CoatZilla and the Barbour Boy- The Second Saga

[LanaKaneIsWeirdedOut]

Hey everyone!

Bloody hell, in all my years of MNing I've never had a response like this, I was really helped by loads of your replies, and loads made me giggle (Roast Potatoes!!) and loads made good points.

I'm sorry I can't reply to specific posts but seriously there's so many.

or for everyone who replied and is sticking with me.

So on to the update.....

CoatZilla, henceforth to be known as CZ, text again last night....

Here it is word for word.
mate, your obviously upset and that was never my intention. I'm sorry that we argued, I honestly didn't see the conversation going that way when I brought it up. I think it's better we let the dust settle for tonight in honesty. Probably best to have a calm conversation tomorrow evening?

My reply....
Yeah tomorrow evening much better I think

And she didn't come back last night (good!)

So she's made a mistake anyway......cos Dad was actually out last night ! So we'll all be sitting there when she comes back.

My plan is, to write a list of bullet points for tonight of things she definitely said, so I can't forget and she can't back out of it or claim she didn't say it (I also remembered another bit in the fucking row- where she went "Oh, so a fucking ghost did it?" in that tone of voice- fucking horrible)

Also to sit calmly and let her explain to my lovely Dad and DP that she thinks they might have maliciously cut her coat.

Then see what she says!

TBH unless she fucking grovels on her knees (not likely after that fucking last text- minimization or what??) I'm going to be asking her to pack her stuff.

I'm not being "spurred on by hysterical posters"

I have read all the replies, some have opened my eyes, some have been excusing, some have told me not to rock the friendship boat....overall I have taken a middle(ish) ground.....but tbh it's clear she is
a) weird/horrible enough to think that of her oldest friend and her family
b) fucking vicious in a row
c) now backtracking massively

So....thoughts???

And again for the troll hunters in the back......my username currently is always "LanaKanesomething", and I've had various other names going back years.....so bloody well report me and see what MN has to say, yeah?

I read the texts 2 ways.

Minimising what she did and blaming you for your reaction.

And

Knowing she was wrong and trying to give you space to calm before returning and apologising.

Personally I think she's minimising. As I said on the last thread we can all - as humans with human emotional - fly off the handle and behave like shits at times. Say things in the heat of the moment we don't really mean.
It what you do after that counts. Apologise, acknowledge you were awful and explain you didn't really think or believe those things and emotions took over or place blame on the recipient of the comments for being hurt.
If she genuinely apologises I'd say be willing to salvage the friendship.

Just remember there's every possibility she's been galvanised and hyped up by Barbour boy and other friends just like some posters have done here to you. Maybe they convinced her there's no other explanation as some posters have convinced you she must be an awful friend who's piss taken for 17 years.

Just let yourself be open to what she says - but remember even if you latch things up the dynamics of the friendship would have changed. Doesn't mean they can be put back on track though.

Enjoy your maccy ds

Hope you manage to get some kind of peaceful resolution tonight.

Sorry meant to say it's doesn't mean the friendship can't be put back on track.

OP, whatever happens tonight I do think you need to re iterate the house rules, I.E. She buys all her own food and does not touch yours.

I would also let her know that you need a timeline for her moving out of your house as this 'relationship' will not improve being under the same roof. For whatever reason she has decided that someone in your family has damaged her property.

As far as her apology to me it smacks she had a conversation with someone and they have pointed out she lives in your house due to her friendship with you, and her behaviour yesterday puts that in jeopardy and you may ask he to leave. And now she is back peddling as fast as she can.

If she was a good friend, when you were down to your last £30, yes she could have, and should have gone and done a food shop. Does she ever spoil the household, bring wine, treats in. Take you out for coffee to say hello??
I think that is what would bother me the most. Though being accused of deliberately damaging her coat is way up there.

