Patient question: My best friend and I are very different from each other but we have grown a very strong relationship over the years. She is a smart, highly educated, 32 year old virgin that I hardly think has ever even kissed someone. Myself, I have been in many relationships but am currently single, 32 years old as well. My friend has been growing as a person a lot over the last year, and in August she came to me and said she´d started dating someone she met online. I was very supportive that she started online dating, and thrilled that she wanted to go out for drinks, buy shoes with high heals, and I encouraged more social behaviour. She dated this guy for a few weeks and it ended. Then, about 6 weeks ago she called me at 00.30 on a Thursday night, asking if she could come over because she had something to tell me. I got a bit stressed thinking it must be serious, because it was so late, and because it could not wait. She told me that when she started dating that online-guy they had sex. He was her first, and they were not in love. Then she told me that she liked it rough and he could not give her what she wanted. She had therefore joined a sadomasochistic sex society, went to an information meeting and now attends meetings and parties. This just after having sex for the first time a few weeks earlier. She told me she didn’t want to lie to me and wanted me to know what was going on, because we are so close and I know everything that is going on in her life. This particular night she came straight from a 45-year-old man she had had sex with. My friend and I have hardly ever talked about sex, I have even wondered that she might be a lesbian without knowing it herself yet. I was shocked to say the least. We live in a small city with 300 000 inhabitants, big enough to be anonymous, but still. I want her to experience love and sex, not sex as a mechanistic act. The days after her confession I felt confused and sad, kind of like I’m losing her. Now she has a complete new side to her life that I cant share with her, and she has met so many new people. People of all sorts with a variety of sex-interests, some living in polygamist relationships. A lot that is new to me, but I wish to be open-minded. One week after the breaking news she attended a party and met a guy wearing latex clothes. Lets call him Alan. They jumped straight into a relationship, and one week after they first met, Alan and his friend joined my friend and I at a cabin trip (because he was going to Kuala Lumpur in a few days for work). He was rude to me and I did not like his attitude. He seems very emotionally unstable (I have a PhD in neuroscience), and recently got out of a 6-year relationship, just 2 months prior. He kept talking about his ex and how she being mentally ill had ruined their relationship. Apparently this ex-girlfriend grew up in several foster homes and was sexually abused, married a 25-year-older man that she left – including the children because she was an unfit mother. Later on it was revealed that this old father had abused the children too, and she got the custody back. Then she met Alan. Alan is dominant and my best friend likes to be dominated, apparently. I cant help but think that Alan sort of “liked” being with a damaged woman that he could help and further dominate. I don’t know, but it bothers me how negatively he was talking about her. All matters have two sides. Now my friend talks about Alan constantly and is in love. She has already introduced him to her parents and some of our other friends. After only 5 weeks acquaintance. She really wants me to like him. However, I find it really hard to like him and her new lifestyle. I feel like I have lost her and that our friendship has changed forever. It makes me really sad, she has been such an important part of my life for so long. I feel like she has put a lot on me, the sex-club in itself will take some time to accept. However, introducing a man to me just a few days after the confession and expecting me to like him, is just too much. How should I react to this? I am trying to be happy for her, but in a way I don’t want to. It’s quite possible that if I don’t like this new guy I will lose my best friend. Should I just move on and accept that we have become too different now? I would really appreciate some thoughts about this, I have no-one I can discuss it with. (From Norway)

Distorted part: I feel like I have lost her and that our friendship has changed forever.
Dominant distortion: All-or-nothing thinking
Secondary distortion: Magnification