Was I Unreasonable to ask my friend to leave?

[CarliseT]

I asked my friend to leave yesterday, I could not have him staying with me for Christmas. He asked if he could come to my house for Christmas. I only accepted for him to visit as I thought he had changed.

My friend is a real miser, he expects people to pay for him. If he stays for a week, he would not put his hands in his pocket. He feels almost entitled to eat and drink for free. He does not spend money on food, he goes from one friend's house to another and the money that he saves, he spends it on travelling abroad.

He came on Friday afternoon and told me, "I don't eat this and don't eat that..." He came empty handed - I had already marinated meat and was about to cook, he told me that he did not eat red meat - I had to cook fish instead.

My friend is not broke, he has lots of money - two big houses, one outside the UK. He had stayed with me before, without paying for anything and since his mother passed away, I thought that he had changed.

He was very upset that I had asked him to leave early as he had told another friend that he would go to his place tomorrow. He told me that I was unfair for asking him to leave early.

I do not believe in freeloading on my friends - I like to pay my share of anything. I am upset that I allowed him to stay for two nights. Should have asked him to leave on Saturday morning - all he did was eat and sleep.

Hmm. That kind of miserliness and poor hygiene is not healthy. A strange obsession to refuse to buy food.

@Bomb, you are right, it's a bizarre story. This was the last straw that broke the camel's back. How much should we put up for other people's unreasonable behaviour? It's not the first time that he had taken advantage of my kindness.

People should know that their behaviours have an impact on other people - We could have had a nice Christmas if he was willing to pay his way. I welcome him, I cooked, put food on the table and was a good host.

He will not change if people keep putting up with such a nasty behaviour. I am not guilty, it's not the first time. I remember that we put him up for three weeks before and he gave nothing, offered nothing or even bothered to ask. He is not a child, this is a grown up man in his 50s and I feel hurt that he feels he can freeload or use people. I have put him up in my house on several occasions.

It's the only way that he will learn. As I have already pointed out, he is not short of money, he is just a miser, someone who will not pay his way in life. Before he came to the house, I explained to him my circumstances and yet he wanted to stay and be feed for free. I tolerated such people in the past, when things were very easy for me, but I am going through some problems in my life and cannot afford to put someone for 4/5 days without them contributing anything.

I do not use my friends - I try to be a nice person to my friends, I try to understand that other people may be having their own problems and would never want to go and stay with any of my friend for "free" or freeload or use any of them. It's not easy to find good people and when we do find them, we must appreciate them.

I am posting here because I was upset yesterday and tired of being used - I would never do the same to him and don't want the anti-social behaviour imposed on me. We all have limits, when the boundaries are breached people will explode. I reached that yesterday by asking him to leave, he got upset and started raising his voice to me.

It does not matter that he turned up empty handed, what he could have said, "Should be do Christmas shopping together?"

He is not homeless, he choose to live that way and he did not have to go to his friend's house, he could easily have gone back to his own home.

@Bombardier25966 if you have suspicions about the post then report it, instead of posting Poirot type statements. 😂

I can't see any drip feeding really, he sounded unreasonable from the outset

You did the right thing OP. DP and I had a very similar friend stay with us for a few weeks who we had to ask to leave before the agreed date of departure. He had very wealthy parents who gave him a hell of a lot of money, never had a job as he was constantly travelling, poor hygiene and entitled attitude. He was incredibly privileged but wanted to be seen as very down to earth/woke and came across as a faux spiritual 'prole-ier than thou' trustafarian hypocrite. The straw that broke the camels back for me was him saying out loud that he didn't want to pay rent as a 'lifestyle choice' after his mother had offered to pay to rent a flat for him, and he turned her down even though he had told us he needed to stay while he got back on his feet and found a flat. He now lives in a van as he went through a few more sets of friends who all ended up kicking him out too, but seems happy enough to be fair to him.