Your DH needs to read the following too:-
What did you learn about relationships when you were growing up?.
Where are your boundaries at here?. You seem also mired in FOG re this man and that as well as the sunken costs fallacy is costing you dearly, not just to say your wife who has been caught up in all his dysfunctional shit behaviour too.
Toxic friends can actually be harder to recognize. We tend to be axiomatic – we’d never be friends with abusers, therefore our friends aren’t abusive. We may excuse their behaviour as “that’s just how (name) is…”. We may choose to overlook the fact that our friends are toxic because of the sunk cost fallacy – we’ve known them for so long that we can’t really let them go.
But those toxic friends are destroying your self-esteem, ruining your happiness and in many cases actively holding you back. If you’re miserable, it may be time to look around and make sure you haven’t surrounded yourself with toxic friends.
Your social circle, after all, is supposed to be a source of happiness, support and healthy validation. Good friends help prop you up when you’re down, help you celebrate your successes, mourn your losses with you, cheer you on and – ideally – help you pick up the pieces when you’ve fucked up.
Toxic friends ruin your self-esteem and leave you feeling lower than low. They drain the life from you and leave you feeling miserable – especially about yourself and the things you love. Toxic friends will convince you that you are the problem. They’ll reinforce every self-limiting belief you have and encourage the worst sides of you… and more often than not, they’ll deliberately hold you back. They’re the friends who will try to convince someone who’s quit drinking to fall off the wagon or a happily committed friend to ditch their relationship. After all, why would they want to give up on their favorite punching bag? Who else is going provide them with validation?. Who can they inflict their drama on?. Toxic people can’t abuse somebody someone with self-esteem and healthy boundaries, so it’s important to them to make sure that you never develop any.
When your social circle develops a case of toxic friend, it can be hard to actually get rid of them. On the whole, established social groups tend to be conflict averse. Often there are few crimes worse than “causing drama” – creating conflicts within the group and making everybody uncomfortable. People can be quick to try to shut it down – labeling the person a “drama queen”, telling them they’re being irrational or that they’re “making a mountain out of a molehill. The problem is that, more often than not, the person accused of “causing drama” is the one who is reacting to it. They’re not causing the conflict so much as pointing out that it exists in the first place. This can be incredibly uncomfortable, even in the most well-meaning of social circles. Often, people’s default response to discomfort is to try to ignore it and hope it goes away. They wrap the nugget of discontent in layers of denial and “well that’s just (name), you know how he is,” like a passive-aggressive pearl in the socially-uncomfortable oyster. This never actually solves the problem; it simply makes it easier to pretend that it doesn’t exist. And for many people, that’s almost the same thing.
The problem is that social circles – especially geeky ones – tend to be loathe to exclude people. This is one of the classic geek social fallacies – that ostracizers are inherently bad and trying to exclude someone (no matter how deserved) is just wrong. Pointing out that someone is toxic means having to do something about it, but to actually get rid of them would be wrong… It can be even worse when it’s a group of people within your social circle. Then you aren’t just causing drama with one person, you’re forcing people to pick sides and everyone knows that friends don’t do that. As a result: there is a great deal of pressure to stay quiet and not say anything.
The best defense against toxic friends having influence in your life is to establish and maintain strong boundaries. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to enforce your boundaries with people you consider your friends. You might not feel as though you have the right or the authority to stand up to them. If you’ve absorbed their bullshit for long enough, you might feel that you deserve what they’re doing to you. You may think that they’re right and “only trying to help”. When you do start to show signs of enforcing your boundaries with them, they may try to frame things as though you’re being unreasonable.
Good. Be unreasonable!!. You don’t need to justify or explain why you’re enforcing your boundaries. Do not JADE (justify, argue, defend or explain) such a person. Your refusing to let other people stomp all over your self-worth is not up for public debate or open to discussion. You and you alone get to decide where the line is and who gets to cross it.
Sometimes enforcing your boundaries means telling the person to stop and not letting them continue with their shitty behavior. But sometimes enforcing your boundaries means that you need to simply walk away from the relationship entirely.
We talk a lot about breaking up with our girlfriends or boyfriends, our husbands and wives… but frequently we don’t realize we can break up with our friends too. And, unfortunately, sometimes it’s necessary.
It can be incredibly difficult. Ending a relationship is hard, but in many ways, ending a friendship can be harder. You may feel as though this means you’ve “failed” somehow. You may have a hard time of letting go of a relationship that’s lasted for months or even years. You may worry that this is going to mean that you’re going to have to give up your entire social circle or end up having no friends at all.
These are all valid and reasonable fears. Letting go of a long-term relationship, platonic or otherwise, is scary. Sometimes cutting a toxic person out of your life does mean being willing to start over completely and having to find a new social circle. Sometimes those toxic friends are skilled manipulators. They will make you out to be the bad guy in the situation and use that pressure to try to make you feel unreasonable and to give in. They may use the threat of turning your friends against you to try to scare you out of walking away.
But as scary and intimidating as it can be, ending the friendship is worth it. Your self-esteem, your mental and emotional health is far more valuable than putting up with someone who tries to undermine you at every turn.
Just having been friends with someone for a long time doesn’t justify continuing to keep them in your life if they’re toxic. This is known as the sunk-cost fallacy – you’ve been friends with them for so long that you really can’t let go now, even though they make you miserable. In fact, many toxic friends will rely on this as a way of keeping you around and under their sphere of influence. In a lot of ways, it’s better to leave a group if being with them means letting one of them – or several of them – abuse you. You can always try and maintain your friendships with the individuals who are real friends. Sometimes that’s not possible and you end up having to start from scratch again – an incredibly intimidating prospect for many people.
You will find other, better, real friends out there – ones who actually treat you as a friend instead of a chew toy and punching bag. Having and maintaining those strong boundaries will help keep the toxic friends at bay. You’ll find that you feel better, that your life is better over all. Life’s too short to let people steal joy from you. Take your life back. Take your self-esteem back. Firm up your boundaries and dump your toxic friend once and for all.
Your wife will also thank you for doing that too.