Friend is so bitter!

[Cornishcockleshells]

We are all mid/late40s. Friends for decades and live in close proximity for years.

A year and a half ago my friends dh left her for a woman he met at work. It has blown up the lives of my dear friend and her dc ( late primary school aged) until this point she had the most lovely bohemian life possible, and was happily married and her life she says has fallen apart.

We are part of a group and she has had the most amazing support from all of us. Her parents live a few minutes away and have looked after the dc, whilst we have taken her out and organised things for her, listened to her, fed her day in, day out. She is still devastated and depressed, and I know it’s been so difficult for her to come to terms with.

My aibu is more nuanced. In the last few months she has started coming out with really unkind statements. Words to the effect that she feels so bitter that she had my life once and now it's all gone.

I took her out for a spa day and she complained about it all day, she didn’t even thank me, it was very costly and miserable day in the end. Just lately she says oh your life is so perfect, or comments unkindly about a new sweater and even said she feels sorry for my dh!

Whilst I understand this has been awful, I am struggling to know how to navigate her bitterness and anger, it’s like my life mirrors her old life (which it did to be fair) and reminding her of everything she used to have/lost. Some of our other friends have started to distance themselves because it’s become too much.

My friend refuses to have counselling, even though it would greatly assist her process the changes happening to her.

Her financial situation will not be awful when everything finalises, but obviously she won’t have anything like the life she had before.

I feel like this is really coming between us now, but I don’t want to be insensitive, this has been so hard for her I am not surprised she is angry but it feels misdirected, maybe this is normal stage, if so, when might it end?

wwyd?

Thanks

It sounds like your friend is so completely overwhelmed by her own feelings that she's lost the capacity to empathize or consider other's feelings.

Neurologically, she has probably gone into 'fight or flight ' and her amygdala is calling the shots - which means her prefrontal cortex is less able to regulate her emotions, feel empathy, think rationally, or make good decisions.

None of that is to say that you have to suffer in silence, however.

A useful method when trying to advocate for yourself with someone who easily feels attacked, is to use the phrases 'when you. .I feel '. (Eg. When you say, I don't know how your husband puts up with you, I feel hurt.)

She's entitled to her feelings but you are also entitled to yours

(Disclaimer: I am not neurotypical, so I tend to prefer compassionate honesty over other methods of communication. It doesn't suit everyone).

Come off it, if she’d been an intelligent independent woman she wouldn’t have been bullied into changing. The op says she was the laid back bohemian type who had never worked. It sounds like she was happy not to work and now doesn’t know what to do.

Enjoy your weekend away Op- you do deserve it.

Your friend’s pain is terrible for her to bear but she is very lucky to have had you all standing by her despite her behaviour.

On your return-perhaps hold back on the expensive treats and events it is hard to end quickly. See her and be supportive but leave easily when the drinking/bitterness start to spill.

(All the lovely spa trips and meals out might even suggest the life of luxury you all have and she is missing - adding flames to her fire!)

Going forward:
Listen to her but don’t give advice or make suggestions or try to solve her problems. (That just allows her to be negative and almost makes you responsible for finding a way out.) Ask her questions about her thoughts and feelings and ideas. Let her talk out everything and come to her own decisions.

Tell her when she has hurt others - in a matter of fact-what are you planning to do to make it up -sort of way.

She is still in there somewhere.

Not sure it’s an outburst. More that you sounded a bit lecturey and I felt it was unjustified. OP is doing more than enough.

Exactly this. The wealthy might have wanted this for their daughters in the 1950s but I doubt there are many people who still want this for themselves or their children now.

I posted way back and have only just caught up with the thread @Cornishcockleshells - obviously there have been some developments meanwhile.

I really feel for your friend and think some of the advice has been quite heartless, but I also feel - especially in light of recent events - that she needs to accept this is a watershed moment now. They're not going to get back together, life as she once knew it has changed forever, and what happens next is down to her.

Your original dilemma was how you yourself should react to her and I think you can use this new reality to drive home some key insights, namely that this is her life - her one precious life - and she needs to take control of it now or she will wake up one morning and find she's ruined yet another decade all by herself, on top of however many years she feels he ruined for her. She needs to get into therapy. She needs some kind of job, so that she (a) has a reason to get up and get out some/most days and (b) is getting some experience of the workplace, which must be very daunting after all these years - paid is best, voluntary is fine if she's truly unskilled or totally overwhelmed. And she needs to get off the booze, at least until she's on more of an even keel, and maybe totally and permanently if she's actually an alcoholic.

