To ask if there's something you've found out about someone you couldn't get over?

[TwistedBirkenstockBlister]

I'll put my two examples:
1.) I used to work with a really lovely lady on reception in a dentist. She had come from another dental practice and told me that her colleague there also went for the job and she hadn't got it so it was really awkward for them to work together after. I asked our employer about this, just in a 'by the way why didn't you hire so and so's colleague' sort of way. He said that they were going to but someone put a letter through their door with loads of negative comments about her so they went with my colleague instead! I knew that it had to be my colleague who had written this as we had all gone to the employers home for the interview and that was where the letter was posted, not the business address. Never trusted her after that, not properly.
2.) I made friends with a nice mum at a baby massage class. We met up a couple of times but I soon started getting FB messages from a random lady in Portugal who told me that nice mum had stolen her husband and left her pregnant and alone in a foreign country. I did try to be normal after but it seemed a bit strained as I so wanted to ask her about the messages but was too shy. I feel a bad now about not trying harder to stay in touch but these messages made me feel uneasy (that the nice mum might have a stalker more than anything!) if it was now I would ask her and tell the woman to do one (even if it was true.)

I was in a nightclub and got surrounded by a group of men who basically wouldn’t let me out of the “circle”. I was dancing but obviously started getting nervous that I couldn’t leave. Some guy then shoved his way into the circle and took my hand, getting me out... he said he’d been watching me and thought he needed to help me. He seemed really sweet and genuine. Seriously handsome too. Anyway we went on a couple of dates and one night he confessed to having beaten someone to death with a plank... in a different city.

Umm needless to say I didn’t see him again after that!

A few years ago I worked with a woman and her adult son.

They were nice. They attended all the out of work functions including family fun days etc. They both socialised with some people in the office and their children in their homes.

He was the jailed for abusing children. It turned our that he had already been jailed once and neither he or her told people he was awaiting trial again.

I get he was her son. But she put her colleagues and friends children at risk by helping him hide this.

OP, you do realise that in neither of your situations, you didnt actually find something out. Your second example, shows that it wasnt definite that your colleague sent that letter. It could have been someone who randomly, hated the woman, the letter was sent about for reasons that had nothing to do with work?

The second incident, that woman could have been lying. Or wrong. Maybe he left her. But maybe it wasnt for your friend. I know my dps ex wife will tell people we had an affair. Which would be difficult because we didnt meet until both of us had left our spouses. She acknowledged the date he left, when she kicked him out and told him it was over, in the divorce papers. He relocated back to his home town (no small children, just one adult son who lives abroad). I met home 3 months later and we didnt date for a while after that. As soon as she found out, she started contacting everyone in his family telling them how he had left after meeting me. It was actually his family that introduced us, so they all knew this wasnt true.

If my friend believed someone they dont know saying that I had done something awful, I wouldnt consider them a good friend. Also you left your friend vulnerable to someone stalking them.

Besides which you cant steal someone partner. That alone says woman easnt seeing the situation as it was. At worst he cheated and left her. Stalking the woman's fb and contacting people who know her at all, isn't normal behaviour.

@Yestermo of course it was the cigarettes and drinking. The hash was the surprise for my dB and I. We never told our dad about our ‘find’.

@pandemonium, that must be horrible but I don't understand why he stole childrens passport photos?

More something I did. I had a very close friend in early teenagehood. We did everything together. Around 15 we grew apart a little (I got more academic, she got less, different interests...) but we were close enough to still do most things together. It is just that she always followed me. I went abroad for a year and in that year she did lots of things, going out, had a boyfriend. But she said she missed me so much and told everyone that it would all change when I am back, even broke up with her boyfriend preparing everyone to it going back to how it was before. I came back at the beginning of the summer vacation and everything fell back into trot - but I secretly applied to some other schools and got a chance to go to a special school an hour away. And I went without discussing it or informing her more than three days before I left. To my defence I thought it would be better for her as well but I still feel as if I abandoned her (by the way this is not a story of deprivation - we were both middle class kids and well off). Still, I still feel guilty about plotting to leave even though I knew she wanted me to stay and was lonely.

Another was my parents were helping out and old lady from the church. She gave them a memory card for them to develop some pictures in Boots. My Dad put the card in the machine in Boots. My parents nearly fainted. There was a picture of her legs akimbo and a few other naked shots.

My Dad is a prude and nearly ran out of the shop. They pretended it never happened at church and never said anything to the woman. Only my sister and me.

I haven't read the full thread but am struck by the irony or you OP.

The first example shows how someone was influenced, possibly wrongly, by a malicious anonymous letter and the second example is you admitting that you are being influenced negatively by an almost anonymous message.

I'm not saying you are wrong but the two examples are the two sides of the same coin really.

My ex told countless people that we had split cos I was seeing someone else. I wasn't, I didn't date even until well after 2yrs of splitting and in fact I didn't enter a relationship until about 4yrs past. In the meantime he was shacked up with his new GF within 6 months...

A 'friend' won't shop at M&S because it's Jewish (I've no idea if that's true and I really don't care either way). I've distanced myself obviously because it's a disgusting attitude and I don't trust myself to be around her.

Lighthearted this one:

I was chatting at work with a quite straightlaced middle aged colleague about that year's Glastonbury festival which had turned into a mud bath.

'Oh yes' said she, 'when I was going to festivals and that happened we would take off all our clothes and dance naked in the mud'.

It still makes me smile to think about it. She was so not the sort of person to have done that!

I worked for a large corporate immediately after graduating. I was on a work trip with my line manager and whilst we were driving into a town one morning he commented that he loved driving past the local catholic school at this time of the morning as he saw all their girls in their uniforms. I was really shocked - firstly that he'd feel this way and secondly he's just say it like it was totally fine. I had intended to stay in that department as I enjoyed the work but took the opportunity at the next 6 months rotatation (grad programme) to move on to another site. I still wonder if I should have told someone and suggested they check his PC or not.

A former work colleague who was the same age as me and seemed really nice and well rounded turned out to have previously been in prison for two accounts of raping young a young boy!! Wtaf!!

Agree with PPs OP that you didn't actually find either of those things out for sure at all, I'm surprised you just believed it without fully knowing the truth.

We're close friends with a couple. The wife told me that they were both married to other people and he had a young baby when they started an affair. He left his wife, they got married and had kids and the husband hasn't seen the baby since. This really upset me and I feel very differently about them both.

I used to attend an annual reunion.
One of the group was sentenced to 5 years for rape, now that he has been released he has been welcomed back into the group by some of them.
I can't understand why they would do that and will probably never go again

My ex bestfriend was caught sending nude pics to a mutual friend of her and her husband. THREE MONTHS after her (big insta ready) wedding.

Oh yeah. The bloke had just had a baby. With her friend - such a good friend that she was supposed to be a bridesmaid but couldn’t as she was due that week.

The guy is awful. She is entirely untrustworthy and I can’t get past what a nasty thing she did.

Not so much what I found out at the time but, dated a guy in my early 20's, was nuts about him, he had the full package, fun to be with, good looking, successful career. We eventually split up as guys like him didn't stay with one girl for too long. Fast forward 30 years, I read in the paper that he's been arrested for raping a girl after pouncing on her on the street! And to think I used to envy his wife.