To wonder if I should say something now

[Perhapsishould]

This is a bit of a strange one but it keeps popping into my mind.

I was at university with someone who had an older boyfriend. I can now see through adult eyes that he was very controlling and was really a very sinister character but he actually appeared very nice on the surface, had a professional and well respected role.

I recently found out he has died, which had me thinking about some things. It was ages ago, over twenty years, but he told me some things which now I’m a but horrified by though I didn’t really take them in at the time.

Is it worth telling her? We aren’t close but she’s on my social media.

What I do know is that she was lied to and tricked as a very, very young person and I know this and I do not know whether I should let her know. Why that is worthy of some of these posts I don’t know.

You are so patronising. You don't know anything about her and their life. By your own admission you haven't been in touch for years. How do you know he didn't tell her already? That he became a better, or a worse, person.

I cannot seriously believe you are so stupid as not to realise what you are actually saying. Your narrative is selfish, interfering, condescending and totally out of order.

I’m glad you’ve listened to the majority and won’t be saying anything to her.

It’s unlikely but possible that he wasn’t telling you the truth or the prowler was a joke that went wrong. Given he told you when he was sober, if it was true, I would have thought he would have told her or somebody else as well and she would know.

Funny you didn’t seem to wonder about doing anything with this info that ‘isn’t really yours to have’ over the last 20 years while the man was alive, isn’t it? When it could actually have made a practical difference to his wife? Might have been the ‘final straw’ or the impetus for her to change things. But for 20 years you didn’t say a word. Is it possibly because if you told his wife then he could lie/deny/confront you/make life difficult for you, but now that risk is gone?

Because I wasn’t in touch with her and had no way of doing so.

What do you think I should have done?

You didn't answer my comments OP. Have you taken the comments on board and decided not to say anything?

I genuinely have no wish to sound belligerent here but have you read the thread, at all?

@Perhapsishould you’ve had an unwarranted aggressive and personal kicking here. It’s good that you’ve decided not to say anything but I can understand your reasons for pondering. It’s only human to reflect on things that we might have handled differently with the benefit of hindsight. I had a situation in my early 40s that I would handle very differently now I’m mid 50s. And you were a teenager back then! Put it all behind you. You can’t change things.

I really appreciate you asking this. Thank you.

This. My god. Imagine telling a widow her husband 'was sinister' twenty years on. YABVU.

I think even if you had said something to her at the time she probably would have cut ties with you if his control was that tight

Sorry, you would be utterly selfish and unreasonable. An interaction 20 years ago, with what is now a stranger, you've had no contact in 20 years, and you want to potentially further blow up her life, after he's dead. That sounds about as selfish and self absorbed as you can get

With respect, you admit you were a drunk teenager when this one conversation you remember as so damning occurred, and that it was twenty years ago. It’s just as possible that you misunderstood or have misremembered as that what you are ‘remembering’ indicates a subsequent abusive marriage. Or that the joke was on you, because he made the whole thing up for the sake of alarming you?

I’m not sure I find it terribly realistic that a sober 30something spent several hours explaining to a drunk teenager that he hoaxed his girlfriend into moving in with him by frightening her.

I think even without that conversation the fact he was a man in his thirties targeting a teenager was dubious to be honest. (Her, not me.)

With the conversation, it becomes sinister and very disturbing. That doesn’t mean I’m going to do or say anything but I don’t have quite the same ‘the poor, poor woman widowed and the poor, poor man having his name blackened’ view that some of you seem to.

I think you’re right @Hankunamatata or he’d have made her

I don’t have quite the same ‘the poor, poor woman widowed

That speaks volumes about your motivation then, doesn’t it? How could anyone not feel pity for a woman who’s widowed with two kids?

I don’t have quite the same ‘the poor, poor woman widowed

Do you hear yourself?

That is not what I said. I did not say I didn’t have pity for her.

But some posts here are very dismissive of the fact that certainly when I knew her the relationship was extremely controlling, and abusive. And I don’t think men like that change. You evidently do.

Do you hear yourself?

Do you honestly think a 31 year old man terrifying a sixteen / seventeen year old girl so she moves in with him is NOT sinister?

I mean, the thread has mostly tried to turn into an attack on me and genuinely I don’t know why.

Out of the blue one day I get a friend request and a message and I’m a bit troubled by it and wonder what to do.

And somehow the thread becomes about me.

I expected possibly a bit of a hard time for not doing anything years ago, but I’ve been accused of some really horrible stuff here and it just isn’t fair.

That's not the point here. The point is that you want to tell a widow, a woman who you don't actually know at this point, about what you were told as a teenager. It's making the whole thing about you, which is what people are reacting to. Go deal with whatever guilt you have about inaction somewhere away from her.

I'd like to know what your relationship was with the man, to be honest. Are you the same age as him, or his wife? What was the message she sent you via Facebook?

You've drip-fed certain information and not given a great deal of detail about other stuff (the abuse you suggest may have happened). Despite other people telling you to leave it alone and despite saying you won't speak to this woman, you have continued in the mindset that you are right.

You've made assumptions as to their relationship despite not knowing anything at all about it beyond a drunken conversation decades ago.

I suspect some of the above is why you've been called out by posters. There's something iffy about this to me.

Why was she at university with you at the age of 16?
And why was she living alone at 16? How was she funding this and uni?

I don’t think that at all. I think you have almost no evidence other than the basic fact of an age gap and a conversation from two decades ago during which you were drunk to suggest that this wasn’t a perfectly ordinary marriage. Maybe he wasn’t at all a nice person, but people marry not very nice people and make lives with them every day.

And I think the fact you considered, for more than a second, contacting a new widow to tell her that you were bothered by something her dead husband said to you 20 years ago and are unburdening yourself about now that he’s no longer alive, suggests a very, very strange mentality and a weird self-importance.

@betterangels

It is not about me at all. At all.

@MyGooseisTotallyLoose

She had been in a relationship with him for some two years before university. So she would have been 16/17 then.

@ClawdeenWolf you seem to be heavily suggesting I’ve done something wrong or been inappropriate in some way and I don’t see how.

She was my friend; I met her boyfriend (as he was then) just as she met mine and I met other friends’ boyfriend. Once, on a night out, I went to sit somewhere quiet as I was a bit upset and he came with me. Then the conversation happened.

So - apart from not doing anything which I accept - what did I do wrong? What deserves to be ‘called out’?

You think ordinary men in their thirties terrify teenagers to move in with them?

Your view of ordinary and mine differ significantly then.

she had been in a relationship with him for some two years before university. So she would have been 16/17 then.
So wasn't 16 when she moved in? Was her family never concerned then? 16 yo dating someone twice her age?