All of this is not nothing and I think she's got a tough time ahead, but she needs to make a start. The alternative is unravelling on the floor, alienating her kids and losing the last of her friends. You've been a good friend to her up to now and I hope she appreciates that eventually.

Come off it, if she’d been an intelligent independent woman she wouldn’t have been bullied into changing.

Do people still believe this?

Regardless of whether or not it's true in this case, do people still believe that only stupid, weak women get abused and controlled?

@Winterwillow24

Doctors may marry doctors but investment bankers often marry beautiful women without careers. Anyway, when my girls were younger, hardly any of the mums worked. They couldn't afford childcare and they wanted to look after their own children. State school. Now, this was in the days when you could get by on one salary if that salary was pretty decent. By secondary school most were back at work but often in a low paid field, often part time. Clearly those whose husband's left them were then well and truly stuck. This is an issue that affects a lot of women, as many women give up earning capacity to benefit the family, and it isn't OK imo to see them as parasitic or sth because they need financial support.

I agree @NonPlayerCharacter and feel a bit uncomfortable with the turn this thread has taken. All sorts of judgements about this friend and whether or not she was happy not working and a bit smug about it or whether she would like to have worked but was bullied not to. It started off well meaning enough, with people speculating (rightly or wrongly) that perhaps she has always felt a bit superior to her friends and it being a high place to have fallen from (perhaps explaining her extreme behaviour). But it seems to have derailed and now we’re speculating as to whether intelligent strong women would allow themselves to be bullied into submission (of course this happens a lot! I can’t believe anyone would think it wouldn’t). Or whether some women love living off their poor hardworking husbands and almost deserve what’s coming to them…. It’s an uncomfortable space and perhaps not the point of this thread….

No they DONT omg this NEVER happens in investment banking! Omg no ypur watching to many soaps, it would be social suicide 😂😂traders yes. Thats so funny

Like I said, I think it's a generational issue. My mum didn't work either. Now me and my sisters all do. Things have changed and they started changing before the OP's friend graduated too.

Oh was that a joke?

The thread captures such a rich variety of reactions from people of different generations and backgrounds. It's heartwarming yet a bit bittersweet to see everyone reflecting on their own experiences. Many of us have journeyed through different social classes—like me, having grown up in a working-class sink estate and then attending a private school. Interestingly, I only met one mother who had never worked, even among my friends from second-generation Asian families.

It’s concerning to think about how many women might be vulnerable in today's world. Yet, I’ve always known women to be fully capable adults. My grandma grew up at a time when women weren’t treated as equals, and she raised my mom. It's fascinating to see how two generations of women have shaped their lives so differently and how that influences how they raise their daughters.

I can’t help but wonder how many mothers here talk to their daughters about important topics like pensions and income. I truly hope that no one is encouraging their daughters to simply serve their partners! It really is a funny old world, isn’t it?

Where I lived far from city life in the 70's there were still mothers like this. Three couples we knew went abroad, two to Hong Kong, one to the middle east. The husbands were smiled upon by their MIL because they were destined to be wealthy.

They all had amazing lifestyles, clad in designer clothes, jewellery. Homes elsewhere in the world for skiing, a home back here, apartments where the husbands worked. None of the wives worked.

When they visited home to catch up with family, it was like Alexis Carrington came to visit.

It was much more exotic then. Nowadays everyone can get on a plane and work overseas I suppose.

Maybe in the 1970s or 80s but we are talking about the 21st century. This is very unusual now.

No I don’t believe that actually but I do believe, from all that the op has said, that she enjoyed being at home and not working, that she was looking down on them because her husband wanted her to “be a proper wife”. Now it’s all gone wrong she’s angry at her friends because they have a life, a job and a husband. Woman can’t have it both ways, on the one hand wanting to be cosseted and looked after, and on the other, blaming the husband for everything! There are far to many woman on here that always side with the woman regardless of what prat’s they have been and castigate men that have sometimes done nothing wrong. Let’s be honest, most woman would have picked themselves up by now and started getting on with their lives, that’s why I think she’s weak willed and unintelligent! If she’d said to me that she didn’t know why my dh was still with me, I’d have replied, well maybe look at yourself, it’s you who’s husband has left! The op is being too nice!

I think it's a very sad situation and I can understand your friend feeling devastated and even rather bitter.

