What has someone done to make you see then in a different light

[NeedyNora]

General chat post. Curious.

He waited 3 years to tell you 😕

@longtompot and @thefourgp .. I used to tell lots of lies when I was a teenager. Not excusing it but I lived in a very abusive situation and I think I was in a fantasy world a lot of the time to escape it.

@LiJo2015

The way my dad told me my brother had died. I found out that day that he had died 3 years earlier. I felt and still feel incredibly angry towards him and saw him for the narcassist he is.

😮😥

@TheMirrorofHerDreams wow, what a horrible shock 😪
Can't believe what some people have been put through by their families.

My own family are pretty hurtful but when you read other people's experiences it is more shocking

A “friend” of mine got rid of her cat when she found out he needed medical treatment to the sum of several hundred pounds. She’d had him from a kitten for maybe seven years or so. She couldn’t justify spending that amount of money on an animal. She didn’t have insurance.

Her husband earns a six figure salary and she works as well. She actually left him at the vet’s to go to a charity who would pay for his treatment and rehome him.

Always be suspicious of people who give animals as birthday presents. I can’t look at her in the same light since that. I really hope that poor cat has a forever home now.

Told an assembled table of old friends that he had cheated on his wife and was leaving her because she was paying more attention to breastfeeding by their baby than giving him sex, then started talking about how he and I had once got drunk and had sex in university. At a table. At a dinner reunion. Asking me if he was as good then as he is now, as causally as if he was asking my opinion on the quality of the steak I was eating. I didn't know what to do, said I didn't have the faintest idea and he said "well, I'm single now, so we could find out before midnight." And squeezed my knee under the table. I'm married. I'd been married about three months. And he and I had been friends for twenty years.

It made me look at all his risqué jokes and flirtatious behaviour over the years as disgusting lechy bullshit and I've not spoken to him since. Despite his repeated attempts to make me talk to him by creating fake social media accounts. It just instantly gave me the ick.

[quote MaidEdithofAragon]**@longtompot* and @thefourgp* .. I used to tell lots of lies when I was a teenager. Not excusing it but I lived in a very abusive situation and I think I was in a fantasy world a lot of the time to escape it.[/quote]
Me too. I created my own world to escape my real life. That manifested itself in lying about it. I used to desperately wish my fantasy life and lies were true as my reality was so terrible.

[quote MaidEdithofAragon]**@longtompot* and @thefourgp* .. I used to tell lots of lies when I was a teenager. Not excusing it but I lived in a very abusive situation and I think I was in a fantasy world a lot of the time to escape it.[/quote]
Unmumsnetty hugs to you. I think this is why my primary school friend did it. I was quite naive as a teen and it didn't really register this was what was happening until the police can round to interview me at my parents.

Someone I knew celebrated their wedding anniversary in April.

We were all meeting up for a meal to celebrate with them one particular year. Her first words, on sitting down at the table was 'well, that's ruined our anniversary meal ffs'. She had a face like a slapped backside all night - her DH and their friends (including me) were just stunned.

The date was 15th April 1989 - the thing that ruined her meal? Hillsborough...

I never saw her in the same light after that and the friendship just disintegrated.

I was ill - properly ill with real flu. Dh had it too dd1 was 9 months we physically couldn’t look after her. My parents travelling my sisters working dh parents never help. We couldn’t ask friends. I rang my aunt who sent her husband my uncle by marriage. He drove 40 miles took dd and i back to their house then he (not my aunt) looked after the baby for 3 days until I was well enough to myself. Such a quiet proper man who I never really knew very well but my god he came through for us when needed!

When I was 18 I went abroad with a guy. We both thought we were so cool and grown up. We had been out drinking the night before we were due to fly home. I'd already packed my stuff but he left it right to the last minute and then starting panicking because his stuff would not all fit in the suitcase. Very calmly I said "Well we've not bought anything so if you fitted it all in before it will fit in now" His reply "But my mum packed it for me before"

The day after our wedding dad had to clear the hall we had had our reception In we were off on honeymoon. My old friends dh turned up to help wasn’t asked or even told it needed doing. Dad said he nearly cried with relief as he couldn’t move the tables on his own. What a lovely chap.

@longtompot

I thought exactly the same about the serial liar-now morbidly obese person. What a sad story.

Someone who I’d thought perfectly nice and normal, with dds around the same age as ours, told me they used to have a dog but she got fed up with it. So she got her dh to drive it into the countryside and ‘let it go’.
End of that friendship, then.

Ex SiL. Always thought she was sensible but years of debt (hers, but DB also to blame for sticking his head in the sand) had ended the relationship and divorce was slowly going through.
One day, she decided, for whatever reason, to visit my elderly parents with her father for support and stayed for two to three hours bombarding my parents with tales of wrong doing by DB. Maybe truths, maybe embellishments, maybe lies, whatever, but certainly things that they did not need to know.
First I knew of this was when I rang them and they were “broken”. It took a few months for them to recover. It was like an assault. I will never forgive her for doing this to my parents who had only ever been welcoming and helpful.
Before she left, she accepted the contents of Mum’s purse! Awful behaviour.

@longtompot thanks I appreciate it. I'm very sympathetic to teenager bullshit now with my own DC friends...you never know what is going on for them. Hugs @Arsebucket too.

