To be pissed off at friend & husband

[Over40Overdating]

Bit of a rant! And long - sorry!

I’ve been friends with A for many years. She’s a brilliant friend and I would trust her with my life. Since she met her husband, B, 5 years ago, he has been involved in every part of our friendship.
It’s been bloody irritating but she says she likes that he wants to be friends with her friends so I have tolerated it for her.

B isn’t a bad man but has zero social skills and finds himself the most fascinating subject of all time.
He contradicts people, says inappropriate things and will interrupt conversations to start monologing about whatever is on his mind.

It makes spending time together really dull and hard.

A&B had a baby last year and in January moved quite far away (plane ride) to get support from family.
A made me promise I would visit as soon as possible. I said I would but there just hasn’t been time yet : I have been working on a really high stress project that often needed 60 hour weeks and when it came to an end recently I was able to take 2 weeks off : my first break in 4 months to literally crash and rest and catch up on boring domestic stuff.

She messaged me over the weekend to say ‘now that you’ve taken all this time to yourself, I need to know when are you coming to see us’. I replied honestly that I don’t know - work is in flux, I may or may not be made redundant in the coming months and as I’ve just taken 2 weeks off I’ll have to wait to see how everyone else’s diary lines up.

No reply - this is unusual. I thought she’d be disappointed as I know she is lonely and struggling with B as her only social outlet but would give her a call today

I woke up this morning to a string of messages from B berating me for upsetting his wife, being a selfish friend and pretty much demanding I come NOW as he ‘won’t be happy’ with me til I do.

This is not the first time he’s sent me messages making demands or telling me I’ve offended him by not doing what he thinks is best and on every other occasion I’ve checked if A knew and she hadn’t so I’ve told him he’s being inappropriate and patronising and cut it out.

Except today he says she does know he’s messaging me and fully supports it and I ‘should do as he says’.

I am pretty livid right now so haven’t replied.

I don’t think she’s in a controlling or coercive relationship and he treats her very well but this passive aggressive stuff now being at her instigation is both disappointing and pissing me off.

And right now the last thing I want to do is make the effort to take a 2 hour plane ride to sleep on a sofa (they have made it clear they expect me to stay with them to ‘make the most of the time’) with two people who seem to think I’m so very awful and selfish anyway!

AIBU to think ‘away off and shite the pair of you’?!

I think the answer is to block him. He is not your friend.

"You can't talk to me like that so I will block you now. Do not contact me again."

And if you want to visit your friend, send her a message at the same time reiterating you genuinely want to see her, maybe even tentatively suggest when (summer? autumn?) and promise a phone call. When you visit, do NOT stay with them.

Whether he's ND or just a bit of a twat he needs to learn to keep out of it. Deal with your friend not him. He may think he's being her protector/advocate but he's massively overstepped. Definitely don't stay on their sofa if you visit. Find a hotel or AirBnB nearby and feel free to leave their home if he's too overbearing.

I'd go with this and just block him.

I wouldn't let him speak to me like that and I'd block him and only have contact with my friend directly. I'd also tell her I'd blocked him and why.

He sounds like he's slowly but surely erasing all her friendships. I'm glad she is now in receipt of what he's been sending to you.
I hope now she can see him a bit more for what he is. I'd be worried for her.

I wonder what his motive is then?

Moves to be near her family & lies about what he can do?

So he'll be in a lesser paid job?

Or she'll have to work & he'll SAH?

I doubt he lied to become a SAH more likely he over exaggerated his skill set because that helps his ego.

I would not be spending my precious time or money on pushy so and so's who expect you to sleep on their sofa after travelling that far and being bullied into it in the first place! I'd be giving them a wide berth for a while.

Indeed-him having to stay home or get a "lesser" job could be the result though!

I wonder how he has explained that away to Op's friend?

Lost in translation??!!

She doesn't sound like a very good friend to you when she knows her husband has talked to you like this before and hasn't dealt with it or left him. You should find a better friend who doesn't let her husband berate you.

Reply:

My plan was to come and visit you at the very next chance I can take time off work. However after receiving your husband's message I won't be doing.

This could have been written about me, I would also do the same, after I had recovered from the embarrassment.

When you move far away, you miss people but those people don't OWE you a visit. They have their own lives

Pretty much this!

He's an arrogant knob and I would really want to just say fuck off!

You are more forgiving than me. I would not visit someone who spoke to me like that. No way.

Honestly I'd have told him to get fucked

Ah yes, one of these men. I have a family member married to his twin. Very inappropriate and is the centre of his own monologue. Emailed me to complain about the quality of a gift and said he’d just give me money to buy something if I clearly couldn’t afford a decent gift. 🙄 Also has no relationship with his own family (he’s older) and has never met any of his grandchildren.

Let’s just say there was more to the story than him just being a twat and it all came out eventually. He has a criminal record and has successfully isolated her from all her family and most friends except very casual new ones. It’s a very codependent weird relationship and they live a very isolated existence now. We no longer have a relationship sadly as it became too painful.

Ok this is a more measured and sensible reply than fuck off knobhead. I like this one.

Honestly, find new local friends. So much stress on you for what?!

Exactly this - if you can do X, he can do
XYZ and 123 and better than you.

He even once tried to hijack a dinner by telling me how wrong I was about a standard aspect of my job that even a child would know about. Actually that was one of the times I got a very pissy message about not letting him speak or share his opinions freely.

I really hope he’s being read the riot act right now!

@goldenlocks I’ve got plenty of local friends but she is an especially close friend who I value enough to have listened to twatty pants for years for.
I hope this is one of those occasions when he’s gotten far enough out of his box for her to put him right back in again!

I knew one of these. I knew him first and really liked his GF but just couldn't bear being around him so stopped seeing both of them.

You clearly value the friendship very highly, enough to put up with him being around. You're right to set boundaries around his messaging which is very inappropriate. I wouldn't respond to him.

I’d text back,

“You may be A’s boss but you’re not mine. Do not contact me again.”

And do not reply to any further messages from B, block him, and don’t respond to any messages from A unless it’s a genuine apology. And even then, make clear you will not tolerate any more lectures or communications in any form from B.

Unbelievable, his texts to you. He is her pit bull, he is bullying you with her approval, she absolutely is in a controlling abusive coercive relationship, he controls her and he has her believing that he is defending her and standing up to her by “setting you straight”. Outrageous behavior from both of them. Her telling you what to do and when you don’t obey, she sics her husband on you.

Stop explaining yourself to those 2 bullies.

Text them and email them : DON'T EXPECT TO SEE ME EVER AGAIN AND DON'T CONTACT ME

“B, you are the reason I don’t particularly want to visit. I’m not your friend, I’m A’s friend, and I’m certainly not someone you can order around. Kindly delete my number and don’t contact me again.”

Job done.

Of course you can't get your head round it, probably because it's so outrageous. And possibly because you yourself haven't experienced it. And besides, none of us wants to believe that a loved friend is so blind. So, just tuck my words in the back of your head for now, then. But just dredge them up now and then and compare them again to how your friend is living.

Sometimes you can manage to hang on to the friendship, but sometimes the abuser's 'pull' is just too strong or their actions too outrageous. I was not able to hang on to my dear friend and I miss her dreadfully. But in the end I just could not bend that far backwards, because it pretty much came down to 'do and agree with everything he says or we can't be friends' and I just couldn't do it. I couldn't compromise my 'self' that far in order to keep the friendship. I have to content myself with the knowledge that she knows I'm here and will always be here.