When you realized your friend was a bad person

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I don’t intend for this to be pit-worthy…please, I’m scared of the pit :wink: I’m just curious if anyone else has had this experience and exactly what’s happening.

Basically, it dawned on me the other day that a friend of mine just isn’t a very nice person. We lived together and always had a blast, and things got along great the majority of the time. Anytime someone sad something bad about her, I’d stick up for her.

But now that we’re not together very often, I can look at things a little more objectively…and I realize that she’s not really all that great. As a matter of fact, she’s fairly manipulative, especially to her boyfriend. She never really looks out for anyone but herself. She says mean things about other people - especially a formerly mutual close friend who is no longer her friend (though still mine). And it’s not that she’s changed; I can remember examples of this from our past, but I never really put it all together.

It’s very disconcerting. Share your experiences to console me. :slight_smile:

2

I, too, lived with a girl who I thought to be such a great pal… until I moved out. The light of day had revealed itself. I was strangely happier not being near her, talking on the phone with her, shopping with her, etc. So I did a little psychoanalysis on these feelings and realized she was terribly materialistic, critical of every breath I took, demeaning, self-centered, and loved to give back-handed compliments. Needless to say, I do not associate with her anymore much. When I do see her I feel awkward, like I want to flee the country from her endless talk about namebrands and “who’s-who”. Puke.

So, all in all, I understand what you feel. It is a part of learning about what kind of people you want to surround youself with in your life. Life is short, so don’t waste time on the want-nots.

3

I’m not really sure if this one is going to console you or just depress you further, but I do know exactly what you mean. Apologies for how long this post is going to be… <Deep breath>

I went to an all-girls school, and one of my friends there was the nicest, most generous person you could imagine. I was quite shy, and she always took care to keep me included in things, etc. Unfortunately she doesn’t seem to extend these nice qualities to the other half of the human race, as I quickly found out when we went co-ed in the sixth form.

She’d flirt with them all (despite having an extremely longterm boyfriend) and this led to quite a few blokes falling for her. She then proceeded to set them off against each other in the most cold-blooded fashion I have ever seen, culminating in a series of deep-seated hatreds between previous best friends.

I was still friends with her though, mainly because of our shared past – by this point we’d been friends for six or so years. Plus I’m just plain dumb, of course :o. I finally realised she was a bad person one night when a whole group of us were on holiday. To cut long post short, she got off with her boyfriend’s best friend in front of her boyfriend (I should mention that it was their three-year anniversary the next day…) and another guy that liked her. I could even have forgiven her this, if she hadn’t denied the whole thing the next day, and actually got angry with me for lying about something that had just been ‘a peck on the lips’! She may still not realise it, but she lost me as a close friend that day.

I still see her quite often when I’m back home, and we go out together and are generally friendly, but I doubt I will ever trust her again. I spent a year and a half trying to justify her behaviour to others who could see far more clearly what she was like, but I think that if I’m ever in a similar situation again I’ll consider what the critics say. Luckily all this happened a matter of weeks before I left the island to go to university, so it’s all in the past now anyway. I’m really quite amazed about how angry and betrayed it still makes me feel.

And if she’s reading this thread: Hi! :smiley:

4

lovelyluka, I’m afraid that the only consolation you’re going to get is of the form “It happened to us too, and we just tried to deal with it.” That’s all I can say.

My Mom and I made friends a few years ago with a locally well-known religious figure, and made a lot of friends through him. All of us thought he was the greatest thing since sliced bread, of course. Occasionally, someone would become violently disenchanted with him, but we’d all write that off as the person having personal issues, because there was no way the friend could be doing anything bad. Eventually we got to see it from a closer perspective, and started wondering but mostly just managed to justify his behavior to ourselves. Then we got to experience it firsthand, and realized what a crock the whole thing was. He was severely manipulative and very cold to people that he considered to be a threat to his sense of order. A friend of his that he brought in from a different country turned out to be a child molester. There were other things. It was unbelievable what we had allowed ourselves to ignore. Ignorance is bliss … yeah.

I could have dealt with all of that pretty well if it were not for the fact that the group of friends divided into those who still trusted him (essentially, the ones whose egos he stroked enough) and those of us who had gotten a firsthand taste of what a “good” person he was. The first subgroup held together, but the second didn’t. I lost most of my closest friends - they just disappeared. I still search for one of them occasionally on the peoplefinders, but he’s in a different country … I miss him. I don’t know how to make my peace, so to speak, with him (or the others). I have decided to believe that the hurt will go away. It’s been … oh … three and a half years? Hurry up and go away, dammit! I’m waiting!

Shill, I can soooo relate on the “angry and betrayed.” Good luck on reconciling your feelings, and welcome to the boards!

5

Here are some exciting highlights of my life as a young woman.

  1. Found out, a few years after the fact, the a roommate had systematically NOT given me phone messages from men, ever. The best part? I found this out when I was out with friends, the nostalgia was flowing, and two guys starting talking about what I bitch I used to be never calling back…

  2. Stupidly signed a lease “because it would be less complicated” and got stuck with a few thousand dollars worth of bills. (Did I mention she was wealthy???)

