Tom, you pissed me off tonight. I’m tired of lying to your “girlfriend” when she asks me if I saw or heard from you. It was over 3 weeks since you last talked to her. I got the [icture when you didn’t tell her about the death in your family I just kept lying to her that I didn’t see you. I lied to her because I didn’t want to hurt her. I care about her and while her and I will never be more than friends I was happy she was with you because I thought you would treat her nice. When she called me today while we were out with your ex’s I had to lie to her again. When I asked you when you were going to call her and you told me that you told her last month you didn’t want to see her anymore I was floored because thats not the impression she had. I still wasn’t going to say anything to her. I was going to wait until she tracked you down and you told it to her face. Instead she has to get an IM from one of the people we were with who gave her false information. This made me tell her everything and turn her into a crying mess. I had to call one of her friends at her university to come over and be with her because she was so distraught. So now I’m not going to be able to sleep, she can’t sleep. Tom, she fucking loved you. I’ve wished for someone to love me like she loves you and haven’t found that. You could have had something good, but you threw it away. I’m not sure if I can be your friend any more Tom, and I hope one day someone does to you what you did to her, ASSHAT
Lying doesn’t prevent pain. The best it can do is postpone it.
But then you have pain and justifiable anger.
I’ve broken up many a relationship in that same way. My ex-GF says I’m a certified cock-blocker.
Yeah…I felt bad about it that the time, but never once have I thought it was the wrong thing to do.
Breaking up with someone via your friends - or even worse, their friends - is something that I absolutely cannot stand.
When I was in Year 10 at school I was going out with this guy (funnily enough, his name was Tom as well). He broke up with me by telling my friends that he didn’t want to see me anymore. Not so much because I couldn’t live without him, but because he simply did not have the guts to face me.
That irks me even to this day. I can’t even say his name without stomping my foot in anger. It’s an absolutely gutless way of ending a relationship.
That’s a shame, but from the way you’re talking about her it seems like you’re interested in her yourself. Why not go for it? She’s single now. I mean, don’t act like a vulture, swooping down on vulnerable prey, just kind of hang out, drop hints that you like her, stuff like that? See where it goes?
A relationship with her would not work, she thinks of me as a brother and I know it’s almost impossible to get someone to think of you romanticaly when they think of you that way. When she is depressed she calls me all the time so I can cheer her up. A mutual friend of ours tried to set us up with each other (thats how we met) but from the start there wasn’t that click between us. Yes she is a sweet, caring, wonderful woman, but she doesn’t have the feelings for me that you need for a relationship. I’m not going to say that the nice guys don’t get the woman because other here have said it and thne they are shown wrong by dopers saying they are dating or married to nice guys. She knows how I feel about her she doesn’t feel the same towards me (even before this relationship) and thats not going to change.
Don’t lie for your friends. Don’t lie for anybody. Lying is wrong - didn’t anybody ever teach you that?
Oh man I hate guys who do that… somehow I have usually managed to get guys who are like that myself. After about 3 weeks of my calling and not getting ahold of him… well I just drop it.
Actually my 2 best guy friends came about that way. I kept trying to get ahold of my bf’s and they were the ones who answered the phone and talked to me… they never lied to me about the ex’s and in fact one was ready to beat up one of them because he had done that to me.
Tom sounds like an asshat as you said.
Be a friend to yourself first and start developing personal integrity. Also, remember that others can’t “make” you do anything without your cooperation.
You seem to be intelligent and sensitive. Someday the right woman will fall for you hard. Women put honesty very high on the list of what they look for in a man.
Yes I have been taught that lyring is wrong, but there are times you have to lie for the right reason. There are times it is better to lie temporarly then give the truth a few days later.
Obsidian Flutterby thanks for agreeing with me on the ASSHAT and Zoe thanks for the kind words. I know the GF I spoke about in my OP has read this. Afterall I gave her the link I hope she will eventully read the rest of the messages here and join our community, and if she wants to post and give her views thats alright with me too.
She’s better off without him. Eventually he would have lied about other things and one day she would have the horrible realization she was married to an immature coward. Nobody wants that.
Did anything good come out of your lying in this circumstance? No. She got hurt anyway, and had two guys lying to her instead of one.
I will allow that there are very limited circumstances where the truth is just going to make everything worse, but these are few and far between. Lying to cover for a coward isn’t one of them.
Anecdote:
When I was a sophomore in college, I had a very good friend who was a guy. During a long stretch when he didn’t have a girlfriend, we got particularly close…close enough for me to know how interested he was in another girl. Now, I was okay with this; to the point, in fact, that when he came to me on a Saturday afternoon and stammeringly explained that we couldn’t hang out that night as we usually did because he had a date with her, I wished him well. I also lent him ten bucks.
So I found a party to go to that evening, and somewhere along the line, someone asked, “Where’s Jim?” Another someone looked nervously at me and said he was at an off-campus party.
WHAT?! I mean, the floor fell right out from under me. He not only went to a party, but lied about having a date instead, and furthermore, borrowed money from me for this purpose?
Long story short, that guy was lying. He thought that I was pining for Jim, who really was on a date, with the girl he’d told me about, and didn’t want to upset me. But he upset me anyway, by leading me to think that Jim had lied to me! That might very well have been the end of our friendship, had it been true. Later, I told the guy who lied that next time, he should just go ahead and tell the truth and not second-guess what he thought people wanted to hear.
Hey, anonymous GF! MannyL’s a nice guy! Why don’t you let him take you out for a nice dinner, maybe a few drinks? Let him help you forget your jerk of an ex-BF? 
LOL Funny thing is last night I drove up to her university, and we did go drinking along with two other friends. (All female but me)
I’m going to agree with you that lying to cover a coward isn’t a good reason to lie, but lying so someone can concentrate on their school work and doesn’t have a good support structure around to help them cope is in my eyes a good reason. Once they have the support structure telling the truth is the way to go. I believe some good came out of my lying in this circimstance, she was not hurt until she had people around her would could support and comfort her.