I’ve been thinking about this for the past week or so and have come to the realization that I don’t ever want to go to my friend’s house again. We’ve been friends for 30 years (yikes!) and she is like my sister. Unfortunately her husband is the biggest asshole I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet. He’s a racist and appears to be a misogynist. He’s always calling women bitches and whores, etc. He has a few favorite anecdotes that he trots out every time I go over there and I just don’t want to be there ever again. About how all women are bitches only good for one thing, etc.
She deserves better. When he proposed several of her close family members told her that they were against the wedding. She was very upset at the time and undecided, but eventually married him and her family just learned to deal with it. She does love him and he does have some redeeming qualities as most people do, but I don’t know what she is thinking of to put up with his crap, weed smoking, laziness, etc. They have three sons and I shudder to think how they are going to treat their future wives.
My friend and I usually meet for dinner, she comes to my house, we meet with a group of people, etc. My husband refuses to have anything to do with this guy so unfortunately we never go out as couples; I wish we could.
Anybody have a similar experience? I just needed to vent. I would never say anything to her unless she directly asked my opinion. I guess you could say it’s the white elephant in the room we never talk about.
When I was in college, I had something similar happen. A very good friend of mine dated the world’s biggest drama queen, then dumped her for a much chiller (but not as intelligent) girl. Later he and Drama Queen got back together and got married, and she managed to do some pretty ugly political backstabbing to me in the tiny petty social circles we were in. I eventually decided I wanted nothing to do with her, and I let my friend know that, and that was the end of our friendship.
Those must be some redeeming qualities to even get mentioned in the same sentence as the assholery, weed and laziness.
Some years back i told my wife that as much as i get along with her work friend that the lady’s husband is a complete douchebag and I refused to be around him in any circumstances. Luckily, she agreed on him and ever since that’s been ‘her’ friend, they do things together, occasionally i meet them but Douchebag is never around.
That isn’t always possible, to make it that clean but we managed. Yes the wife knows how I feel about her husband.
My wife and I, plus one other couple, used to hang out with a third couple. The husband in this third couple was great, but his wife was evil. The other two wives decided they dind’t want to hang out with the third evil wife anymore. So we all tried to figure out how we could all hang out with the nice husband without the evil wife around.
This was tricky because the evil wife would not “allow” her husband to go out and do things without her. He wanted to go out with the boys only, but she said she could not imagine wanting to do things separately. So the “supportive” (i.e., doormat) husband went along with that to support his evil wife, even though they fought about it and the nice husband clearly went along with this evil plan in protest.
We tried to do boys nights out, but evil wife would always tag along. :smack:
It got awkward for a while as we tried to finagle ways to go out with the nice husband without the evil wife around. It just never worked.
Eventually, my wife broke the awkward silence and came out and told evil wife we didn’t like hanging out with her. The evil wife got mad and that couple never spoke to us again. We made it clear to the nice husband that if he ever wants to hang out with us in the future (i.e., divorced), he is welcome.
That my concern, that if I was ever to say how I really feel about the guy it will cause a rift in our friendship. She is more important to me than that so I keep my mouth shut. The closest we came to talking about it was the last time we met for dinner. She told me that she’s unhappy with a lot of the things that he says and does around other people and that they don’t socialize much because of his behavior - he embarrasses her. The kids love their dad and she does too, but he has quite a few negative qualities. After a while she has to have realized WTF?
He has no impulse control. Everything he thinks and feels is out there, like it or not. Unfortunately their oldest is 15 and has started to sneak weed from dad’s stash. Nice. His lack of respect for my friend really bothers me. He won’t help with the household chores (women’s work), didn’t help with the kids when they were little (women’s work) and if I don’t miss my guess, doesn’t contribute much financially. She works long hours and makes good money.
I don’t know, I’m sure there are a lot of positive qualities I don’t know about because I try to avoid the guy. She’s quite intelligent and I wouldn’t think she would stick around if he didn’t have good characteristics. At least, that’s what I tell myself.
I hate my best friend’s boyfriend. To make matters worse, he seems like a nice guy.
That is, he seems like a nice guy now. But I can’t seem to forget the first two years they were together, when she was constantly calling me sobbing because of some cruel thing he’d said or done. As in, three to four times a day for two solid years. So now when he’s kind and polite and thoughtful, it feels to me like he’s a lying snake hiding until he strikes. He’ll help me carry boxes to my car unasked, and I’m thinking, “Man…you sponged off her for two years refusing to get a job and then literally told her you love video games more than her before storming out of the apartment she let you stay in rent free and then you refused to answer your phone for three days…”
She’s let it go. I can’t figure out how to. And I feel really bad for hating this seemingly nice guy who went through a bad bout of depression and PTSD and took it out on my best friend.
From years of experience, all I can tell you is to just suck it up and be nice.
There is nothing you can do.
I have a great friend for over 30 years who has the biggest jerk, mooch, idiot, arrogant and egocentric boyfriend you could imagine. It is not only me who thinks so - all of her other friends think so as well. The sad part is that this woman is gorgeous, has a great job, is fun to be around and could really get just about any decent guy she wanted! When they briefly broke up, she had some really great guys asking her out!
Yet, she has been with this guy for 10 years now, so what is the point of stressing about it now? I am sorry she chose this asshole, but if she’s happy, well - then I will try to be happy for her.
Other than the weed smoking, he sounds like a complete asshole. I’m not sure it has to be all or nothing in this situation. When we have issues with some of the spouses in our friends or family circle, we cut back on the interaction. Don’t think any were bad enough to completely cut off. This one you describe, might be that bad. For example, I’dlike to think racist comments deserve zero tolerance. (on reflection, my asshole stepfather did say one day that he would never “allow” one of his daughters to marry a “black.” He was always kind to my mother, so I tolerated him.)
