Curious Meeting

Yes, a few of them. I had a best friend for years and years during school and in my late teens was asked if I would loan this friend several hundred dollars. I did, gladly, and never asked for repayment but heard from them less and less. I was down on my luck, homeless and jobless, and asked if I could stay a few nights. This friend refused, even though they lived alone in a 2 bedroom apartment. I mentioned the loan and was soundly tongue-lashed. More than 20 years later this friend wrote to me wanting to have contact again but I never replied. I should have at least written back a hello to see how things stood but I figured with friends like that, who needs enemies? Another friend of my ex-husband and mine acted very much like yours during a divorce. I still have the paring knife from the set he gave us as a wedding present and it's my favorite but although he knew how to give a great wedding gift he was a jerk. I've also known a couple of women that took their husbands for everything they could even when the man could not afford it. Needless to say, I'm not in contact with any of those people. I went through a messy divorce, too, but I did not take any more than my share. If I ever come into money, he'll be one of the first I share with.

Oh, thank goodness for I haven't had a friend such as yours. While i was reading your post, I couldn't help feeling disgusted about your friend. What the heck was he thinking???? He only got a little more extra money to pay and he changed himself into a monster! Poor wife... i only have few friends but at least they are all genuine human and not an animal. If I happened to have a friend like that, he can hear things from me that he hasn't heard of from the day he was born.

I have to give you credit. You handled the meeting well. I have had this happened and I always try to be civilized but distant to show my disdain.

I have been in this kind of situation several times in my life. I hate it when people turn out to not be genuine when you were to them the whole time. I have wanted to say something to these people also but I just bite my tongue to save my breath before making matters ever worse.

Too young to say never but I think I did, just couldn't really remember the exact details, as I am very forgiving to friends and even to foes. I know I am still to meet more, so I have been warned.

Not lowering yourself to his level, you see? I admire your self-restraint, I really do but I also agree with it. There are some nasty people in this world (I've known a few) but there again I haven't always been perfect either. You notice I said "haven't always" lol.

I was thinking in these same lines today morning and thought of starting a discussion on the same. You beat me to it :( I am in the state of mind with a close friend of mine based on quite a few incidents and how she treats her household help and her husband. But she considers me a friend and many times I want to tell her how I feel about the way she thinks and how she is abusing most of the important relationships in her life. But I just can't bring myself to do it since I don't want that to spoil our friendship and what she does really doesn't concern me. I'm pretty much honest about my feelings in general and though I might not be outright rude,I avoid talking to people I do not have a good opinion of. But in this case, I feel 'I' am the hypocrite.

wow, that's terrible No, I haven't had anything like that happen, but then again, most of my friends don't work out of town and are almost all single women like me

Nope... Not so far anyway.

Hmmm ... several guys I once considered myself to be in love with come to mind. When we parted company I had the greatest respect for them, but their subsequent behaviour lead me to question how I had thought I knew them well at all. One simply went into melt down and did all sorts of bizarre and upsetting things, but the other has just displayed very poor parenting skills and that disturbs me even more.

Yes, i have. My ex bf. He sounds very much like your friend. He tries to appear so upright and Godly. But when you get to know him better every words you can think of to discribe him is ugly and evil. So that makes him ugly on the outside and the inside. Like a blackheart man. I broke it off with him upon discovering he was fooling around with a 18yr old girl. He even told this girl "Its ok you can talk to her shes just an old B*&%#." Two wks later hes calling me telling me he misses me. I said,"What? You miss a old B*&%# like me???" Then i hung up. My guess is he was getting serious and she took fight away from the old man. What i can not figure is why she was attracted to him in the first place. Anyway im glad it happen. Otherwise i may have still been fooling myself with him. That girl was less than 1/2 half our age. We both have children older than her. OMG but if that was i who was with someone that young in his eyes i whould have been a HOE. Talk about double standards.

Trout and salmon! Yum! Scottish backwaters. I envy you both that. Always wanted to see Scottish anything. I can certainly understand why you wanted to tell him what you thought. I would feel the same way. Infact I think you are a far stronger person than myself for not doing so. But what would it solve? I did have a friend who actions totally changed my opinion of her. She and I had known eachother for thirty plus years. I had moved into her home for a few months. Something happened that made me want to move back home. Nothing with her but just life. So I moved back home. Although I felt bad about moving out and leaving her financially in a bit of a bind she and I continued to email back and forth and things were okay between us. That is until one night a couple of months after I moved out she emailed me accusing me of stealing jewelry and some DVD's from her. Now mind you this is several months after I moved out. She had gone through all my stuff having packed it for me. Yet she continued to accuse me ending with if I didn't get the things back to her she would bring authorities into it. She could never tell me what the articles were exactly. I still don't know what brought this on or what she thought she would gain from it. I am no longer friends with her and she never contacted the authorites. It bothers me alot that she would even acuse me of such a thing. I will always wonder why she did this.