It is difficult to understand, though, why she has become so unkind to people who have shown her nothing but support and kindness. Is it possible she is having some sort of breakdown because you say her nasty comments are completely out of character?

Maybe you should speak to her about it - not in an angry way but just to tell her how hurt you feel about the comments she keeps making - and that you are worried about her. Perhaps you could gently suggest that she might be suffering from depression and that she should seek help. I think you said she has family nearby. Do you know them and could you speak to them about it?

@NonPlayerCharacter I certainly don't think it is stupid or weak women who get controlled but my reason for thinking that probably won't be popular here because it still doesn't fit into the "Mumsnet narrative" that all SAHPs are hardworking saints and heroes.

The reason I don't think only stupid or weak people get controlled is because just as often in my line of work it is the spouse who worked in a single income household or who did the lion's share of the paid work in that household who is the one being controlled. They're not normally stupid or unintelligent, they've been in love (and often they're being dumped by their spouse because they cannot meet the escalating standards of working full time, trying to balance holding down a demanding job and keeping a demanding spouse happy) and they've been doing what they thought a responsible adult should do.

The person going to work in these situations would very often like their partner to work too because not only do they carry all the pressure of earning but they often find the other partner spends all the money that they earn too and they have to bear the brunt of straitened finances during the marriage because it is increasingly difficult for families to survive on only one full time wage. For example, it's fairly typical when you look at the finances that the spouse who works owns an old banger whilst the spouse at home owns a nice, fairly new family sized car. A perusal of the finances often shows the person working taking a packed lunch to work whilst the person at home has been "lunching with friends" etc.

What happens during the divorce is quite telling too. The stay at home spouse is often determined to keep their lifestyle and their opening offer often demands ridiculous amounts of spousal maintenance and most of the joint assets. They are determined to carry on controlling their ex-spouse as their meal ticket, dictating what their ex does for work in the future and the hours that they work so that the controlling at home spouse doesn't have to. They want everything they had before but without the working spouse in their life so that they can move in a new partner. I see this situation so often that it has gotten boring.

I've kept the above gender neutral because it is increasingly becoming a gender neutral phenomenon. Historically it might more often have been the man that worked and been controlled but nowadays you don't need to look far on these boards to find a mum who is working full time and then having to go home and clear up after her stay at home slob husband.

So absolutely, I believe hard working and intelligent people can be controlled.

Sorry if i have missed this on the thread, but won't she still be able to have a nice life in a different smaller property in the same village or nearby, once everything has settled down

I do agree that can happen. Toxic people are everywhere and very clever.

But the wage earner can also be the psychopath type, restricting money tovthe SAMP, who has to beg for everything. My brother in law was like this. Big job. Loads of expensive holidays. But I remember taking my girls over once for the day and she had no food for any of us, just cheese sandwiches for her sons. I had taken biscuits and she put them away in a cupboard. I was completely perplexed - I had to stop off at a service station on the way home, we were all starving.

Then they hosted a bbq and there was fish, but only for him. The rest of us got sausages. She invited us over for Boxing Day but asked us to bring food.

I used to look after their dog when they went away on all these holidays - for free obviously - and they would give me cheap supermarket biscuits as a gift.

Anyway, turns out it was all him. He was so controlling. He did allvthe food shopping and she couldn't buy a single thing. She stashed my biscuits for later as he wouldn't buy her any.

And then he left her for his secretary.

She is a highly vulnerable person for lots of reasons. Her mum died when she was 12 and her dad had a degenerative condition. She is possibly on the spectrum. He targeted her imo as someone he could manipulate.

Both can be true although that brother in law sounds like an extreme case. Normally when I find someone complaining about economic abuse at work, a quick look at the finances shows that there just wasn't any money and one spouse was more determined than the other to stay out of debt.

I think coercive control is more common than we realise. I have had some suspicions about a few couples I know. Most stay and take the hit.

@ShinyShona

Agree with what you said . I know a stay at home husband who did nothing about the house , not even wash up a cup , loaded about in other people's houses to save on the heating and took helicopter lessons. He tried to take the working wife for everything when they split .

Also a woman who married a lovely man and married after a whirlwind courtship . As soon as the rings went on she changed . Destroyed the relationship he had with his daughter, got a dog knowing the daughter was terrified of them , the dog just appeared in the house no discussion, had a kid by "accident" despite them both agreeing no children before the marriage , hid from him the fact she was in debt and mortgage arrears , kicked the man out as soon as the child they had together was
independent after getting him into debt .

Yes toxic people are clever and everywhere.