Concerns about a friend

Today is our first wedding anniversary. I understand that this is slightly off topic but I still had to mention it. It is a very depressing day since I am spending it all by myself here abroad with the volcano ash cloud over Europe preventing Luke from coming to see me. Oh well, it gives me time to write. My only fear is that if this damn cloud continues to hang in there it might prevent me from traveling to see my family for Alexander’s anniversary in two weeks. Let’s pray it does not since I cannot imagine spending that day all by myself. Oh, I don’t dare to think about this prospect too much.
Something else has occupied my thoughts these last few days as well though. A very dear friend of mine told me on Thursday that she is having relationship issues. Without getting into detail, she is torn between two guys. Well, that would not trouble me too much as such. But this would be all too simple for her, too. She feels really attracted to one of them, him being her ex-boyfriend whom she was together with for lets say two years. He broke up with her last summer, it took her a long time to get over him but she managed. Now they are talking again and she is again seriously interested, him as well. So where is the problem? He treated her pretty badly during their relationship, which I mean in an emotional kind of way. I do believe he is bipolar. She feels she cannot trust him, cannot be sure he will be there for her when she needs him. She told me that over several phone calls they have had in the past few weeks he apologized for bad emotional abuses, arguments where he did do something wrong. This is new since he always claimed to have forgotten everything about the entire argument before. The reason for me getting so detailed on this here is that it reminds me so much of arguments with Alexander. It was so hard for me to make him see how deeply he had hurt me or someone else, and then, half a year later, seemingly out of the blue, he might apologize for that very event. There were many more similarities between the two guys. Honestly, I am scared for my friend. The most – from her point of view – touching thing he said is ‘What is the point of living if I know that I cannot change?’ For very obvious reasons a statement like that has all sorts of alarm bells ringing inside me. Plus, from a negative point of view, I do think that only with an enormous amount of luck you can really cure bipolar depression, not to say that I don’t think that you can completely. So I am worried about her. While I can say that for him it would be great to have her by his side, I hope that she will choose a life where she can rely on her partner more. Obviously, I am getting into advisory terrain here that I do not really like and I would never tell her my opinion as I have written it here. But these are my – in this respect very damaged and biased – thoughts. Try to stay away from this illness, if you have the option.