Anyone you know ever said anything to you that's made you change your opinion of them?

[TrustPenguins]

Kind of light-hearted but...

Two examples recently:

1. A friend admitted (rather sheepishly) that he voted Tory. He said it was because of Labour's intended VAT on private school fees (his children go to private school). That was his sole reason.

I feel this was selfish and he wasn't looking at the bigger picture. I've always been taught to vote with the most vulnerable person you know in mind and of what is in their best interests. I was also shocked that a good friend would vote Tory full stop!

1. Another friend said he was supporting Spain in the football last night. Apparently his Mum is Scottish and his Dad is Scouse so they've never supported England (friend is English). When England played Italy in the previous final, he was cheering on Italy. When Italy won, he was celebrating whilst his kids were crying (they were supporting England). Just seems strange to me.

Obviously anyone can vote for and support who they like but I just never expected these friends to say / do this, and rightly or wrongly, it has changed my opinion of them a bit.
Just when you think you know someone...! 🤣

Anyone got any other examples?

Friend once told me that she felt like a single mother when her dh worked away.

He earned 6 figures, did bedtime via Skype every night he was away and she was in contact with him many many times a day, she was a sahm and was able to share the mental load 50/50.

Said to me during an awful divorce involving financial abuse and an ex who walked away from the kids completely.

Same friend also told me I should accept shitty behaviour from a subsequent boyfriend because 'he's taken you and your kids on' with zero commitment, responsibility or financial involvement.

We've not spoken in 11 years.

Not a friend buy someone I got talking to in a group setting in a pub told me she left her puppy (about 4/5 months old) home alone that day for 7 hours while she was out getting drunk. Couldn't imagine how anxious the poor little thing was.

Found out today an acquaintance believes Putin didn’t start the war. I knew they were more left wing than me but not that far! I literally didn’t know what to say and will avoid as much as possible in the future.

How is that belief left wing?

My friend of over thirty years told me her husband, who I had always known and liked for over thirty odd years had hit her many years ago. She didn’t say whether he’d done it since but I no longer see him as the jovial family man he portrays himself to be. It really proved that you never know what goes on behind closed doors.

I also really go off people who say they hate anyone who votes Tory. So childish. Can you imagine the howls of protest if it was the other way round?

People regularly say it.

How rude of you. No wonder he was pissed off.

Close friend who I’d known for decades made a casual remark that revealed serious antisemitism. This was well before the Gaza conflict so nothing to do with that.
I have never felt quite the same about her since.

@Barbadossunset of course not! this thread isn’t about who you mix with. All I’m saying is we’re all different and often we get on much better with those whose values are similar.

Labour council I suppose. They were notorious.

Yes! I started working in a private school after years in the state sector. I was given a mentor for my first year who was a lovely lady teacher in her mid fifties and well-versed in private school polish.

All was going well until she told me she’d buy me a gin if I would upset ‘Yvonne’ (a very easily flustered and anxious Year 1 teacher) by stealing all of the nativity costumes before she’d had a chance to look.

At first I was a bit surprised but then I realised she had a whole campaign against ‘Yvonne’ and would say things in staff meetings to set Yvonne off and sit there smirking at her (equally bitchy) friend who taught in the year group below.

I was shocked that a seemingly gentle and lovely seeming woman nearing the end of her career would be so unkind. The worst of it was, she was constantly accusing others of being unkind and holding herself up as a good Catholic pillar of society.

It really disappointed me. Eventually her acidity turned on me and several other colleagues. She would do bizarre things like look at my books without admitting it and then get my boss to announce criticisms about the way the learning objective labels were placed on the pages in front of the whole staff meeting rather than just say to my face that they were meant to be in the top right, not the top left. Cowardly horror.

She left a year in and was going around telling everyone it was because a 21 year old teacher had been bullying her all year.
I couldn’t believe the bitchy insanity of her. I hadn’t witnessed that since being in secondary school in the 90s!

"It's not about being virtuous. It's about instinct...those without a voice need me to vote..". How do you know then which party they want you to vote for on their behalf if they are voiceless? Or have you just made that decision for them as you know best and of course they must obviously think the same as you about their best interests. I would personally not be so confident in what is good or bad for other people.

Tbf, you sound like Justin Welby and things are not going so well for him on the Popularity Front.

Did you miss the word 'jokingly'?

Also, we'd ripped the piss out of each other for 40 years and just laughed, except for this time.

Shouldn't that be 'his wife and I'? See, it's not nice being corrected is it?
No wonder he was pissed off.

No it's me and his wife I'm afraid. Not that I agree with correcting other people re grammar, but you did raise it 😬

My friend told me she was shagging her boss. Her husband is the nicest man in the world.

I just don't feel the same about her any more.

No, in this context it is most definitely 'his wife and I'.
You don't say 'me jokingly said'.
Christ, the irony.

It's good to be confident but I would check that if I were you.

It’s the whole “scouse, not English” thing. Basically Liverpool gets dog shit abuse from the rest of the country, so it’s a “fuck you, if you hate us so much, don’t expect our support”. Also coupled with the fact that most scousers are genetically Irish/Welsh means they don’t have the same sense of national identity as the rest of England. I do support the national team, but my DS doesn’t. We’re 1/3 Welsh/Scot/Irish.

I didn’t miss the word ‘jokingly’. You’re obviously a laugh a minute.

I don't need to because I know I am right. It is a simple rule of grammar.
And I pointed it out because the person who wrote it was being snarky about someone else's spoken grammar.

I think that attitude has been copyrighted by Millwall, actually.

Liverpudlians: so derivative.

Yes I know you corrected someone's grammar. So I would suggest it's a good rule of thumb to be correct yourself. Which is exactly the point you made to the PP. Amusingly.

He wins asshole of the century...what a complete and utter twat.