Someone on the first thread commented that you must have been 15 and her 10 when you met. But if it's a 17 year friendship she would have been 13 and you 18. This makes me even more convinced that she has always seen you as a kind of big sister type friend. The daughter of her Dad's friend. As she went through her teens you would have been an adult. Quite unusual for a 13 year old to be proper close friends with an adult. She has got her own group of friends (you said yourself she doesn't invite you out with them). I'm sorry OP but I think she just sees you are "family" and she thinks you'll take whatever crap she throws at you. Don't let her. Stand your ground on this. Her behaviour has been totally unacceptable. She is not your friend.

Good luck for this evening!
Unfortunately I think she has totally spoiled the friendship by her accusations. Would maybe start by saying that.
Not sure if anything can be salvaged as lots of things about her not to like the sound of not least treating your house like a (very cheap) hotel.
Wil await an update and good plan to write down what you remember.

Enjoy your afternoon OP and good luck tonight.

Some people can and do behave dreadfully while staying in others' homes for more than a weekend, I've found over the years, especially over food and (not paying towards) bills. It's like you turn into their boring mother in their eyes, because you are running your own actual home.

I'm very wary these days, being long of tooth, of putting people up for more than a couple of days.

Oh and crumbs. All the fucking crumbs ...

If she was a good friend, when you were down to your last £30, yes she could have, and should have gone and done a food shop. Does she ever spoil the household, bring wine, treats in. Take you out for coffee to say hello??

This is what bothers me, along with her awful behaviour in front of DS and the Marple -ing and muttering to mutual friends.

When did she last demonstrate to you what a loving friend SHE is? Because when you are down to £30 for a shop, and Barbourella's eating your family's left over roast spuds, it doesn't really look to an outsider as though she is spreading the love.

A lot of us didn't really have a good start to life, all the more reason to notice that your pal is struggling a bit and lend a hand. It's not a life long ticket to be a selfish greedy cow.

I hope you and DS have a good afternoon and a bit of a laugh together.

Preparingfor totally agree with you. Some posters have been obsessed with the bloody damaged coat when the real issue is that a kind woman and her family have give this freeloader somewhere safe/cheap to live and she has massively kicked off about a tear/rip in her coat. She should be bloody ashamed of her behaviour.

Lucky sadly that makes an awful lot of sense & goes a long way to explaining my broken friendship too & I can think of at least one other that I've fallen out with over the years for taking the pee that falls into this category too

As other PPs have said, I do wonder whether there are MH issues at play here. It's not at all normal to find a tear in a coat and jump to the conclusion that it was deliberately cut and not simply ripped by accident.

Hope it goes ok, this eve, OP.

Agree with Lucky - and the dynamic ('sisters') has unfairly morphed into OP becoming an annoying mum/Rigsby figure.

But coatgirl is 30 years old, with a postgraduate degree and a good job. The rudeness and duplicitousness is totally unacceptable.

The irony is, if she was paying more she'd probably behave better.

Be calm OP. Stick to a few key points (no more than three) and don’t let her gaslight you. She accused you of deliberate viciousness towards her and has been involving others before she spoke to you. She has been taking advantage of your kindness to her and you should bring that to an end.

She has used you and your family when times were tough.....what sort of person does that make her? Not one I’d want under my roof or spending time with my children.
She sounds calculating, cold and incredibly uncaring and now she’s panicking about her living arrangements.

Preparingfor

It’s really very lucky you are here to police the thread, good on you.

If you're chucking her out I would frame it along the lines of she doesn't trust your family and surely she can't live in that environment as it's not healthy for her.

I think those people stepping in to suggest the OP is going on a bit or is sustaining heightened emotions for the baying masses of MN to the potential detriment of her mental health need to pipe down until they can only emit squeaking noises.

There are lots of reasons so many people are invested in this.

