Dear Prudence,
I have a close friend (I’m female, he’s male) since childhood who is loyal, supportive, and funny. We are in our early 30s, and he’s good-looking, charming, and successful. Over the last decade he has developed a pattern with women that I find repulsive. He will start dating one and lavish her with attention. Then after two or three months, when she has fallen in love with him, he’ll react with astonishment when she assumes he’s a real or potential boyfriend. He’ll say he never thought of her as anything but a nice girl and sexual partner. Recently I met a girl who said she became clinically depressed after her affair with him. She thought she had met the love of her life, and then had to go the humiliating route back to her friends and family and tell them the romance was all in her head. When I have confronted him with this, he shrugs and say that the girls are oversensitive, that he never talked about love, and if they had any expectations, that’s their problem. This whole business makes me sad and I am considering distancing myself from him. But he has never been anything but a good friend to me and we go way back. Should I try to reform him? If so, how? Or should I drop him so that I won't have to meet any more girls weeks away from getting crushed?
—Friend of Callous Seducer