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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To not want anything to do with ex-friend and his child?

61 replies

TheSmallClanger · 22/05/2013 22:34

Situation has been rumbling on for several months now.

Close friends of ours have recently split up. The husband had been having an affair for 3 of the 5 years of his marriage. The OW became pregnant and he left his wife.

Since the split, I've not wanted to have anything to do with him. Basically, he isn't the person I thought he was. He has been lying to us all for a long time and has been vv cruel to his stbxwife - he has done a u-turn on wanting children and is now bleating on to anyone who will listen that stbxwife was trying to "deny him" fatherhood. The OW is much younger than him and he was in a position of trust when they met. It leaves a bad taste.

The baby has recently been born. I am still avoiding him, as is DH, although he has contacted us a few times trying to bury the hatchet.

It has been sad and regrettable, but DH and I felt we were doing the right thing.

However, other mutual friends think differently, and I have had one such talking to me today, and she told me I was being very unreasonable not to see the baby, as it is hardly her fault. This feels like guilt-tripping and I don't like it. Apparently, several people are going to the christening, and this friend thinks DH and I should go (we were invited).

My instinct is no, and to drop this man from our social circle. Am I actually BU?

OP posts:
Allalonenow · 22/05/2013 23:30

YANBU.
I'm sure the wife would be glad of a good supportive friend at the moment.

Scruffey · 22/05/2013 23:30

He sounds like a horrible man. I wouldn't have anything to do with him. You aren't upsetting or depriving the child of anything, what a bizarre thing for your friend to suggest. I would drop the man in question quietly without too much fuss and there is no point in going to a christening for a baby who you don't know and aren't going to know. This man didn't take his last promise to God very seriously, I wonder if it is lost on him that he's going to make another promise at the Christening.

You'll be well rid.

Alisvolatpropiis · 22/05/2013 23:40

Yanbu, you don't have to be friends with this man if you don't want to be. That is fair enough. I'm sure his very badly treated ex wife would be grateful of having such supportive friends.

I don't think a 12 year age gap given the OW is a consenting adult, not a 16 year old, is an issue. Whether he was her lecturer at university or not. It's the fact that regardless of who she is,how old she is or how they met, he cheated on his wife and has treated her bloody terribly that is the issue. And one you don't have to be "cool" with either.

GrendelsMum · 22/05/2013 23:46

I think it's up to you, no should' about it.

FWIW, I stayed friends with someone who split up with his wife (he could have behaved much better, but he could have behaved much worse, IYSWIM), but a very good friend of mine felt that she couldn't talk to him any more. I appreciated her viewpoint, and I suppose I appreciated that his ex-wife had someone like my friend in her corner at her difficult time.

HibiscusIsland · 22/05/2013 23:56

YANBU. Good for you.

LemonPeculiarJones · 23/05/2013 00:01

YANBU. It is an abuse of the power dynamic - for a tutor to sexually target an 18 year old girl Angry

KatherineLacey · 23/05/2013 00:06

OK, 12 years isn't much. But I really can't imagine it being OK for a tutor to get involved with a fresher to such an extent. Agree, the power dynamic is all off. A few of my friends at uni were absolutely infatuated with their tutors, but the tutors that realised it ran a mile, naturally. If you think about it, a few months before she would still have been at school...

Alisvolatpropiis · 23/05/2013 00:12

I just meant that the age gap and how they met isn't the biggest issue here.

Lecturer - student relationships happen. Not entirely right but not fundamentally wrong either. People of that age could easily meet in a bar. It's an imposed position of responsibility that is different to the teacher-pupil one.

Op and her DH don't like or condone how he behaved, I imagine that would be the same if the OW was 30 and he'd met her in a bar. If he has behaved in a way that they simply cannot forgive/accept then there is absolutely no reason for them to make any kind of effort with him. No judgement from me on that front.

Inertia · 23/05/2013 00:12

YANBU. I'd even go so far as to tell him that I didn't particularly want him around my teenage daughter , under the circumstances. At 18 the OW was an adult, but the man was supposed to be a professional and in a position of trust and responsibility- it's all pretty seedy. And he's already proven that he has absolutely no scruples about hurting other people, especially his ex-wife.

I'd spend the time with his ex-wife to be honest- she's been very shabbily treated and would probably appreciate a present far more than the baby would.

Inertia · 23/05/2013 00:14

What I meant was hat this man is in absolutely no position to bleat on about feeling hurt if friends drop him, given how hurtful and damaging his own behaviour has been.

Alisvolatpropiis · 23/05/2013 00:16

Inertia agree. He is no position to cry about the consequences of his own behaviour at all. Made his bed,lie in it etc.

