This week's dilemma comes from Maggie, who for years has been helping out a young woman who is often in crisis. The young lady, let's call her Tessa, makes bad choices when it comes to boyfriends, who almost always end up treating her badly.

Over the years, Maggie has taken crisis phone calls from Tessa at all times of day and night, helping and counselling her through difficult patches in these relationships, listening to hours of stories of abuse, offering lots of compassion and wise, prayerful advice. But Tessa seems to just keep falling into the same patterns again. While Tessa is a Christian, she doesn't really live like one in all areas of her life and doesn't seem to follow any of the Godly advice given to her.

Recently it happened again - Tessa was in yet another crisis and rang Maggie... Now Maggie is feeling just exhausted by it all, and is starting to doubt whether Tessa will ever change her life. She is wondering what to do now.

What advice would you give Maggie?

DISCUSSION POINTS

• Should Maggie keep the door open to this young lady? Is true Christian grace when you allow people to just keep coming back, even if nothing ever improves in their life?

• Or should Maggie consider puttingt a boundary between herself and this needy young lady? If so, how much of a boundary - should she cut off all contact? Or just offer limited contact?

• Will a boundary be damaging? Maggie's worried that if she doesn't help Tessa, maybe she won't have anyone else to go to for help.

EXPERT OPINION - Psychologist, Dr Mel Fung

• First, Maggie is to be commended for her deep concern for Tessa. It is a demonstration of Christian love to care for someone in such a troubled state.

• True Christian grace does mean that we persist in relationships with people, even when those people do not make decisions in the way that we would. In this way, we can have friendships with people even when they are very different from us and yes, even when they continually make mistakes.
 
• Maggie should consider putting a boundary between herself and this lady.It is good for Tessa to understand that Maggie has other things in her life to tend to and therefore Tessa must learn that Maggie cannot always be there whenever Tessa calls.

• In general, setting boundaries is often a loving thing to do. It helps us to be good stewards of our lives - so that we can tend to all the responsibilities in our lives, not just one issue. It also fosters healthy relationships with others in that it teaches us to be considerate of the needs of ourselves and others.  It is also modelling to Tessa how healthy relationships work - where there is mutual respect and consideration for both parties. This could actually be helpful for Tessa to see how a healthy relationship works and may, over time, help Tessa to see that the ways these men are treating her is not healthy.

• Tessa's difficulty in her relationships with men is likely to be something quite deep-seated that advice will not fix up. Often people know what not to do, but there are emotional reasons for staying in such abusive relationships. Therefore, it may be best for Maggie to be a supportive and constant person in Tessa's life, though I recommend that Tessa actual seeks professional help for her problems. This may also take the burden off Maggie to fix Tessa's problems.

• Perhaps Maggie can ask others to also get to know Tessa and provide support.