I don’t see that he was or is important enough to your life to go through this again, so I would be very cautious about advice to let bygones be bygones as this person used you badly in the past, and is not likely to have changed. Sociopaths (not an official diagnosis anymore) rarely change, narcissists never change.
Here’s my take on it: Three is a finite number of friendships that any one person can maintain at any one time. Fact of life–there are tweny-four hours in a day, and you only have so many of those hours to spend maintaining friendships–and friendships have to be maintained. The number varies from person to person (my own number is lower than average, I suspect) and with the degree of friendship–you can maintain 10 aquaintainces with the same amount of maintainance as one close friendship, say.
As a result of this, we have all had to pass up potentially great friends simply because of time–that guy you shared a clas with and got in the habit of talking to every day, your boyfriend’s sister who you love to talk to every time you meet her, the person who works three cubicles down from you. We give these poteential friendships a miss because we chose to spend our time with our estabished friends (and SO). There is nothing wrng with this, just a said fact made inevitable by human limitations. In the face of that, why should it be more of a tragedy to not pursue a relationship that you already know has a greater than average chance to turn sour? If there is time in your life for a new friend, spend it giving omeone new a chance–there is a better chance (and life is a all about playing the odds) that a total stranger you have an affinity for will be a good person than that this loser has changed. And if he has changed and she misses out on it–so what? How is that any different, or more tragic, than the dozens of potential friendships we all pass by every year?
I agree with the deleters. Life is way too short, as mentioned already.
Amen to what Manda Jo said. We’ve cut off contact with one of our neighbors after we discovered how manipulative the woman was. After repeated attempts at trying to repair the relationship and then being pulled back into yet another drama, we finally broke off all contact. My last e-mail to the husband said something to the effect of “Instead of trying to repair our fractured relationship, let’s just move on. That way we can both focus on the other wonderful friends we do have. I think we’ll all be happier in the long run.”
And then I blocked our e-mail and phone number from receiving additional correspondence.
You have nothing to gain from this person. Let him ride off into the sunset.