To contact someone who made my life hell a decade ago

[takeiteasybuttakeit]

I was very very good friends with someone in the past (more than ten years ago): we spent millenium new years eve together in a small group, I cooked the meal for her hen party, I was one of the first people she told when she was pregnant etc. We had a big circle of mutual friends including two of her sisters, both of whom I was close to. Her husband was always a bit 'off' with me, and then 10 years ago she came to me and said we could no longer be friends as she 'knew' what had happened between her dh and me. Turns out he had said that I had asked him to have sex with me ('do you fancy a shag' was the exact wording). This was so unlikely that when I told my dh he just laughed. I found it sort of funny but deeply upsetting that someone could just make up something about me, and it had pretty horrible repercussions (read on!).
I was so appalled and confused that my dh contacted him to talk it through and tell him he must have been mistaken (he cited a time and place that it happened which would have been impossible as I wasn't even in the country at the time). Anyway, the other man pretty nastily kept contacting my dh to insist it was true. His contact with my dh became pretty weird and my dh ended up changing his email address and blocking this person on his phone. I decided to let it go as my dh was getting really incensed about it and not sleeping and it felt like there was nothing much we could do.
Thankfully my dh knew there was no way it could have happened, although I hate to think what might have happened if he had believed it. Although it was clearly a pretty outrageous lie, the friend and her extended circle stopped being friends with us and that was that. I tried to talk it through with one of the sisters who just said that family loyalties had to come first, and the friend's BIL who I had been very close to for years (he is how I met them in the first place) told me that this guy was completely arrogant and may have told the lie to his dw in an argument that then got out of control.
Well the upshot was I lost a whole circle of friends due to the 'family loyalty' but I got over it eventually with time and am fine now. I never saw the couple again. BUT it eats away at me that this man could come up with such an outrageous lie and attempt to mess with my marriage in this way as well as ride roughshod over my friendships let alone my feelings. I really feel like writing to him or his wife and telling them that. It has arisen again as next September my ds is likely going to be going to the same school as their dcs and I am worried about running into them. AIBU to contact them or AIBU to be concerned about my ds going to that school to the extent that now I'm wondering about finding another school for him? It seems so unfair that this one person's mindless actions might continue to have such an impact on my life.

Sounds good. It is so sad when you are dropped and very painful even without any melodrama. .

The PTA in secondary is - again - VERY different to primary. Even if she's massively involved on the committee, you won't necessarily have any contact with her. Just don't join the PTA (it's not expected or hoped for in secondary schools the same way it is in primaries).

I was very much a part of the PTA when my DD went to primary, I was on the committee for years and at (almost) every event serving drinks or selling sweets or something. When my DD went to secondary, I took the decision NOT to get so involved, because - to me - part of secondary is about encouraging her independence and letting her grow up. So I might attend an event as a punter, but I don't help put events on any more or help out on the night. Most parents really don't. The PTA at my DDs secondary seems to be about the same size as the PTA was at her primary. Primary school had around 460 kids, secondary has around 180 in each year group, so the PTA is a teeny tiny thing for most parents.

You can find other ways to support the school without going down this route. Maybe there'll be a club that needs parental support that suits your skill-set/times that you can offer and which the other child doesn't do???? But this is getting quite ahead of yourself. Let your DS get a place first!

I agree with MarchEliza - if he is that where your will not be the only person he has sidelined. There will be other incidents throughout the ten years.

Are you worried they will bring this up again at your son's school?

Definitely do not contact your ex friend or anyone in their family.

" but the ex-friend seems very involved in the PA and so on and has an older child there so I'd be going into her world to some degree."

If this is really bothering you, then send your son to a different school.

As your son has ASD, it's up to you to choose the secondary school which has the best support for him, that should be the driving factor, not who you may bump into at school events.

If the school where you are possibly going to encounter your ex-friend is that one, then you need to either put your son in a different school or just ignore all of them on a rare time you may encounter them.

Do be aware though, you could put your son in a different school then find that for some reason her kids have been transferred there.

This is kindly meant, so please don't be offended, have you thought about having some kind of talk therapy, because you seem to have hung onto all this anguish for over a decade and it's not healthy for you to let things affect you so deeply after all this time.

Do not contact them.

I’d ask the high school to put your child in different form to theirs so you have minimal contact.