You right, friend. Life is too short. We don't know when and what time we are going rest. I don't have a friend like your friend. But as you said is completely right...

That is a shame that your friend did that to his wife and family. I have a similar story. Mine involves Brazil too! The women there must be pretty good! In the 90's, my wife's cousin went off to Japan to work teaching English, her younger sister did the same. They both met two Brazilian best friends who were half Japanese and living in Japan. They both married these men, had some children and eventually came back to Australia to live. We used to see them all the time and had a good little family group thing happening for a few years. All was good. About 6 or 7 years ago the older sister and her husband started an Australian branch of a business that his family owned in Brazil. It was some hair technology thing and they started getting these devices and products into hair salons all over Australia and were doing well. The husband started going back to Brazil on business trips every now and then. These got more frequent and longer until he just never came back. It turned out that he longed for life back in Brazil and had met someone there. The bank account was in his name and he stopped his wife having access to it. He basically abandoned his wife, his three children that were aged roughly around 9, 6 and 3 at the time, as well as his lifelong best friend. He also abandoned people like me that were supposed to be his friends. It was a shock at the time and his family really suffered for a few years. She has met someone else now and moved on, but I think the children, particularly the older two would still be bitterly hurt by their father giving up on them like that. He was adored by the kids!

'No One is Perfect!' This is a good reason to never get too close to anyone! It seems to be human nature to idolize someone, make them a "Close Friend,"and then the inevitable happens, - They let you down! At 77 years, I have never made a close friend,I do have acquaintances, but have never been let down or disappointed in anyone! On occasion I have wondered where this person is coming from, but because this chum is just an a casual acquaintance, I can just relax,and wait, to see what happens.

Yes and it is a sad thing indeed. I had a good friend whose home I moved into when I left my first husband. I adored her and it never occurred to me until I'd been there for a few months that she had/was taking advantage of me. When I finally wised up I told her I was moving out and in the blink of an eye our friendship was irrevocabley broken. I think of her often though, but those thoughts are tinged with such regret they are almost painful, even after all these years.................

What a CAD! We had a friend just like that, whom because his wife cheated on him very early in their marriage, they split, and he paid her half of the value of the business they had begun to develop, $100,000. He made her sign a Prenuptual Agreement, that IF they ever got back together, she would no longer share in the business profits. They DID get back together. He paid her a salary, BUT, the IDIOT forced her to redeposit the 'paycheque' back into the business account every week. And still thought, tried like he11, to make sure she got NOTHING after 26 yrs of marriage. She divorced him, because of abuse, he was violent, threatening, and cruel, and never forgave her for the long ago indiscretion. Held it over her head constantly, and I witnessed him treating her no better than a dog for many years. I told her many times to leave and finally she did. At the time of their divorce, they owned a multimillion dollar business, the courts valued it at 2.4 million. Plus the matrimonial home and a cottage that were personal assets. He fired all 7 of his lawyers, one at a time, after replacing each one when they all advised him to settle. He would refuse, fire him, and get another, delaying things for even longer. It went on for 5 yrs. At one point, he made the mistake of threatening the life of his spouse, in front of one of their son's. He was incarcerated. Because of this, the employees were running the bar/restaurant/pool hall that he had begun close to home, and it went into the ground during the 3 mos he was in jail and the nuthouse (aka Mental Facility). The rent wasn't paid, the creditors moved in and he lost it all. It was the only thing that truly was his and his alone as he started it after all the bank accounts were frozen during the duration of the divorce. All in all, the end result was that.... he lost, she won, and he should have just given her the measley $60,000 she was asking as start up money to leave him with instead of fighting it so hard. Instead, the judge awarded her HALF of everything, which was liquidated by the auctions ordered by the courts, and his half went to paying ALL the lawyers, hers and his. So, he was left penniless, with a huge mortgage that he had to get on the mansion he lived in, to finish paying off the lawyers. He is now a pauper living on a Disability Pension, ($1400/mo?). I think justice was served and he got just what he deserved for trying his best to make sure she got nothing.

I was talking about this with a friend last night how many people last year mainly really surprised me with affairs and just being downright evil. Some of these people i would have swore blind were genuine and decent and would never do such a thing but the truth always comes out eventually. It just shocked me i guess no matter how well you think you know someone you never really do! Saddens me really as i like to have great faith in us as a human race just a shame 80% of the population chooses to try and prove me wrong still there are some genuine people out there so all hope is not lost. ps. i know what you mean you want to give them a good shake and a talking to but feel it isn't really appropriate. You just have to think that maybe your friend (the wife) needed the experience to push her to learn and grow and achieve the success she is achieving now horrid to go through at the time but shes all the better for it.

Yes, but it is also the duty of a friend to influence their friends. Seems you still have work left undone.

While these things usually happen, they are mere results of the respect and trust that we give to them. I sometimes call these situations as emotional betrayal. If by chance that we do not respect them, and we expect them to do the worst things in life, then my opinion of them would not change.