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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To want to shake this friend 'til her pearly white teeth rattle ...

43 replies

UsedtobeFeckless · 13/10/2014 10:04

Old friend ( let's call her Flo ) has totally lost the plot and is stalking me with hourly updates ...

About five years ago her husband had an affair and left. She had a rebound fling with a chap ( let's call him Fred ) which rumbled on for the next four years and finally finished last Christmas with a huge argument ( Think midnight shrieking matches in the middle of the road, police cars etc )

It wasn't ever a very happy union - she likes rich alpha-male types with degrees and Fred is an unemployed pot-head. He worshipped the ground she trod on and she used him as a punch-bag to work out her anger over her rich alpha-male ex-husband ditching her for a younger model. The sex was great, apparently, but she never wanted to act as a couple in public with Fred because he embaressed her.

After they split up last Christmas Fred tried to get back together for a while and then went quiet and Flo was patting herself on the back for having finally got rid of him ... Right up to last week when she ran into him and his new girlfriend in the pub.

He has a job. He has a hair cut. His teeth are fixed. The new girlfriend is slim, cute, well-educated and ten years younger than Flo.

This is where it all went mad. Flo got pissed and decided Fred was the love of her life and it was all a horrible mistake and she had to tell him how she felt. She rang him. She went round to his house. She sent him some toe-curling texts about what she'd like to do to him. He explained he was with someone else now and blocked her number. She got a mutual friend to set up an "accidental" meeting and explained she just wanted to be his friend ( Fred's friend, not the friend's friend ... ) Fred said fine ...

Then she changed her mind. Fred is a half-wit. He's paid someone to pretend to be his girlfriend. She thinks he's mad and insanely possessive and she's had a lucky escape ...

... And twenty-four hours later we're back to he's the love of her life again, and she can't live without him.

Help me! She's turning up at my house at all hours wanting to go on and on about good Fred/bad Fred, she phoned at 7.30 this morning, she was turning up at my work last week wanting me to come to the pub to listen to her woes ... I've known her for ages and she's always been a bit of a drama queen but this is well over the top!

I think she and Fred are a bad combination and she should let him get on with his life and find herself someone she actually respects to have a relationship with but mostly I want her to leave me alone for a bit before she gets me sacked!

Sorry for the epic saga ...

OP posts:
musicalendorphins2 · 15/10/2014 07:33

Tell her you are her friend and that you do want to be there for her, but not on call 24 hours a day, and definitely not during working hours.

She sounds like she needs someone to help her deal with rejection, maybe there are some books you could recommend for her about relationships?

ithoughtofitfirst · 15/10/2014 07:39

Christ i feel your pain OP. Tell her you're busy. All the time.

YouTheCat · 15/10/2014 07:43

Poor Fred! After years of being put down and told he's rubbish he gets dumped. Then he sorts himself out and finds a new gf, gets a job etc. And he's still getting crap from his ex even now.

Your friend is damn lucky he hasn't called the police because if he was the one posting here you can be sure that's what a lot of people would tell him to do.

PiperIsOrange · 15/10/2014 08:02

Tbh I am glad the relationship ended, DV is never right in a relationship using him as a punch bag..... No wonder he doesn't want that life.

I would of ended the friendship years ago. I can't stand vile people who subject another person to abuse.

Suzannewithaplan · 15/10/2014 10:39

I think the punch bag line was a figure of speachWink
she wasnt actually lamping him!

FriendlyLadybird · 15/10/2014 11:07

Oh God. My DH was 'Fred' (though not a pothead) and he allowed himself to get back with the ex and even marry her. It was a disaster. OK for me, I suppose, because if he hadn't he'd probably still be with the girl he left for his ex. (She's happily married now too, so her DH is probably equally grateful.)

Babycham1979 · 15/10/2014 11:12

Oh dear. She sounds like an extreme attention seeker. Get rid. This is beyond a normal friendship; she's using you and Fred to indulge her borderline personality disorder!

It never ceases to amuse and amaze me that so many women who trade on their looks to snag a 'rich alpha-male type' are then surprised when they're traded-on for a younger, hotter model. Does it never occur to them that, in trading in such superficial characteristics, they're playing with fire?

Live by the sword, die by the sword!