KatherineLacey · 23/05/2013 00:32

It's not the biggest issue, but I just feel it compounds it... Not surprised OP's h doesn't want him around their daughter

TolliverGroat · 23/05/2013 00:48

There's a distinction between lecturer-student and tutor-student, I think. The responsibilities of a tutor are quite different from those of a lecturer in some significant ways.

IneedAsockamnesty · 23/05/2013 01:36

Yanbu.

Someone who lies to you for 3 years is not a friend.

I have a list of behaviours of people I do not wish to be friends as i only wish to be friends with people who i actually like value and feel friendly towards they are very simple

Perpetrators of child abuse
Perpetrators of domestic abuse
Thieves
Liars
Sex offenders
Anybody who preys on vulnerable people.

If a friend does any if the above they cease to be a friend. You get to decide what your personal rules are.

ComradeJing · 23/05/2013 02:07

YANBU.

But do stick with the exwife. MY DF was an abusive twat when my parents split and it was surprising and very sad that so many joint friends dropped my mum when they split.

WinkyWinkola · 23/05/2013 05:39

TolliverGroat, please elaborate on the differences between a lecturer-student relationship and a tutor-student relationship.

IMO, it's deeply unprofessional to start shagging the student in either circumstance. Never mind the rest.

Op, yanbu.

I can't understand why friends of mine are still pally and civil to the h of another friend of mine who had an affair and punched her in the head!

Riddo · 23/05/2013 05:53

YANBU

Lastofthepodpeople · 23/05/2013 05:55

YANBU. DH had an affair years ago and we split up. We've since reconciled and worked through it, but I know he was shocked at the time at the reaction he got from his friends.
I think having good friends tell him he'd been behaving like a knob definitely opened his eyes.

plentyofsoap · 23/05/2013 06:27

You really do not want someone like that in your life. He did not care that he lied to his family and friends and he should accept the consequences of this. If he keeps contacting you perhaps just be honest with him? You are not being hurtful just truthful?

ApocalypseThen · 23/05/2013 07:03

Sounds like this man abuses every trust. I wouldn't go near him.

TroublesomeEx · 23/05/2013 07:15

I wouldn't want this man near my teenage daughter either. It sounds like he has a somewhat 'flexible' moral compass.

He's lied to you for 3 years - you're right, he's not the man he thought you were.

TolliverGroat · 23/05/2013 08:20

It depends on the university, but certainly at some places a tutor has a measure of pastoral responsibility for the student, is supposed to meet with the student regularly, and is intended to be the student's first point of call in getting advice on personal matters. I know some places with a tutor system have that role filled by a lecturer from a different faculty, but some others combine academic and pastoral responsibility. A lecturer might teach the student for one term only and could easily never be in a group of less than a hundred with her her in a professional context.

I don't recall saying that either was right or professional Hmm. But a tutor shagging a student for whom he or she has pastoral responsibility I would normally have expected to be summarily dismissed for gross misconduct while a lecturer shagging a student for whom he had no pastoral responsibility and with whom he had no ongoing academic relationship might get away with getting his knuckles rapped, having a close eye kept on him and being told not to do it again.

RubyGates · 23/05/2013 08:25

Yanbu.

And he'll do the same thing again. Because he can. I hope OW realises this.

LessMissAbs · 23/05/2013 08:40

Its an interesting question, but I agree with the poster above who says she admires people who don't tolerate shitty behaviour from others.

I think if society in general does tolerate shitty behaviour, the boundaries of whats acceptable and what is not come down.

I'm in a similar situation myself, except no DC has been born - instead the man in question has moved in with a very much younger woman (a teenager when he met her), and has started to "mould" her into what he wants her to be - paying for a personal trainer, paying for her to go to evening classes although she has literacy problems and can't cope, telling her what she can wear, etc.. Another friend got her a job in his company which she is unqualified and inexperienced to do, and she cannot do the job (I have to deal with her occasionally and feel sorry for her). Its so creepy, no, they have done nothing illegal or wrong (except discriminating against the other candidates for the job), but I'm now left thinking they are not the men I thought they were, and what on earth do I say to this woman socially.

I've also had the DP in question trying to use me to make things look better, and to be friends with his girlfriend, and I'm contemplating dropping them, I'm just not comfortable with it at all. I think treating an ex-wife badly and having an affair with a student is really reprehensible behaviour, and YANBU to show your disapproval by withdrawing your friendship.

MummytoKatie · 23/05/2013 08:57

Agree with Tolliver. The "icky ness" of this is much greater if he's supposed to be providing 1:1 pastoral support than if she is one of 200 students snoozing quietly at the back of a lecture theatre.

The only thing that would be worse than if he was her tutor is if there was continual assessment and he's been marking her work.

FWIW we have stayed friendly ith both halves if a couple that split up due to infidelity. Although It was a one off incident rather than a three year affair. But I see nothing wrong with what you have decided.

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