Finished a friendship with a middle aged male friend who aggressively complained about his luxurious life

[Nicewoman]

I finished a 15-year friendship with a male friend (I’ll call him Mr Mediocre) who aggressively complained for the past year about his luxurious life: £1.5m house, wife on £100k, he was in and out of work but bitterly complaining about it, how he thought he should be in a mega paid job and do short hours. He was thick as s and lazy. All his family are healthy, no money worries. I tried to explain that everyone’s situation is 10x times worse than him, do charity work etc, appreciate his life, be grateful for small mercies, but the ungrateful conceited toe-rag just couldn’t get past his extreme conceit & self-obsession. He’s just pathologically greedy. He admitted he had no friends & people avoided him. After I blocked him he tried to text me to have the last word and turned nasty I was ending the friendship. He was just making my blood boil. Now I’ve terminated the friendship I feel 1000x better, but think I wasted a lot of time on a man who I only realised was a total arsehole late in the day. Hope other readers learn from me and as soon as there is red flags, get out immediately & not let things drift on or give people the benefit of the doubt. Some people out there just aren’t nice people, but do a good job of hiding it (for a while, before the mask slips). Incidentally, I have a feeling his wife will hand him divorce papers once his teenage kids leave home & his wealthy parents pop their clogs. Then he’ll be one of those bitter old men living alone, that his own family avoids.

Yes, to me he was. But he said I was his only friend & he gave examples of where others were shunning him. For a while I felt sorry for him, but then he did things to get people’s backs up. Him being friendless, was entirely his own making. But because he was stubborn, incessant he was right, very conceited opinion that he should be top dog & everything should be given to him on a plate etc. That was it, I was off.

Exactly. With Mr Mediocre I used to tell him you are so lucky, almost mortgage free in his late 40s, £1.5m house, he still went to bank of mum and dad whenever he needed money, he got a whopping inheritance, his parents funded 3-4 flash foreign holidays a year, his wife and kids all healthy. But whenever I tried to put him right about how the rest of the country is struggling, can’t afford things, massively stressed out about their lot, he ignored it and it was water off a duck’s back. He just didn’t give a duck about anyone else, except himself. He was selfish personified. He was also jealous.

Exactly right. This ex-friend was desperate for applause yet he didn’t have the brains or talent to achieve it. One example: he lied to get a job, and because he wasn’t clever or hard-working, he didn’t get the pay rises or promotion he demanded. Just by chance he gave an example of a work colleague that I happened to know who is kind, generous, nice, intelligent and hard-working. He knifed this work colleague to his boss, as my ex-friend was jealous of him and how the bosses liked the other guy, gave the other guy work not him. My ex-friend also gave another example in another job where he knifed a female who he thought was going to get a promotion, not him. This ex-friend was desperately insecure and was cowardly and weak, but did snivelling weasel things to eradicate rivals so Ex-friend could remain on top in the workplace. Ex-friend routinely lied, was false and disingenuous, fake.

OP, you’re coming across worse than him at this point. Why the endless paragraphs of vitriol about someone you considered a friend for a long time? Maybe give some thought to why you apparently didn’t notice or care about any of this for so long?

No, Mr Mediocre will be on to his next victim where he can fabricate a woe-is-me backstory, for sympathy so the new person is some therapist for a while, before Mr Mediocre drops these bombs which show his true mean-spirited personality. All in search for mugs who will give him sympathy, attention & tell him he’s the best, whilst Me Mediocre asks for favours and is on the take, take, take, steam-rolling over everyone so he’s front of the queue.

Fair point. I will wind-up this post now. I didn’t notice for ages, and didn’t want to ask probing questions in the early days as I didn’t want to seem nosey. In reality, I should have asked him a lot more probing questions in the early days, as that would have saved a lot of time as would have discovered he’s an arsehole at an earlier stage. Didn’t want to appear nosey. Also, he lied a lot, so I think he would have just given me a palatable answer.

You do realise money doesn't make you happy. All that is material, he sounds an unhappy man more than anything.

How do you think it feels to be in and out of jobs, not having a steady job? It must be quite soul destroying and does nothing for one's self esteem.