PiperIsOrange · 15/10/2014 17:44

Perhaps the op can clarify what uses as a punchbag means.

flummoxedlummox · 15/10/2014 17:52

A thread abut a Fred Shock Grin

banburycake · 15/10/2014 18:38

I actually feel really sorry for Flo. She sounds very desperate.
But could you please enter the Mann Booker prize next year? I am crying with laughter.

wantstolickwilliamgraham · 16/10/2014 08:45

She needs to speak to a professional op.

Why do some feel sorry and think Fred is the shit here? Op wrote that he worshipped her and she was using him as a punching bag.

So if a woman trades up and looks better after getting rid of an abusive wanker, is she also a shit? Or only if she's unemployed and smokes pot?

Your friend sounds toxic op, to this guy and to herself. He certainly doesn't sound like a dream either but she could have got rid long ago. Just tell her she needs to put him behind her, he's no good for her and neither is she to.him.

Original poster
UsedtobeFeckless · 16/10/2014 10:32

Gah! I've got performance anxiety now ... Blush

Flo battered him with words rather than fists - there was a lot of mutual shouting went on between them but she knows more words and arranges them in actual sentances so she was permenantly ahead on points.

I think they'd both be fine with someone else, but together they're a domestic incedent waiting to happen. To be honest if she does lure him back to his doom I'm going to give serious thought to growing a beard and leaving the country.

Flo's always had a knack of making a drama out of not much at all but up until recently I thought it was entertaining in a phew-I'm-really-glad-I-don't-have-to-live-in-your-head sort of way ... She used to turn up on the doorstep with a bottle of wine, a glint in her eye and the latest brick fate had lobbed through her spokes and it was all a bit of a what-are-you-like? sort of giggle.

Not now though. The fun's definitely over. I've got that morning after feeling that I should have stopped listening and making sympathetic noises a lot earlier than I did ...

OP posts:
wantstolickwilliamgraham · 16/10/2014 10:58

You definitely should stop listening and enabling op. Tbh verbal battering still isn't ok however volitile the relationship.

Perhaps now you are seeing the kind of obsessed drama living person she is and realising she's dragging you down with it. Luckily she's just dragging you in then making a drama including you but if she gas form for this I would tread carefully op.

TaliZorahVasNormandy · 16/10/2014 12:22

Feel sorry for Fred, he gets dumped after being used as an emotional punchbag, he sorts himself out and moves on with his life, then not only does he have his ex on his case.

Hes got Mumsnet giving him a hard time. Obviously self improvement after being dumped is not allowed on mumsnet.

outofcontrol2014 · 16/10/2014 12:33

I understand completely how frustrated you are dealing with this mad see-saw of emotions. It's enough to drive anyone crazy!

It sounds to me, however, like your friend needs you more than ever. She's not having a relationship crisis, she's having a full on midlife meltdown. This is not about her exDH, or Fred or the new girlfriend - it's about the fact that she feels left on the shelf, old, and inadequate.

That doesn't mean that you have to accept her boundlessly. You are not obligated to sort her out, save her, clean her up, or deal with screaming or crying in the middle of the night. Setting some limits to what you can and can't do, both for your own sanity and to manage her expectations, is vital. I think you should probably sit down and work out what you can healthily give, without getting sucked into the whirlpool of drama. Then sit her down and tell her you are truly worried about her behaviour in the longer term, that you know she's had the most dreadful time and you think she needs to talk to a professional counsellor, that you'll be there for her but that you can't watch her self-destruct and can't sit on the sidelines and watch her x, y or z any longer. Let her cry, give her a hug. But get out of the mentality where, at some level, you actually enjoy the chaos of her life over that glass of wine. It's not healthy for either of you any more.

Original poster
UsedtobeFeckless · 16/10/2014 12:51

Thanks Out ... You're right. I think I've been working it up in my head into a bit of a Briget Jones type humorous disaster thing because I can't easily deal with it being a real people getting hurt thing.

OP posts:
inadarkplace · 16/10/2014 13:09

go on holiday DO NOT take your phone she will hopefully latch onto someone else Flowers

my husband used to say i attracted nutty people like this

PiperIsOrange · 16/10/2014 13:48

Sorry somebody who abusing people, even if it is emotional has not got MH problems.

I'm sorry but I have seen many times a women post about her partner being EA and the women is encourage to leave. Not once have I ever seen the poster being advised that the partner may have MH issues.

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