  3. Pressed someone I care about a great deal, who has had a hard life to say the least, to invite my “friend” to his graduation party. She ruined it by throwing a huge scene. Seriously, cleared the place by 9 p.m. He had spent a lot of money and gone to a lot of trouble … and for nothing, thanks to my stupid defense of someone who didn’t deserve it.

  4. Had my entire office learn about a tragedy that I would prefer kept private.

Grrrr. I can only hope I’m older and wiser.

6

God, this thread makes me want to cry.

Thank god I can say - I hope! - that I’ve never been the bad friend.

Here are some exciting highlights of my life as a young woman.

  1. Found out, a few years after the fact, the a roommate had systematically NOT given me phone messages from men, ever. The best part? I found this out when I was out with friends, the nostalgia was flowing, and two guys starting talking about what I bitch I used to be never calling back…

  2. Stupidly signed a lease “because it would be less complicated” and got stuck with a few thousand dollars worth of bills. (Did I mention she was wealthy???)

  3. Pressed someone I care about a great deal, who has had a hard life to say the least, to invite my “friend” to his graduation party. She ruined it by throwing a huge scene. Seriously, cleared the place by 9 p.m. He had spent a lot of money and gone to a lot of trouble … and for nothing, thanks to my stupid defense of someone who didn’t deserve it.

  4. Had my entire office learn about a tragedy that I would prefer kept private.

Grrrr. I can only hope I’m older and wiser.

7

it was the culmination of two years of stupid, shitty things … lying to us about his drinking, smoking, cheating on girls (from what I have been told), anything from who he was talking to on the phone to a car wreck he had.

The last bit was him on his AIM SNs, pretending to be people who used to be his friends (whom he had mentioned to them before, but with whom they had never previously talked) to find out, basically, which girl he’d been courting online would be most willing to let him do certain things to her (coming inside without protection, having a child out of wedlock … one was willing to untie her tubes for him).

I hadn’t liked him for quite some time, but I put up with him because he needed friends and he was kinda close to a friend I spent a lot of time with. He’s not been a friend of mine for several months mainly because regardless of what he says, I cannot trust him. He lied to my face and to my friends’ faces when we confronted him about impersonating them online.

I don’t need those kind of people in my life.

8

j.c.: This line is priceless:

“Thank god I can say - I hope! - that I’ve never been the bad friend.”

I have many weaknesses, but I feel my biggest strength is my ability to look past bad qualities. More often than not, a friend actually means well. Most people I know aren’t intentionally malicious even if they appear to be.

There is one fact in life…people will talk about others behind others backs. I am not innocent of that sin. However, I always try to point out something good about an individual if I am going to say something negative.

In other words, people piss me off. However, there is always a strength somewhere that I may someday need to rely upon.

I know someone like your friend. This particular guy (I’ll call him JoJo) is always there to lend a helping hand. Numerous times, I have asked for his assistance. I have always paid him handsomely whether it be in free food, money, or favors. I know for a fact that he is in it only for the return…and I am glad to pay for that help. However, he has another very bad quality. He tends to be the rumor king. Unfortunately, most of what he says is true…and he seems to know everything about everybody. He initially seems like a very trustworthy guy, so people tell him what is on their minds.

I was lucky. I met him through an acquaintance. We didn’t really become good friends until some time after our initial meeting. Before I confided anything in him, I realized he was telling me some things he really shouldn’t be saying. That is why I never trusted him to that degree.

I would, however, trust him with a million dollar investment. He is an honest man who can’t keep his mouth shut (see…a positive mixed with a negative:)

I’m glad I know the guy. Truth be told, most of my friends share some sort of positive/negative qualities. What might seem like barely perceptible negative qualities to me might be simply unacceptable to others.

9

Well, being left behind and abandoned 500 miles from home was a clue.

Other than that, I kinda liked Mobile, AL, and wouldn’t mind returning some day.

10

Tough as it is, there’s a line between understanding and condoning. I lost the a great friend, a friend from childhood on, because finally that gap became just plain too great to bridge. No lie, we used to call ourselves Damon and Pythias. Trouble is, people get complicated. I could accept why she did things but not what she did, but even that line severed the friendship.

Don’t want to go into details, because it still hurts, but we knew each other’s flaws from childhood and for a long time, they didn’t matter. Mostly they made us closer. We knew exactly how imperfect we were, when most people around us seemed to have everything together. (We weren’t exactly perceptive when it came to scope.) But we, and a few others, were a collective “safe zone” for each another; misfits huddled against a cold, perfect world.

Over time, we all slowly, tentatively reached outside, and found it was liveable. Not always easy or welcoming, but not totally alien either. Most of us carried a ridiculous naivte–honor–outside our shells, with varying degrees of adaptation, but at least the basics held. Except for my best friend. She became icier and more ruthless than the worst supeficial twits we’d ever dreaded. For example, she made new friends–genuine friends, by her new lights–but deliberately pursued the husbands of couples anyway because “if women couldn’t keep them, they deserved to lose them”. And she saw no disconnect in doing it. Friendship, loyalty, decency, charity–toward male or female–were just easily disposable or changeable labels. Her whole way of treating the world and people had changed.

