Weird gaslight-y thing from visiting male friend...

[Margerine78]

I already know IANBU and my ‘friend’ behaved badly but this post is more for my sanity…

Has anyone read ‘Flowers in the Attic’ and do you agree there’s a subtle storyline about the brother and sister having an incestual relationship. I mean, the sister is pregnant with her brother’s kid in the prequel so…Sorry for the dark book choice but it came up in conversation somehow and my friend point-blank told me I was wrong as he couldn’t remember it happening.

This friend stayed over (support bubble thing) this weekend, I was so looking forward to it after being on my own all lockdown, but he spent whole weekend telling me I was wrong about literally everything - books (as above), films, TV series, how I washed up, how I cooked, how I mixed drinks, my music taste, even how my oven worked! He's normally a nice guy but he turned into a chauvinistic arrogant, argumentative and gaslighting douche this weekend when I most needed to have nice company.

For some reason the book thing pissed me off the most as instead of admitting he may have missed that subtext as he read it 20 years ago and taking my word for it as someone who reads a lot, he instead spent hours making me feel like I imagined it and I’m losing my mind!

So how are you going to deal with it / him OP?

Saying Flowers In the Attic has subtle references to incest is like saying Jaws has subtle references to sharks.

OP,

Is there any way at all he could fancy you?

Have you ever had the slightest feeling he might?

For there to be such an about turn in his behaviour is strange.

Could he have come to yours thinking you were up for more than company?

Could he be one of those strange men that think its attractive to be domineering?

Apologies if I'm miles off.

Just seems strange that he has done a complete turnaround into a boring pillock.

@Margerine78

Hey *@june2007*, the gaslighting part wasn't really covered in my OP. A few times I lost it this weekend as I was being so talked down to so I snapped at him. On these occasions, he'd start talking gently (rather than the usual over me) presenting it as me being the aggressor and him being all reasonable, then he would re-write the entire conversation and claim he had said 'gently debated' with me rather than the reality which was him pushing for an argument constantly and goading me each time, and in a really patronising, belittling and aggressive way. Also, he constantly moved of goalposts, if the internet backed up his argument in any kind of loose way that meant he was right and I was an idiot, if it backed up my argument I was stupid for believing everything I read on the internet. Stuff like that all weekend.

Crikey, this sounds so much like an abusive relationship I find it difficult to read. The patronising goading, then treating you as an aggressor when you express a difference of opinion... I would genuinely never speak to this man again.

Why didn’t you just Google it??
Would’ve saved you the hours you say you spent with it going round in your head.

OP says he used Google to back up his arguments and belittle hers.

'He's lost the plot, literally.'

@HelpFlattenTheCurve

Sounds as though you need to Consciously Unbubble.

(sorry!)

Genius!

Never read the book or even heard of it but I couldnt be bothered even seeing someone who did the rest of the argumentative shit. Bin him off. Am sure you wont miss him. Agree with pp who said it sounds like an abusive relationship

Haven’t read the books since the 80s but remember the incest through the generations and murder by arsenic-doughnut.

My Sweet Austin’s was weird as well. Gaslighting a girl into believing she was her own younger sister to avoid her dealing with being raped. I seem to remember several bloody miscarriages in it as well.

I went from reading Enid Blyton, to nicking these off my mum’s bookshelf and reading them in secret.

Anyway your friend is a nob. I doubt he will ever admit as much though. Can you ever see him in a un-nob-like light again?

Audrina not Austin’s

Thelnebriati, cheers. I did wonder.

Not sure how he managed that... he must’ve looked at very weird sites.

All I remember about the books was the incest. And the doughnuts.

The best way to handle these types is to not engage. A bit of a head tilt and an "Awww". Then turn away and be altogether more impervious like a grey rock. Accelerate grey rock to the point you are so blended into your own landscape he can't see you and loses interest. He will escalate initially as these types like it when their barbs hit their target but after ten or so attempts he will lose interest and start worrying if he is losing his touch. That is the result you are after. Him worrying that he can no longer have that negative effect on you.

He sounds insufferable

@Margerine78

Could he perhaps fancy you and was being a bit of a dick because he couldn't get you? Either that or he's a unhappy man

They have sex in the book. The first sequel she miscarries. The prequel you find out why the grandmother hates the mother.

IDK if he's single, but if not I'd be concerned about his partner after reading this.

What a twat. Don’t waste any more time on him.

He sounds fun!

Is it possible to change your bubble buddy?

Strange he changed so drastically from your previous experience of him. Lockdown madness?

Cathy doesn't miscarry. She has a major PV bleed during the dancing audition leading to her requiring a D and C. She asks Chris if there was a baby and he says no. Later her 'nemesis' fellow dancer Yolanda tells her that Chris has a deformed foetus in a jar in his office and she asks him how he could have kept their baby like that. Yolanda was having an affair with Chris and lies to Cathy to get her to back off. It works, Cathy marries dancer Julian and Chris is devastated. Chris says the baby was a stupid prank gift from a fellow medical student. I sadly know these books off by heart. OP your friend is a knob at best, and something more sinister at worst.

It's not a subtle storyline. Chris rapes Kathy in the attic

God this thread brings back memories. What the hell were we all doing, reading this twisted shit aged 12?! I couldn’t get enough of them, yet My Sweet Audrina gave me nightmares.

In Seeds of Yesterday they are a ‘married’ couple

He sounds like a complete dick.

Even without the book thing, this is total shit:

:he spent whole weekend telling me I was wrong about literally everything - books (as above), films, TV series, how I washed up, how I cooked, how I mixed drinks, my music taste, even how my oven worked! '

What a wanker.

I haven't read the book for over 30 years but the bits I remember are

Brother and sister start getting it on starting with kissing, think they had sex?

Woman who has them up there pours tar all over girls beautiful hair as punishment when she catches them

It is literally a major plot point to the extent that's all I remember

He hasn't read it.
I mean why would he have read a book at aimed at teen girls decades ago?

And why the fuck was this even a thing for teen girls to read in the first place? It is totally fucked up

Ditto my dear sweet audrina and fucking on the grave etc

?????

@category12 Trust me, I did. I brought up Wiki and several reviews and he flatly refused to listen to me or anything I presented. As he can't personally remember that part of the book so everyone else has apparently misinterpreted it as it's "subjective". To say he was being unreasonable is an understatement (hence why I am raging).