I think both my first and second wives have been that person to others. Working towards my second divorce, I think I’ll stay single for a long time, for the sanity of friends, family, and of course myself.
Re: PTSD WhyNot; I have a lot of experience with this in a loved one (second wife). Folks with PTSD and depression are truly lost in a lot of ways, and with care and work a good person can flower from that person. However you cannot underestimate how difficult that road can be, and it is sometimes easy for that person to run back to the shelter of ‘I have PTSD’ when they need to either stop what they are doing, or at least make amends for what they have done. At least that is my experience.
Oh yes, big big time issues. And I’m not entirely sure she’s really dealt with them, either. I suspect hers are simmering just under the surface, too.
Maybe that’s it. Maybe I’m just so suspicious that this whole thing is going, inevitably, to go “kablooey” again and I just don’t know if I’m up to dealing with the fallout. I can’t go back to fielding 3 or 4 sobbing calls a day.
Absolutely. And what if this is what’s going on? Maybe I only fear that this:
is what’s happening because I’m a big old meany grudge holding jerk.
One of my best friends married the dumbest and laziest men I’ve ever met. He’s so dumb he’ll happily tell you he barely graduated from high school as if it were so some sort of badge of honor. He’s currently unemployed and sponging off her parents. I can’t imagine anyone hiring him ever again as he’s also grossly obese, barely articulate and in his early 50’s. I just smile and ignored him as much as possible. Whenever he attempts conversation I get a sudden urge to find the ladies room ASAP.
After I was divorced I had two couples I knew and had socialized with say to me privately that they had put up with my husband for my sake. And I knew, after the marriage, that my father didn’t like the guy. He’d never had a chance before the wedding to say so because he only met him three days before the wedding. The guy who was the best man( a last minute substitute, long story) is still a good friend, and was one of the folks telling me he’d had misgivings about my fiancee.
I have no idea where the guy I married is now, we didn’t stay in touch as we had no children.
You’re right. In the end it’s none of my business so I’ll keep my mouth shut. I knew going in that a party at their house was going to be difficult to get through and sure enough, it was. I don’t care if he likes his weed, party on. Problem is that they have kids, at least two of which know exactly where he grows it and one of which has taken some at least a few times. She’s pretty frustrated by that but how can you tell your kids to not smoke pot when dad grows it?
I also hate my best friend’s husband. Since they have been together, she can’t seem to go anywhere without him. We used to go for manicures, shopping, etc and now he has to tag along for all activities. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t ask her to do those things anymore cause I know he will be there.
She’s pregnant and we were talking about going out to get some baby stuff. He said no, he didn’t trust us to get the “right” things without him.
He’s a total blowhard. He tells people he’s a fancy stockbroker, but he’s not. He’s in debt up to his eyeballs. He’s controlling and doesn’t seem to trust her to the smallest decisions.
She has a medical condition but he doesn’t trust her doctors to manage it. He obviously knows better than her doctors. He disagrees with the drug course they are taking and thinks there should be a “natural” way for her to manage the condition.
I will admit that there is a bit of jealousy that since they have been together we haven’t spent a lot of time together, but another friend in common also agrees with the above.
It is also our opinion that she “settled” when she could have done better.
I had a great friend of almost 20 years. We were best friends, fellow Americans living in Japan. He would always pick “controlling bitches” (his term, after he would break up with one), married one, and finally got a divorce only to start going out with another one. When he broke up with her, he made me promise to warn him the next time.
Fast forward two weeks later and he’s found yet, the next love of his life. A Drama Queen from Hell. I pull him aside at some point and ask him if he remembers that conversation. He gets pissed. In the meanwhile, Miss Drama Queen has pissed off everyone in the group and finally they fade away.
There is one of my fiance’s friends that he doesn’t see much anymore, largely because of the guy’s cow of a girlfriend. Literally, the broad is the size of a bus, but friend’s been unlucky in love before so he took what he could get (and she pursued him).
It’s been several years and I rue the day that she told me she told me she didn’t take her BC pill but begged me not to tell the friend because she wanted to sleep with him that night.
I thought it wasn’t my place at the time.
I regret it. If I had told him, they might have broken up.
He doesn’t necessarily have any good characteristics; your friend might just have low enough self-esteem that she thinks he’s the best she can do.
I think a lot of us date unsuitable people when we’re younger, but if we’re lucky, we wise up and break up with them instead of marrying them and having kids with them.
I also think that limiting your exposure to her husband is a good strategy; you don’t have any say in who she picked for a mate, but you do have say in who you socialize with. If she does ever open the door to a discussion of what she’s doing with him, I would suggest a low-key approach - saying something like, “I know you love him, but I don’t think he’s a very good match for you,” or something that won’t cause her to shut down and not listen to anything you say.
A friend of mine has been praying for the last six months that either her daughter’s eyes would be opened, or that the mother would become resigned to the daughter’s choice of husband.
Daughter called the wedding off last week.
Mom refrained from doing a happy dance until she was off the phone.
She knows the daughter is hurting.
But she firmly believes that the daughter could do so much better, and there were several very specific warning signs. Not so much signs that this guy was a jerk, but certainly signs that the daughter was infatuated, and moving way too fast. (The first time that wedding dates were mentioned, daughter was not yet officially engaged, her family had not met the groom-to-be, and in fact, daughter’d only known the guy for a month or maybe six weeks).
And so she’s very proud of her daughter for calling off the wedding now–church reserved, dress bought, save the date cards acquired (if not sent)–but still, no wedding, no children, no divorce.