I think teenagers often lie from a place of wishing their lives were different - I was the same, and looking back I was just crying out for some attention. (Good or bad, any attention would do)

I had a serious accident a few years ago now that left me with permanent medical problems and unable to drive for a long time. I also had to give up work. Something like that really reveals who your true friends are. I have changed my opinions on a lot of people, some for the better, some for the worse. There are people who I considered close friends beforehand who I literally haven't seen since the accident, and others who I didn't even know that well who have bent over backwards to support me. It's been very illuminating.

I had a friend and we had been TTC at the same time and it was part of our friendship since we both struggled with infertility and confided in each other (she was distraught and had a melt down when her sister had an abortion because 'all she wanted was the chance to be a mother').

She moved away for 6 months, got pregnant and moved back, then one night called me to say she was in the hospital with a suspected miscarraige and I dropped everything to rush to her side.

Stayed in hospital over night while she had tests and got the all clear for miscarraige and then as we left she dragged me to the bar, ordered an alcoholic drink (just 10 minutes after leaving hospital), popped a pill which turned out to be ecstacy and when I in my shock asked 'what about the baby?' she said 'if the babys messed up from it I'll just abort'.

Blew my mind, its like the girl I had known for years was unrecognisable - I dont know what happened in those months but a different girl came back from the one that left.

I was still TTC and honestly it was just too painful too watch so I distanced myself, she did invite me to meet the baby (who was miraculously ok) after the birth but it turned into a party with drugs and I left - drugs are not nor ever have been my thing (hell I dont even like popping paracetemol lol).

In general Im pretty laid back though, Im not one for drama filled friendships and falling out over nothing so theres nothing else I can think of. I can see you every day or not for 10 years and Ill still treat you exactly the same level of friendship as long as you havent done a complete 180 in personality.

Very close friend was quite judgmental of certain issues in dating when we were younger.

Declaring things such as I would never have sex with someone on a first date, etc. She seemed to be quite pious about it.

Then she started dating a separated but still married man, with visa issues and couldn't divorce his wife as he would have to leave the UK. He also had 2 kids by 2 women neither by his current wife.

She stuck with him for 9 years, helped him divorce and get him back in the UK whilst she financially supported him being frequently out of work. He dumped her when she said she wanted marriage and kids and he admitted he didn't want that with her.

I realised at that point her bar was very low in the men she chose and her snide comments about sex early in relationships (that I have done) after the company she kept made me see her differently.

I was really struggling to get over my ex nearly a year after us splitting. I couldn’t help myself constantly looking at his social media (I’d unfriended him but it wasn’t private), then I came across his new girlfriend! Looking at her (also non private) SM was a real eye opener and I instantly lost all attraction/like/respect for him! She really is something else, always falling out with friends then briefly deleting her account before she’s back with a long winded ‘woe is me’ post, selfie after selfie all taken at the same angle, writing very VERY intimate details of their sex life! Of course she has something along the lines of…’love me or hate me or fuck off’ written in her bio! I can’t help but look at her profile every couple of weeks or so, it’s like a soap opera!!

Thinking that my ex has chosen to be with someone like that has made me feel disgust that I was ever with him!

Turned vegan.

In the past couple of years, a friend of mine and another friend of DP have pretty much instantly turned full blown preachy vegan as well as hating all Western medicine and believing all conspiracies they read online. Both had seen a Netflix documentary and overnight changed their entire mentality. Straight away they became judgy assholes constantly criticising other people's lives as well as being anti-vaxxers. One friend said that my auntie died because she had chemo - orange juice was all she needed. DPs friend became incredibly shitty about everyone's carbon footprint but still drove a Porsche and went on holidays in Asia - that was okay though because he was "enlightened".

The funny thing - DP and I are vegan, we rescue animals, we recycle, we're incredibly thrifty, and have an eco-conscious company. Some people just love to shout about how they're "better" than everyone else and that's where we decided we'd had enough.

Care about the planet - yes.
Behave like a dickhead - no.

Friend had me walk with her behind her Dads coffin as she said she couldn't walk alone. An hour before this her (thankfully now ex) Dp came on to me as we were waiting to go in to the cremitoriam. I never told her. I really lost faith in people that day. What scum would think that was appropriate?

@MrsAvocet I can relate to that. I had an accident earlier this year - not life-threatening injuries, but life-changing. I’ve been surprised both pleasantly and less so by friends and “not so much” friends. Has certainly opened my eyes.

Oh I have thought of another.

DS was in an club and there was this very friendly but very 'hippy' mam who use to come bouncing over to talk to me, Im quite introverted but she was nice, friendly and chatty if not 'a bit wierd' (liked to talk about how she took her kids out of school etc...).

After several months of this she invited us to the park after club to a playdate with her DS, I didnt drive then so told her we couldnt as it was a 20 minute drive away and she said 'no bother hop in and we'll go together'.

Last time I ever accept a lift from a 'stranger', she drove like a mad woman and when I pointed out some of the seriously worrying road laws she was breaking she laughed like a nutter and said she 'didnt believe in goverment rules', I said 'but they'll ban you from driving' to which she replied 'they cant I never submitted to their tests to begin with'.

Yes she had no license, no lessons, no MOT, no insurance, didnt believe in laws etc...

Needless to say we got out as quick as possible and I refused to get back in, DH had to leave work to come collect us from the middle of nowhere.