When did someone show you their true colours?

[vickynotvicy]

What a gut wrenching feeling when someone you thought you liked and respected suddenly shows their true colours, and you realise they were never actually the person you thought and never really a friend at all.

I’m 42, so not a spring chicken, but honestly, that feeling has completely floored me. I’m still trying to process it. Has anyone else experienced this? How did it come about, and how did things work out in the end?

We’re on one of the Royal threads together and if you ever posted on one of the cancer support threads here then I think we were on that thread together also. I’m TheDuchessofTwerking over the road.

I can recall your story but then it may also have been another lady going through the same things at the same time.

I hope life is treating you kindly and the horror of cancer and the breakdown of your marriage is behind you.

The best friend I had throughout my teens told me out of the blue when we were 18 and doing our A-Levels that he didn’t want to remain friends because he wanted to be a doctor and I ‘only’ wanted to be a teacher and that he thought he should surround himself with ‘likeminded’ friends. It completely crushed me and took me a long time to trust any new friends after that.

Spoiler alert…15 years down the line, one of us is a teacher and it isn’t me

Hello Duchess, yes probably me. I do name change every few months because I am told this is the thing to do security wise but given my rather particular set of circumstances I am reasonably recognisable.

My life reads like a bad episode of Eastenders with all the drama and I sometimes worry people will think I make it all up but sadly not!

The RF threads save my sanity at times.
I hate injustice and that is why I get so cross with H&M’s behaviour towards others and so it is nice to share that frustration with others.

My cousin, after my sister died. She'd always been narcissistic but it came out more obviously after then. She was my only first cousin, 10 years older so had always been in our lives. My sister and I were v v close, I realise now as an only child my cousin was jealous of that closeness we had. I was single when my sister died and then when I met my bf (now husband) a couple of years after my sister's death my cousin turned on me. Lots of really passive aggressive, cruel things said and done. She could not deal with me moving on and being happy. I made a thread on mumsnet about it just after my mum died last year, detailing all the stuff she'd done and said, it was quite cathartic tbh as lots of people gave me really good advice and made me realise it was her, not me, and now I'm much happier and feel more peaceful not speaking to her. I was always walking on eggshells.

The ‘friend’ who messaged me when my brother died. She hadn’t contacted me in ages. Wrote 4 words of condolences and then a lengthy paragraph about her floral business and did I want to order funeral flowers from her? She’d be happy to pop over to my parents the next day to walk them through all the options. Ended the message with “we must meet for a drink hun” and a smile emoticon.

I have two.

One is a friend who I knew for 15 years and said she was like a sister to me, actually ghosted me when I got engaged. I'm still shocked by this.

The second is one of my in laws who dropped me when I went through an extremely hard time. She lives 10 minutes away, but barely saw me, avoided conversation and made her kids keep their distance. It baffled me as I didn't talk about my problems or ask for anything. It was just an incredibly difficult, sad time. It ls like she was embarrassed by me, or worried I would take from her. I will never look at her in the same way again.

Oh you poor heart. I'm so deeply sad and sorry for you💔💐

God, I’d forgotten all about a friend who did similar. Declared to me in sixth form that I wasn’t cool enough to hang around with so it was best we weren’t friends. Bumped into her a couple of years later and gave her another chance, but she just spent loads of time telling me how many social invites she had so didn’t have time.

30 years later she was sat next to mum on a bus. Was raving to her about how she and I had been best friends and she would love to catch up, and gave my mum her number. Yeah, not interested, thanks. And her life definitely wasn’t cool.

Not me but my friend. She left her violent husband and was staying with colleague/friend. Obviously they spent a lot of time drinking and commiserating.
Colleague went to management and told them she thought my friend was an alcoholic. For some reason she thought it would ingratiate herself with the managers, instead they spoke to my friend and she told them colleague matched her drinking so maybe they both had an issue. She had to move out and never spoke to her again.

I also had a friend dump me basically when DH was gravely ill in hospital because I wouldn’t allow her DD round to play, apparently going to see DH in hospital was unreasonable. When I asked if she would take DD for a few hours she made a massive fuss about how she wanted a relaxing day and didn’t want one of DDs friends round and what an inconvenience it was.
She was a fool though as her DD was round constantly, it stopped that day.