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!

@WinningEveryDay yeah I'll accept that. Annoyingly stubborn could be another way of putting it. My ex-friend definitely isn't a monster like my ex so don't want to fall in the trap of always comparing all men to the latter - even when they've acted badly.

@ChipotleBlessing

It’s hardly a subtext. It’s the main theme of the book.

Exactly! There is no hint of incest, it's right out there.

YANBU; Flowers in the Attic is a well-known novel and the incest is not subtle - it is overt. If your friend isn't a great reader, you could suggest he watches one of the film adaptations? It's not subtle on-screen either.

The question is why has he even read it?

Is there something that states only certain people can read things?

@Margerine78 apologies for derailing your thread, but if you have been a vegetarian for 40 years, then can you recommend any good vegetarian recipe books / websites / blogs, especially with foods that kids might be willing to eat?

Hey @HelpFlattenTheCurve, I'm don't use recipe books I'm afraid, I'm a chuck it all in the pot kind of person. I never make anything fancy, just wholesome things like curries, lasagne, stews with loads of veg. I tend to bung in loads of chilly and garlic too but you can tone that down. Wraps go down well with some kids as they can roll them themselves and have dips to go with them? Easy too? Sorry I can't be more help.

@Margerine78 earlier in the thread I linked to the exact passage where it (graphically) describes the incest/rape. I guess it won't help to send him the link as he'll just trot out the 'fake news' cheap again, but at least you have proof now that you were right!

@HelpFlattenTheCurve Green Roasting Tin is good. There are a few things in there that kids may not like, but lots of the recipes can be adapted. Also Quorn crispy nuggets taste EXACTLY like McDonald's.

*crap, not cheap.

I've read that book.

I didn't even think it was a subtle text running through it!

@JesusInTheCabbageVan Thank-you. He'll proably say until he's read it himself in the actual book he won't believe it though. My sister (on maoning to her about him) said "you can't reason with unreasonable people" so I'm thinking I might just not engage at all (as much as I'd love to send him the paragraph and two fingers!).

Also good shout on the Quorn...@HelpFlattenTheCurve I totally forgot about Quorn pieces (very tasty), and you get meatballs too now which you can make with tomatoe sauce and bung in some courgettes, onions etc so there's veg too so nicely balanced.

He's 43? From your descriptions, he sounds more like a callow 18-year-old with undeveloped social skills. Falling back on a cop-out like "art is subjective" shows precisely how incapable he is of holding a discussion. Interpretation of literature is certainly subjective, but the basic plot of a novel isn't open to interpretation.

He probably hasn't even read Flowers in the Attic. I thought the readership of this book was almost exclusively made up of pre-teen and teen girls, passing around their copies among friends and secretly reading with a torch at night.

I haven't read the book and even I knew it featured incest!

He's a prick.

@DotForShort He claimed he read it over 20 years ago, which was part of my argument, that his memory of it can't be as reliable as mine - but apparently that's irrelevant.

I had an epiphany this morning, he said he'd smoked loads of weed all of lockdown. I've experienced this with male weed-smokers before where they have periods of being very similar - argumentative, arrogant, stubborn, aggressive, irrational. Not being all anti-smoking, it's just an observation. Too much can have an effect and would explain his total personality transplant this weekend (he used to be lovely).

Is he a serving police officer now?

Hi @Thelnebriati, don't worry, he's definitely not in the police! I mentioned a copper in a reply earlier to another Mumsnetter but that was in reference to a friend of hers she mentioned, not my friend.

he is not a friend and incest is the main theme of the book.

End the friendship and make sure to tell him why!

@Mags5Bia I once had a completely baffling conversation with a friend in which she was talking about Flowers for Algernon and I thought she was talking about Flowers in the Attic - we got that sorted pretty quickly though as neither of us were behaving like dicks!

perhapse an article in the guardian might help him recall better,

www.theguardian.com/books/2019/nov/14/flowers-in-the-attic-vc-andrews-40-years

i echo an earlier posters suggestion you atraight out ask him why was he so argumentative, arrogant, stubborn, aggressive, irrational, you could add to that was it the weed, did he know it was having such a negative impact on how he was acting .

I've never read those, books, but even I rememeber that what they were about!

Sounds like he was a right grumpy arse and ruined your time together. Have you asked him if he's OK? You could well be right about the smoking.

@LifeSpectator I considered this but he's been so unreasonable and stubborn I'm worried he wouldn't accept my weed suggestion or my views on the weekend (even if I worded it really carefully and explained it in terms of my feelings rather than going on the attack). It could just escalate things... I want a quiet life after the weekend. It was so awful.

Margerine78, it’s been known for some time that a lot of the types of weed are stronger than they used to be, and if smoked a lot can result in psychosis eventually. Depression, paranoia, all sorts.

I think you need to take a massive step back from this so called friend. I doubt it would do any good for you, he chooses to smoke weed and you can’t stop him, nor will you be able to suggest it could have been that which caused his appalling behaviour without a massive row. I think you know that he will not change, therefore the best thing for you is end the bubble arrangement because he was aggressive and rude, and ruined the weekend. Don’t let him stay any more either, you need your home to be your safe place. Avoid him, don’t talk or take his calls until you are ready to talk about it.

I've read Flowers in the Attic eleventy million times.

It's about incest. Your friend sounds a whack job.

I love that article: Murder by Doughnut!!! Gawd, the arsenic.

Love that southern gothic.

@girlywhirly I think this is a good plan. I've never smoked so I don't know much about it other then what I've witnessed in friends, and the male ones** that smoked constantly definitely lost the plot and it was quite frightening. It explains a lot about the weekend, how rude he was, how aggressive, the goading constantly etc

My family is closeby so I can see them in their garden outside of the bubble thing now anyway, so it's not like I'm so isolated anymore so that's good.

** I don't say 'male smokers' to be sexist, I've just never seen this in female friends just male ones. I think it's a strong weed + testosterone mix being a very bad thing.