Can you be close friends with someone who has such different values to you?

[raiseyourglass]

I'm sorry, I think there's probably a better way to phrase that, but I can't think of it! I'm a namechanging regular.

I have a male friend who I am close to. Over the years I have been made increasingly aware of how poorly he has treated women. This includes cheating, lying and taking advantage of someone's feelings for him (ie sleeping with this person and then refusing point blank to have any contact with her, they loosely share a friendship group).

This has all made me think hard about the friendship I have with him. We do have a sexual past, it's very definitely in the past, but when it was going on, it was seperate from our friendship and we were never 'official'. It was a sort of friends with benefits/fuck buddy type set up. I now believe that he treated me quite badly. He was with other women in front of me, he picked me up and dropped me when he found a new girlfriend and generally did not treat me like he had any respect for me. For a long time, I convinced myself that this bothered me because I had feelings for him (I did back then, for a while, I don't now), not because he did anything wrong, and since he was not about to admit he treated me like crap, the conversation did not come up. It's only been since he got involved with the refusing contact woman that it started to become clear to me that he treated me similarly.

The friendship we have now is most of the time quite good. He leans on me more than I lean on him. I'm quite self sufficient emotionally, and I have never needed propping up. He says he values my friendship and that he'd be upset if I wasn't in his life (can't even remember how that subject came up, but he explicitely said this). The trouble is, I am having great trouble reconciling both our past and how he treated me and subsequent other women, with the friendship I have with him now. If he was someone I was meeting now and I had objectively seen him treating people like my friend has done, I would run a mile. I wouldn't give them the chance to be my friend because I wouldn't want someone like that in my life, simple as that.

My question is, can I really put everything aside and just have the friendship I have with him now (which leaving everything else aside is good), or does the fact that I hate the way he treated me and treats other women override that and mean that I can't possibly have a genuine friendship with someone who does things I so deeply dislike?

Thank you anyone who got this far. I tried to keep this short but failed miserably.

I think YABU

You were fwb or fuck buddies... That's sort of a given you would be dropped etc when he got a girlfriend.

You had that setup together with him. He didn't make you do it and sounds like it was fine at the time. He was not responsible for you developing feeling for him in that time as it was casual.

So looking back and saying 'I believe he treated me quite badly' should maybe read 'I feel upset because I was more emotionally invested at the time'

He just treated you as to how you let him treat you by having that sort of set up

I would still be his friend

I agree with you on the fuck buddies bit, which is exactly why I've never said anything. It was the general disrespect for me he showed at the time, which was not about being picked up and dropped, that is still niggling. He did treat me badly but I don't believe that it was ever intentional or even conscious at the time, again why I've never said anything to him about it. I let him treat me like that, you're quite right, but now I wonder if that's a reasonable excuse for him actually doing all that.

I want to still be his friend, I don't want to remove him from my life, but I see a lot of things now that make me question whether I can have a genuine friendship with him. I don't know if my 'judgement' of the way he behaves (and the fact that I see parallels with how he was with me) gets too in the way of that.

I think it is very hard to be friends with someone whose ideas you don't respect. You aren't required to maintain this friendship - if you feel resentful towards him or you dislike him because of how he behaves then it is fine for you to distance yourself from the relationship or drop it altogether. It's normal for friendships to wither over the years as people change.

I have a friend who I used to be very close to but over the years I've reduced my contact with him because the way he's treated his girlfriends makes me feel sick. For me, friendship implies that you genuinely like and respect a person. I don't feel that way any more about my friend so IMO there's no point in maintaining our previous closeness - I am just not interested in hearing him be nasty about his lovely girlfriend and I don't think it's my place to sit there and criticise his life either. He's made his choice about how to live and I've made mine.

That's it, Cailin. I like him, but I'm not sure if I can really respect him.

Hmm I'm not sure. I think I've become less close to male friends who have treated women badly - but i haven't "dumped" them iyswim. I know one man who has had appalling, commitment-phobic relationships with a string of women, some of them my friends, and I take a pretty dim view of it... But I still hang out with him, but wouldn't be a close friend. But then female friends aren't always perfect are they and I wouldn't expect that to end a friendship - unless someone was doing really unforgivable things all the time.

I think your past involvement is confusing things too. You just have to ask yourself if you like him, get something positive out of seeing him etc - or is it more stress than it's worth? If it is, it's ok to have had enough of a friendship.

As your friend, does he treat YOU badly now. You allowed him to treat you the way he did when you were fuck buddies, so take responsibility for your choices there. That is the past. Bit late to mull it over now.

If someone is a friend, it is not their job to judge, or feel indignant on the behalf of other women whom you feel he has treated badly. Unless, of course, there was serious cause for concern i.e he was violent, seriously abusive.

Friends don't judge.

Not sure whether friends don't judge, we'd like to think we don't but we do. We constantly "judge" what sits right with us and what doesn't. Maturity is showing you he isn't a particularly nice person.

Even now you're feeling you are being more of a friend to him than he is to you.

It's unequal.

I personally wouldn't entertain him but it's up to you.

I cannot be friends with someone if I don't respect them.

I can respect someone who has different views to me (from me? than me?). That's not a problem. I can argue with someone and say their view is totally wrong but still respect them. I'm not saying someone has to be just like me in order for me to respect them.

But there are certain things that would make me have no respect for someone, and without respect - there can be no friendship, imo.

And treating people like shit is fairly high on that list.

Gosh, I don't think friends don't judge - in fact I think that sounds as if we should switch our brains off in relation to friends. My view is that we call people on things with honesty and affection, where necessary. I certainly wouldn't expect my friends not to say something if they thought I was behaving badly.

I think I agree with DoesntBoden that now matters more than the distant past, which you can't change. Are you saying that he's still treating women badly now, and that your lack of respect for him stems from current, rather than past behaviour? If so, then it's entirely your decision as to whether or not this friendship is worth maintaining. It sounds to me as if it's causing you more pain than pleasure, to be honest, in which case you should feel free to start cooling things down to an acquaintanceship/more distant relationship/

I think it is possible to have a friendship with him, but whilst you are currently good friends. you are obviously quite upset at the way he has treated you.

I think you should speak to hi about how his behaviour towards you would make you feel.

Though when i saw your title my instant thought was no. I am always very surprised at people who have "friends" who live lives that the person so clearly disagrees with.
I for instance couldn't possibly be good friends with someone who voted tory