How to deal with someone arguing in bad faith?

In My Humble Opinion
1

(maybe more suited to mpsims?)

We’ve been friends with someone for about three years now. She’s someone who can be hella moody, blaming others, and who also lies a lot, but up until then she was nice to hang out with, say, 90% of the time. We were living separated by about 2 hours driving.

Last fall her relationship with her husband had deteriorated a lot, they broke up messily a couple of months ago and I suggested to her to come live in our village. She had been complaining a great lot about the people of the village where she was living in, and had found people here really nice, so I thought it would be a good idea. (I truly hate me for that now)

We helped her move over a weekend and she was really really nasty with us in particular, but also with everybody. We waited for her to cool down a bit to meet her again, but then she played it like nothing had happened, and was using her kid as a mean to escape having adult discussions with us. (she is homeschooling her pre-teen girl and are pretty much 100% of the time together. the girl is hyper-sensitive and cries/yells at the slightest tension)

The weeks passed and she kept on behaving badly with us, but in a subtle and slippery way, the kind of way your first thought is WTF she just said?! and then before you can react, she’s away.

We thought “ok, she got back together with her husband after all the horrible stuff she had told us about him, don’t know how to tell us that, and maybe in the end she regrets moving, so that’s why she’s behaving like a 12yo girl”. She’ll calm down eventually.

But lately it has became worse.
I said she often lies, but usually she would recognize she’s lying. Now she’s making various shit up about us, or her, and seems to firmly believe it. She alternates that with being very “sweet” and behaving like if nothing has happened.

The last stuff that happened, and that I don’t know how to handle, is that:
She moves out again soon, to be with her husband in a nearby town. So we asked her by mail to bring us back some piece of furniture we had lent her some months ago.
We had reminded her that we were lending it temporally to her, that since she was moving so much (she changed house 3 times in the last six months) it was more useful to her than us at the moment.

We also reminded her in our mail that she still needed to pick up some remaining stuff she had put in our house the last time she moved.

She shot back a mail telling us we could bring her all her stuff anytime, and so at the same time getting back our item, and oh hey, bring me back my gas stove.

:confused:
They gave us that gas stove because they got a shiny new one, and on our side we wanted to get rid of our electric stove. It happened more than two years ago.

My first reaction was “fuck that! we keep it, she’s a goddamn liar and thief”, but my partner wanted to avoid more drama so he said she can have it back, while also telling her she had gave it to us so what was up with her?
That was yesterday.

I’m pissed off because she’s doing this just to aggravate us, from what we can tell, and because we now have to find another one unless we want to do all our cooking with a microwave it seems.
We’re broke and even if we manage to find a used one for 50-100 euros, 50 euros is two weeks groceries for us, or nearly two weeks of gas-oil. I can probably get my parents to pay for a new gas stove but I hate to beg for money.

Man, I do not even know if, when she comes to pick it up, she won’t play the “you broke it, pay me something” card, even though she knows perfectly well the state it’s in. Or even if she’s going to pick it up at all. (which also aggravates me because we can’t just buy a new stove in advance, in case she’s just bluffing)

So, dopers, how the hell do you behave with someone who is a lying snake and who is hanging out in the same social circles than you?

We don’t want to talk about all that by mail, my bf tried to talk to her but when confronted she, as I said, makes shit up and denies it. She has already started to stir shit up in the activist group we are part of.

I’m the non-confrontational type, unless directly asked, and my bf is the ever-forgiving, sensitive, type.
I’m also kinda scared of her because she’s a lot taller and bigger than me and when angered becomes really nasty.

2

Get your stuff back from her and give her the gas stove, and call it the price of getting this toxic, nasty person out of your life forever. In case that wasn’t clear, you also need to cut all ties with this toxic, nasty person. :slight_smile:

3

Yes. You don’t deal with them unless you want to drive yourself nuts. You just cut them out of your life. If she’s as unpleasant as she comes across in your post, the other people in your social circle will understand why you refuse to have anything to do with her. If they don’t, to hell with them too.

4

Thank you for your messages, I guess I really need to hear that i have to cut my losses.

5

I would just think about the value of the stove to you versus the furniture of yours that she has. If they are in any way equal, keep the stove and never have any more contact. If she wants her other stuff back, she can come pick it up.

you’ve already spent too much time on this “mess”, it is going to get worse and the sooner you walk away, the better! Be polite and respond to her, but don’t contact her and don’t go out of your way any more.

6

Keep the stove, forget about the couch, stop contacting her. Stop letting her contact you (don’t pick up the phone). Get a restraining order if she persists. She sounds legitimately bipolar, I have a bipolar aunt who is only medicated about half the time (because she’s broke as shit, can’t hold down a job, and extremely lazy). When she isn’t medicated she is truly a monster. Don’t put up with that shit in a relative, much less an unrelative.

7

“I find you dishonest and distasteful and I no longer wish to associate with you.”

[sub]It helps if you then slap them with a white glove and walk away.[/sub]

8

“I SAID GOOD DAY!”

o

9

Yup I’d have to agree with Cat Whisperer, dealing with something similar myself, give her what she wants and then say good bye. People like that just aren’t worth the effort, as for your social circle let her say what she wants and in your activist group, you know the truth and lies eventually get found out, you’ll soon know who your real friends are.

Chin up! :slight_smile:

10

No news from her a week after, at this point I’m thinking she just wanted to keep the furniture to herself. (It’s a very sturdy, very big, all metal clothes rack btw, from a cleaners shop, gifted to my bf when they ceased activities. I just remembered the word in english.)

My bf shoot her a couple of days ago an email asking when we can come pick up the rack.

What we lent her belongs to my bf, so as I told him, it is easy for me to give it up and forget all about that.

I don’t know for bipolar, but she fits a fair number of traits of folks with borderline, while not being exactly that.

Ha! That’s actually a good sentence!

11

Jesus God, I couldn’t even read your whole post…just how desperate for friends are you? I was going to say…from your “teaser” about this post (thread?) that you were assuming where she was “coming from.” Because I believe that ppl don’t do things because they think it’s wrong—they do them because they think it’s right. But…this is so jacked-up that if you’re buying into it you’ve got more time on your hands than you need to have. Cut the ties. I could say a whole lot more but I don’t know you.