We live in a small close and made friends with an older couple who live across the road. We have known them for around a year.
The husband is 84 but fit and healthy, the wife is 71 and healthy. My partner and I are 32.
As my partner is Italian, he has good old fashioned values about helping out neighbours, especially older people.
We have helped the couple with literally countless things, examples include: giving them our spare doorbell because theirs stopped working, and setting it up for them, giving lift to hospital appointment, baking them birthday cakes and keeping them company, sharing food with them, helping with I.T, helping the wife sell her clothes on fb (not for any gain to me ofc), helping sort out their car insurance, helping them plan their trips to Italy, having them over for dessert, coffee and biscuits regularly, keeping them company, and MANY more things.
Just for context, they have A LOT of money, multiple properties and two extra classic cars. The wife was widowed before meeting her current partner, she gained a huge amount of money from her late husband, and she has never really worked.
As we started to get to know them, we realised they were a bit intense, they don't know when to stop talking, or what is a reasonable time to be at our house for. At times it has been pretty unmanageable and stressful. They kind of talk AT us, and never really ask about us. We always provide coffee, snacks and we always host them. On the occasions that we have gone over to their house, they haven't even offered us a coffee.
We have been incredibly generous and kind to them, but we started to realise that they never actually do anything similar. The wife is INCREDIBLY stingy towards others. She loves to spend a lot of money on herself, and she kind of hoards expensive clothes and furniture that she doesn't use. She often tells us about all the expensive shopping she's done etc. All the while, has never even offered us coffee and biscuits.
There are also just so many red flags with her stinginess and behaviour that have slowly become apparent as we got to know them better. To the point that we started to realise that she is actually not a nice person. It's kind of like the frog in boiling water scenario when you don't realise it's happening gradually.
The only thing we could rely on her for, was to look after our two house bunnies that we really love. She has always loved animals, and was always happy to look after them. Despite all her faults, we always felt very secure in the knowledge that she takes such good care of them when we go away to see partner's parents in Italy.
We would never want anyone to think we are taking advantage, so we always pay her well, as well as bringing her nice gifts from Italy on top of the money. The routine when we go away is to have her round for coffee beforehand and to go through the bunny care etc. Then after we return, to have them over for coffee and biscuits and to give her presents and money.
Lately, it has already started to become a lit of stress seeing them because they are really intense to be around, and constantly just talk about how much money they waste. It's really insensitive and insulting as everyone is struggling with cost of living at the moment. We are in a good position because we are well paid etc. But we aren't overly well off.
But they even do things like moan that their pension hasn't increased with the cost of living. This is just infuriating as they are so wealthy and, like all old people in the UK, they get the winter allowance to pay for their heating bills regardless of how much wealth they have. Whereas, normal working age people have to pay their bills.
All the while these people are using their money and wasting it like water. It's just really annoying to hear about.
It has got to the point where we actually cannot deal with them anymore, and my partner and i actually agreed to each other that the only reason we are still giving them our time is because she is the only person who we can trust to look after the rabbits.
This has now changed.
She told us last week that she won't be able to look after them over Christmas, when we will be away seeing my partner's parents.
We arranged it with her months ago to be sure that she was free to do it, and she had assured us that she definitely could.
The reason for this last minute unavailability, she told us that her daughter has a tumour that needs to be removed, and that this is going to be on 28th Dec, and she has to travel up to take her daughter to the hospital.
We work for the NHS, and we know for a fact that the waiting time she has outlined for this story.
Do not line up with the (non urgent and benign tumour elective surgery waiting times), long story short, there is no way the daughter would be booked in to have a benign tumour removed on 28th Dec.
Just for more context, this woman doesn't like her own daughter, and made a comment before saying that she 'loves her daughter' but 'at the same time wouldn't be bothered if she wasn't born' LOL
she's always saying mean things about her daughter too and has never shown any interest in helping her before.
It is all very fishy because she kind of pre empted that this may be an issue week ago, as she had just opened the gifts we got her from the last trip, and we had just paid her. She said 'now, there is a bit of a problem with Christmas' and started saying yhat her daughter has just found out about this non cancerous tumor that needs to be removed. She said, 'so it might be done on the 28th Dec, but it also might done on the 3rd Dec, so I'm just hoping it's the 3rd so I can still look after the bunnies.' This was just such a weird story because why would it be a toss up between 'maybe' those dates... again, having worked for nhs for a long time and Mt partner being a registered nurse, we know that's not how it works...
Moving on to the next part, this woman had recently found some new friends who are really horrible rude people, but she absolutely loves them and has become quite obsessed. As they are wealthy and flashy, she is always trying to show off by buying things they have, going on shopping trips with them, going on holidays with them etc. She also does anything they say. It's really weird, like a schoolgirl trying to impress the mean popular kids.
Anyway, so I was waiting for her to get back to me about her 'daughter's procedure', and obviously I was stressed because this whole situation could jeopardise us going to see my partner's parents over Christmas, which we had thought for months was already in hand.
So she calls me last night (she is currently away with said friebds) saying that, yeh, she can't look after rabbits for Christmas now because her daughter's procedure will now in fact definitely be on the 28th Dec.
She then proceeded with this plan that she will ask our other neighbours to look after them instead... but we are not comfortable with this because these neighbours aren't very nice and we don't know them well etc. (Story for another day).
Basically, I feel like her new friends probably asked her to go away with them for
New years eve and new year, and so she changed her mind about taking care of the rabbits. So she came up with this story about her daughter's tumour that is 'not cancerous' and she must go up there for the appointment that clearly doesn't exist...
I'm hurt and disappointed, yet still questioning whether I'm the asshole.