I understood why and how she’d gotten to that point; her upbringing had been brutally dysfunctional, to say the least. After a while I just couldn’t condone what she was doing. And it ended the friendship. I’ve talked to her since, very briefly, a few times through the years. She called, when both my parents died. A lot of the old glimmers remained, because we shared a lot of history. We could never really connect though, because the real friendship died years earlier.

That’s really depressing, but it’s how it shook down.

Veb

11

This isn’t nearly bad as the others, but here goes…

When she asked me to be a bridesmaid in her wedding, then dumped me from the party the day before the event.

12

Yikes! That’s kinda cold, if you ask me.

Anyway, mine is I had a best friend. Until the day he told me he helped a buddy of his dipsose of some kittens by leaving them in the middle of nowhere. That was the end for me.

13

Well, the good news is I’m going to be a bridesmaid in my twin brother’s wedding, and I don’t think I’ll be left out of this one. :slight_smile:

That’s horrible! There are pounds and shelters that would have taken them. Heck, he probably just could’ve given them away. What was the buddy’s justification?

14

I’m usually perceptive about people – especially other women. I’m in my late fifties and have rather prided myself on my good judgment in friends. (I even have one friend that has been my friend for fifty-five years.)

I had been friends with another woman (about five years older than me for about five years.) She had been like family to me. When she would come to visit, we would stay in our bathrobes all day and chatter like magpies. I trusted her totally.

Two years ago she suddenly and without warning cut me out of her life totally and betrayed me to people that she knew I did not trust. She gave no explanation. She would not admit to being angry – just irritated.

It was both cold and cowardly. I have even wondered if she has lost her mind in some way.

It was an extremely painful experience.

15

That friend of mine wasn’t exactly a bad friend, as in the sense that he/she was not a total jerk deserving to be drown in a pit full of detergent. What I couldn’t swallow was he/she pretended to be someone else he/she wasn’t just to ‘be my friend’.

The last couple of years I have been rather lonely (so lonely that I could have lengthly debates and conversations with the left, middle and right side of my brains). Then this fellow hailed along. We shared some interests. Got along well. He/she would call me out to watch movies (which never happened to me for the past eighteen years of my miserable, boring life) and drag me out for other activities (something which is a breath of fresh air after all the stale air in my little world).

Gradually, however, I noticed something. As he/she knew me better, I was left on the wayside. Forgotten like the unwatered lily on top of the fridge, or the left-over ice-cream in the coldest compartment of the freezer.

It dawned me that fellow was merely showing me a ‘Christian Courtesy’ ™. If that was so, fine, at least he/she didn’t tell me to go to Africa and spend the rest of my life there learning the languages of some tribal tribes so that I could evanglise with them. But the upsetting thing is that this friend would only call me when he/she needs my help.

I realise most of the time the friendship was sustained by me - I called to suggest a movie, a visit to an interesting place etc. He never, rarely did it. If I dumped that friend to the back of my mind, in three months I wouldn’t have gotten a single call from him/her, unless, of course his/her computer crashed.

Maybe I am not the type who take friendship too seriously, but at least one advice I learnt proves truth - it takes 3 years to find out whether you really find out the personality and character of a person, or more if he/she is extremely good at acting.

16

Zoe, do you have any clues as to why she did that?

LostCause, sounds like he was a “friend in need” and only your friend when he was in need. Did you eventually confront him?

17

Well, KCSuze, I did. That what the fellow said - I am over-senstitive, paranoid, over-demanding and ‘I am just that type of jerk.’

Well, at least tell me beforehand, not after I spent a year or so beliving that you are really interested to be my friend.

To be fair, that friend said he/she would pay more attention to the details that bother me. But I already given up inside - why bother? I don’t even make it to the Top 50 of that person’s Priority List.

18

My very best best friend for 15 years. We were closer than sisters. I’d take vacation time when she was sick to sit with her and wait on her. Many times. When things were rough for me and money was more than tight, she’d leave an envelope on my desk with money in it because she knew how proud I was and that I’d do without before asking for help.
She had a very serious development in her life, double mascetomy. It totally changed the person she was. Her husband was also a close friend. An affair occured, he found out, they separated, tried to make me take sides. Ended up that he told her some things that “I said” when in reality he had had her followed the whole time she was seeing the other man. I have no idea what he told her. She never told me, she is the type that will hold a grudge for a lifetime. So three years have passed, we haven’t spoken. Me, because I feel betrayed that she didn’t give me a chance to speak and that she believed him knowing that he lied to her most of their marriage. And for whatever reasons she has, she totally hates me now from what I hear. We will never be friends again. I could not trust her, since she so easily threw our friendship aside. I rarely think of it, even though we both work for the same company, just in different buildings. Definitely her loss.

19

When he was indicted. …Then convicted… Then sentenced to prison for years.

20

I think I’m probably the friend that’s the bad person. Actually, it all hypothetical since I don’t have friends, but I’m sure any I did have would realize I was much to self-centered and unappreciative to be tolerated.

Or at least, I’d like to think so.