If you see them just walk straight past them as if you have never met.

This couple and their extended family have treated you very badly, your mantra should be ‘they are dead to me’

Treat them with indifference and disinterest.

Be strong.

it must have really hurt but on people saying you have to try and live on are only meaning that this hurt is only going to go if you keep going and making better memorys and moving onwards.not accepting wha tthey did was ok.not thinkin what they did is forgiven but almost forgiving yourself.the inner part of your hurting allow her to move on because its only bringing you down again.
show them whos boss.
we can all remember painful times but they are in your makup of the years from then on.they don't make you up.
to use yet more sickening soppy cliché build drom this not as this.
bringing it back will only bring it back for you to.all the hard work you've put into creating new memorys.
you have your son now.this isn't then you aren't struggling with pain in the times of prengnacy.you have you dc!how wonderful.
don't allow people that hurt you to do so again.
you don't deserve that not when you've come so far.

takeiteasybuttakeit do not write or make contact with this woman.

Everyone has said not to but you are still suggesting it! If you do, you are in danger of causing a problem for your son!

If you cannot let this go, book a session with a counsellor and work out your understandable hurt and anger in a safe place.

You are not wrong to feel angry BUT potentially you will stir this up agiain if you engage in letters/contact/fake sympathy for her/anger with him/aggression/revenge or passive aggressive comments.

She broke off the friendship and so it is broken off/no more.

Choose the best school for your son and stick to it.

I personally would not tell your son anything. Giving him Thr name of a child to 'avoid' or telling him the story will only IMHO make it more likely he will become friends with the child!

If anything is ever said or done deal with it as am issue. but do not expect an issue.

My dd's school has so many year 7 classes I can't remember all the names! I go to the school about twice a year.

The kids make their own friends ds and deal with themselves. My dd is not Neuro typical but has managed to make friends and do ok.

I would seriously imagine your ex friends son would be mortified if either parent used this as a chance to dredge up a ten year old 'issue'.

Personally, you see her, I would ignore her. If anyone says do you X (I would be so gobsmacked if anyone did, life is too short), take the advice of a previous poster, "We lost touch, I knew her over a decade ago." No passive aggressive comments to make anyone interested.

But honesty speak to a counsellor, this was not your fault at all but you are now the danger as you seem to not feel able to let it go.

Thanks all. Re. counselling, I'm not sure I have held on to it very very deeply as in I am happy now. It is pretty hard to have full closure as it did happen and did affect me, although if I think of it I feel half amused but also sort of empathetic to them all other than the man. The main way it has changed me is that I am very wary of people who gossip and try not to judge anyone based on what others say about them. I'm also wary of people who seem to cut others out of their lives easily. I'm not really anguished, we just found out yesterday that my son has been offered a place in this school so it has been reactivated - I haven't really thought about it too much for years other than as a puzzling anecdote.

I agree with @italiangreyhound. If it helps write the letter then shred it but if this is the right school for your son then don't change it.

Honestly you have so little contact with parents at secondary compared to primary you may never even see them at a distance.

In her heart of hearts she knows op but chose to save her relationship and throw you under a bus. Understandable but a shit way to behave.

" I haven't really thought about it too much for years other than as a puzzling anecdote."

That is good.

Do not let any angry feelings live rent free in your head. Please do not tell you son any of this, only talk to him if this ever, ever, became an issue. I just think it is wrong to bring it up, it is past.

I agree with other posters, when you first posted I thought your son was just starting school. Secondary is completely different, I doubt you'll even see them. Don't compromise your DS's future for a lying scumbag who put you through this.

If there is another suitable, comparable school then I would send your DS elsewhere.

Your ex-friend is on the parents committee and has a child already established at that school. I would avoid that can of worm unless there was no reasonable alternative.

bbcessex well it is certainly going to be a bit of a factor in deciding, I feel lucky not to have met them in the intervening years and am getting more and more anxious about even seeing them.

I think you should consider sending your ds to a different school. You are obviously very worried about this situation. Your ds will surely pick up on that underlying concern, which will impact him at a difficult time when he starts at the new school.

I have been through a similar experience to you, and now I make sure I don't put myself in the position of having to meet the people who made up nasty lies about me. I don't want to be constantly worrying about them and wondering what they are saying behind my back.