You sound like you lack empathy and think because someone has money and nice things that they should be happy.

Maybe it's news to you in your glass house but well off people can be depressed.

It is a thing I've noticed on MN, but not in the real world, that some people seem to have very digital relationships, in that the timeline goes friend, friend, friend, friend, not friend. Or similar with family members. There doesn't seem to be any middle ground on which you just drift away from somebody who's started being a bit of a dick. I suppose I'm saying that yes the bloke in question here sounds like an arse, but it also sounds like that's not new news, so why did you bother with it for this long before providing formal notice of the End Of The Friendship?

He sounds awful, and I know what you mean about how sometimes you just suddenly see someone differently from one moment to the next. And if you helped get him a job then you have actually been a good friend in the past.

I will say this though - when people are having a moan, they usually aren't asking for advice, or for someone to put things in perspective for them. It's best to say mmm.

Well, there’s also another deeply weird Mn trend where ‘friend’ appears to mean ‘someone I know but don’t much like, and about whom I don’t have a good word to say’.

Was your friendship based on anything other than talking about jobs and money?

Why is the middle aged and male bit so important as to make it into your thread title? Very odd post.

He loudly complains to his wife about his lot as well. I think the wife said to him, haven't you got friends you can moan to, don’t want to hear it. Wife is the breadwinner, yes. This guy has very rich parents who toss cash and free foreign holidays to ex-friend, his parents are about to drop dead, so I think the wife is waiting for that to happen, then she’s off. The wife does everything around the house. The ex-friend just is a taxi service for his teenage kids. Once they leave home, he’s in the dustbin. That’s me reading between the lines.

Yes, the OP’s character assassination of this guy sounds more like the kind of thing you’d do with an ex boyfriend who two-timed you, gave you an STD and then ditched you in some awful, public way.

But ranting all day long, every day for years is too much.

Is there some kind of romantic back story here between you and him? Some people can be very annoying, sure, but the strength of your feelings seems high for an on/off married acquaintance

I tried to get him to talk about other things but he had no hobbies, and he was obsessed with himself. Also, he only wanted to talk about getting lots of money, I think because he thought that would mean he would get acceptance from his wife, kids, parents, neighbours etc. He was very competitive, had to be top dog to everyone.

Nope. Nothing romantic, started friendship (if you can call it that, more like loose acquaintance) in a work context. Way too boring for me. I now realise he latched on to me as a friend as I was the person in the know about jobs ie HR and management, I.e he could use me. I assumed he was some work colleague who just wanted random chats. He started off boring (which is fine as a friend). Then he came out with observations which were mean & revealed his selfish self-obsessed whining money-grabbing character. That should have been my original post lol, but I waffled on a bit. Sorry.

I’m getting more than a whiff of a woman scorned about this post.

You sound quite envious of him

Well, here’s the thing: he was obsessed with having a flash job and tons of money so he could brag to everyone. The guy actually didn’t need to work again in his life time and would still have a comfortable life. Also, I did get him a job via my contacts. He messed it up and was sacked from it. He got sacked from all of his jobs because he lied on his CV and was obviously useless at work, meanwhile demanding to be out to the door early & dumping all his work on work colleagues because he’d rather be at home lazing around in the sun and knifing work colleagues who were better than him. Lastly, believe me, over the years, I gave him tons of sympathy and empathy. It just ran out when I realised what he was all about: intensely ungrateful, very selfish, lazy, stupid, etc.

Just be glad you were only a friend and not the wife.

Well, that was the revelation to me: I just assumed he lived in an ivory tower & just didn’t realise that other people have it 10x worse than him and that if he knew how lucky he was, he would realise he’s got it so good & stop moaning. It turns out, quite frankly he didn’t care give a toss about anyone else, because all he cared about was himself. He routinely ran rough shod over everyone. It was all take, take, take. Intensely selfish man, bitter that he couldn’t get his own way all the time.

Indeed. I often wondered why the wife was putting up with him. I think she will be off once his rich parents pass.

Good you left his friendship for your own sake. Now move on and be happy with better quality people. Do not ever expect other people would care about the problems of the world. People are different and you can’t convert everyone to feel for the poor.