• Sartorial exposure (barbour what?)
• Lessons on what friendship isn't
• How emotional abuse / gaslighting can happen and be rather... Confusing, and really bloody upsetting and damaging.
• How keen certain types of people will be to rush in and suggest the above is no big deal, stop making a mountain out of a coat, godddd, going on a bit aren't we, ugh etc. It's interesting (horrifying) because to encourage someone to cut themselves off from a support network, to encourage someone to not take their own feelings seriously, to encourage them to accept abuse and gaslighting, is to harm that person, to isolate them and strip them of any power to try to understand what's happened, to be able to protect themselves, to be able to acknowledge it, to deal with it. It is shutting them down.

TLDR: IT'S NOT ABOUT THE COAT.

Shamelessly place marking OP, I feel incredulous on your behalf. I hope you get some answers tonight that piece the puzzle of it all a little - if this happened to me I would need to know wtf had caused a friend to behave in such a weird and upsetting way

This is odd but I had my own coat incident last night.

DP comes home from work and has chilblains all over his shoulders and stomach. Says needs a warmer coat for work. I suggest this nearly new jacket he has that he split the armhole stitches on. Its a black padded one, shiny stiff outer layer with a light padded layer beneath and then a tartan fleecy lining, like club security personnel wear. I offer to quickly hand stitch up the seams so he can wear it.

So, I get out the needle and thread while he goes to extricate it from the bottom of the coat pile that is our coat rack.

Now, what's this I see...an eye shaped white hole on one arm. I know instantly that the secret smoking lying sod has burnt a hole in it and cut out the evidence with scissors because of the size of the hole and he's got prior form. The hole is freaking symmetrical and as a seamtress, I know scissor cut marks when I see them. He has obviously pinched it and cut a curve.

Him: I caught it on a nail.
Me: Did you fuck, you burnt it with a cigarette and tried to cover it up.
Him: No I did not.
Me: Why would you cut around a little rip, turning it into a white hole (padding showing through), making it harder to fix.
Him: I was trying to neaten it up.
Me: Just how fucking stupid do you think I am. How about you tell the fucking truth for once.

Half an hour of loaded silence later....

OK yeah, I burnt it with a fag. Sorry for lying about it.

Why am I writing this? It's because the OP says her friends coat is cut through to the lining in the same way as the top layer. My DH admits going at it with the scissors and crucially, the lining and the padding remain untouched.

Lana's friends coat would only receive a cut that goes through to the lining from a stab from one scissor blade or a small knife blade while the coat was flat/flattish against a semi soft surface if done on purpose. Even then, the cut would not be a corner tear. You would have to firmly pinch the fabric to do that and nobody is pinching fabric before stabbing it because it would be covered in blood too if you tried that. The friend is claiming a "test" cut with scissors would produce such a cut. No it wouldn't. It's very difficult to cut an identical slit through 3 layers of the same fabric and almost impossible with 3 layers of very different fabrics, one being padding, such as in a coat.

It is most likely she put her coat down on something sharp and put a weight on it (such as a heavy handbag) before giving it a small tug when she picked it back up.

I have been sewing for forty years both personal and professional. I even used to sew waxed cotton such as in the stated coat (if it's the kind I am thinking of) and that stuff was a bugger to work with. It was not jackets but various outdoor apparel for hunting, farming and fishing but the fabric was the same. For instance, we used to have to stack and firmly clamp the pieces together and put drill holes through if we needed to get press studs or eyelets through it. It would refuse/partially refuse the metalwork from the hand press machine and crinkle/split if we didn't pre-drill. I don't see cutting through the lining if one attacked waxed cotton with scissors, too stiff, especially if the hole is only in the 5mm to 1cm range. Like I said, most likely a snag and tug.

Also, I HAVE maliciously stabbed a jacket hanging on a coat rack against a wallpapered wall (anger and a cheating bastard) with a carving knife and the straight hole was a lot bigger than 1cm and there was also a slit hole in the wall and a cut on my hand.

I agree with Lana now though, it's gone past being about the coat. It's a betrayal to think so low of a friend of 17 years and her family.

I do think over 1000 messages from MNetters have fueled this up into far more than it needs to be. No one has been murdered here.