Bragging About Being Bad

Dear Bro Jo,

Hello again! Thank you so much for that great advice, it really helped, with more than just the one boy. However, I now have an even stranger, not cool problem with the same guy!

Sheesh...

So I started talking to him and being a nice, friendly person, and we became pretty good friends. Then one night, at a cast party (we were both in a production together, it was fun, that's how we met) we were just sitting around, and he says he has something he needs to tell me. So I listen, as he tells me this really sad, shocking story about his life.

He had just moved here, a highly LDS populated area, from a place that had like one or two Mormon kids our age living there. He told me that his brother somehow got drugs, and started using them. He looked up to his brother, and so he tried them too, to be ''cool'' he says.

Evidently, he became the small town's drug dealer, pretty much. That was pretty shocking for me, because he seems like such a good guy on the outside. But I kind of figured he was working on getting over it, and a lot of it had to do with him moving here and being with good people (like me, and his cousin who I'm also friends with).

But it gets worse....After the whole drug problem talk was over, he told me that he could've had a child with three girls. Three! And seeing as I know what ''having a child'' requires, that scared me. Bad. Like to the point where I needed to get up and leave. So I told him I had to go for a minute, and we both went back to the party.

My question is basically, what the heck should I do? I told my mom about the whole thing, and she says she thinks he's just lying or joking around, trying to impress me. The thing is, that's not impressive at all. Quite the contrary, it's super unattractive to me. I talked to his cousin about the whole thing, who I'm super close to, and his cousin said that he wasn't lying, and that he was working through it, trying to be better.

That didn't really change how freaked out I was about the whole thing. He hasn't asked me on a date because he says he doesn't want to be tempted again. That scared me yet again.
He also says he doesn't have a testimony of the church. All my interpretations of this boy were completely wrong!

What do I do? Stay away from him entirely? Maintain a friendly, acquaintance like friendship where I just say hi every now and again? I feel kind of bad judging him, and I know he's trying to be better. But still. It's one of those things that gives me shivers.

Wow.

That was pretty random and all over the place.

Thank you very much, Bro Jo!

To be or Not to Be



Dear Not to Be,

It doesn't matter whether he's guilty of what he says or not; the mere fact that he's claiming the behavior is bad.

You're right: be kind in a sister-in-the-Gospel kind of way, but that's it. I don't think there are very many valid reasons for a girl to turn down a date, but "gives me the shivers" is one of them.

And you're absolutely right to find this guy's past and his confessions (again, whether they're true or not) as serious warning signs. When you put this letter together with your last one about the same guy, you and your mom may be right in that he’s just looking for attention (albeit in a bad way), but when you mix in the confirmation from his cousin, it seems clear to me that this guy is a lot less good and a lot more bad than you originally thought.

- Bro Jo