my friends, and notorious for wanting to get the first-hand experience of a world class shithead instead of acknowledging the mountains of evidence supporting their terrible history. Maybe I’ll be different... how could anyone treat me badly? is a recurring stupid thought that has failed me more than once. Every time I’m shocked when someone lives up to their shitty reputation, and I’m forced to confront the fact that I’m not special, and they didn’t make exceptions for me. And every time I regret not just listening to my friends from the start.

It’s hard for me to speak up to complain about a friend’s dating choice. I’ve done it before. Most of the time it’s just politely discounted. Sometimes I’m rejected for it. Generally, I can cope with a loser in my periphery and keep my mouth shut. I don’t have a ton of close friendships, so unless it’s a dire situation, I’ll stay quiet to preserve what I have. I trust my instincts, but also trust that my friend will sort it out on their own without too much meddling from me. When I say dire situation, I mean something potentially dangerous. There’s a huge distinction between dating a loser and dating an abusive loser. I won’t ever hesitate to voice a legitimate concern to a friend if their safety is in question.

I wanted to get some perspective on the subject, so naturally I took to social media. Opening up my Twitter DMs to strangers is always sketchy, but the feedback I got was well worth the hate mail and unsolicited dick pics. I asked people about times when they should have listened to their friends, or times when they tried to talk to their friends about their partner.

(Obviously I changed their names.)

‘I literally peed myself’

I had a crazy abusive ex-boyfriend that I dated last year for nine months and he was INSANE, literally all of my friends told me he was the worst and he would convince me my friends were trying to tear us apart because they were jealous of our happiness. I tried to take him to a Counting Crows concert last September and he got so mad at me for skipping a song on the way there that he got off the interstate and went 90 mph on a dead end road that had a cliff at the end of it just to scare me. I literally peed myself and was sobbing hysterically. I still dated him after that for a couple weeks. My friends actually often compared him to a snake and said that he always looked like he was going to unhinge his jaw and swallow me whole. —Sarah, 23

Porno bro

My brother didn’t tell me until after my ex and I broke up that he hated him the whole time because the only thing he would ever try to talk to my brother about when they were alone was porn. —Lisa, 20

‘She doesn’t talk to her friends anymore’

I told one of my close friends I didn’t like her boyfriend because he honestly mooched off her. They got very hardcore political, then they got married. Now they live out of their car with four animals to “escape the system” and she doesn’t talk to her friends anymore. When I told her my feelings, she got pretty mad at me but said she respected my opinion, but I just simply don’t understand her anymore. She went to being one of my best friends to a stranger. She cut out a most people which is kind of a red flag. —Alexis, 20

‘He ended up stabbing me’

I dated this guy for almost a year and a half and none of my friends liked him. They hated him soooo much and I was like “why, no he’s fine.” He ended up stabbing me with a pocket knife when we got in a fight about pineapple on pizza. Needless to say, my friends were right and I always listen to them about relationships now. Feel free to use it if you want, he thinks computers and online stuff are poison… like he doesn’t have a phone because he thought phones were trying to kill him via the government. —Andrew, 21

The majority of the stories people sent me were about not listening to their friends, and it’s starting to shift my feelings on the subject. If I care about someone enough to be worried the person they’re dating isn’t right for them, maybe I should speak up. It’s a situational circumstance, and important to unpack the reasons why I don’t like them. Just as people can be blinded by lust, they can be blinded by selfishness. Make sure your dislike isn’t impacted by things that are affecting you, but not your friend. Just because your friend doesn’t have as much time for you because of a budding romance doesn’t make them shitty. At least have some solid or a reliable gut feeling before you tell your friend to dump them.