I get so caught up in it and I hate myself for it. I don’t want to listen. I don’t want to add to it. But when I hear lies or half-truths I nearly can’t stop myself either.
I removed a socio-pathic, lying, sticky-fingered, self-centered, gossip from my life last year. She has now resurfaced as a new member in my Church. She has become friends with my friends and has worked her way into the groups I participate in. Whenever I see her, I’m polite, I smile & say “hi”. But, knowing her to be a NOTORIOUS liar, and a compulsive gossip, I am concerned that she will lie about me to all of my friends there. I know I can’t say ANYTHING to ANYONE about this, but I am actually afraid of what she may say about me.
Okay, maybe she’s reformed, but I doubt it. When she said what she liked about this church, she said, “you can believe anything you want here, and it doesn’t matter.” Sounds like more of an indictment than the praise she intended.
Any good words of wisdom to help me keep my mouth shut when I’m dying to “set the record straight”?
Well, on the bright side, if she is still a nasty, lying gossip, you’ll find out real quick how many real friends you have in that church.
Best suggestion I can give to you is to get your closest friends to keep their ears open for you, so you’ve got at least some warning if she starts massively defaming you.
You might also wish to talk to your pastor- let him/her know what Ms. Gossip used to do in the past. Don’t accuse Ms. Gossip of still doing it (without proof, at least), and agree with your pastor that Ms. Gossip may well have mended her ways. But at least try to get across the point of Reagan’s old maxim “Trust but verify.”
Watch your back. Maybe she has changed her ways but maybe this is just the calm before the storm. All you can really do is be polite, refuse to engage in the behavior and if she does start talking trash about you, confront her. Confront her in the presence of others that she has lied to about you. She’ll either back down and apologize or get really pissed and show everyone her true colors. Either way, you’ll walk off not only as the adult but also show her for what she is.
Well I was thinking about worshiping Satan, but since he cancelled his trip out to California, I changed my mind.
I’ll just worship his ass and whatever may be shoved up there .
If she read this and recognized herself in it, then I would welcome a conversation with her about it. We were very good friends for awhile, until I got tired of hearing her trash everyone else. She did some pretty mean things to another friend & I couldn’t stand being around her anymore. I didn’t realize that it was happening TO ME until afterwards, when people started coming to me to tell me things she had said (I know, more gossip).
I never even told her that I know what she said and did to me. She still thinks I quit talking to her because of what she did to my other friend.
Oh, I was only referring to the posting immedialtely previous to mine, about Satan’s ass, not about the rest of them. If you want my opinion, you definitely need to call her on it. With that in mind, you should hope that she does read this, because if, by some staggering coincidence, she does come in here and recognize herself, well, that would certainly help get the job done. That wasn’t what I was referring to, though, I just saw the last posting you’d made and felt the need to pop off. Dreadfully sorry for the confusion.
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