Edited: I feel like my friend is being jerked around.

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Summer_Twilight
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06 Oct 2022, 11:38 am

Edited

I have a close friend who keeps running into issues who he has known and has been close to for years. On the contrary, this person has been drifting apart from friends for a while. Rather, he has been connecting with some new people and seeming to make time for them while my friends appears to be at the bottom of his list while everything else is more important. In fact, he left my friend out of his birthday celebration with because he chose to only invite 10 people. All the while, he's been jerking my friend around for a whole year by saying he's his friend but keeps my friend.

Some examples

1. Over the summer, he could not keep his story straight about why he could not make my friend's birthday. He even texted my friend and wished him "Happy Birthday" prior to tagging himself and another friend of his on FB doing the very same activity that we did for my friend's birthday on the very next day.

- As a result of that, my friend removed his from his list of friends on Facebook only to get nasty backlash from this person and his other friend by assuring my friend that he was rude and hurtful for doing that.

2. Then after three months of not talking, this person called my friend up last Saturday while I was trying to spend time with my friend. He said he missed my friend and had made plans for Sunday. However, he ended up bailing on me friend at the last minute over some excuse. He also told him that he was going to be busy on his next off day from work. Yet, he texted my friend on Tuesday and said he wanted to hang out with my friend only if he could give him some money for gas and then he could pick him up. So my friend doesn't want to go.

3. He also promised my friend that he was planning to take off one Sat this month so that he could spend time with my friend.

I don't trust this guy and my friend is just about at the end of the rope with him. Any suggestions?



temp1234
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07 Oct 2022, 7:14 am

Your friend should ditch that insincere guy. Someone that keeps causing that kind of stress is not a friend. A friend wouldn't do that. Your friend is better off without him.



beady
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07 Oct 2022, 7:36 am

I agree that this other person is not a friend but is just hanging onto your friend in case your friend can do them some service.

It’s probably best for your friend to block that other person’s number or take whatever steps are needed to block contact.



DanielW
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07 Oct 2022, 7:43 am

this friend seems to be this other person's last resort and is being used as someone to do things with unless "something better comes along.

This isn't friendship. Your friend should take the pro-active position of removing himself from this relationship and focus on other relationships or finding better friends.



Summer_Twilight
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07 Oct 2022, 9:03 am

Thank you everyone because I don't trust this person, as he has not only jerked my friend around but me as well and believe me, I blocked myself and I will explain below

Strike 1: He also originally invited me to his birthday as well and then canceled the original invitation. Then he went behind our backs and invited the 10 other people which he called me up and boasted about.

His excuse? "I only wanted to have 10 people at my gathering because I didn't want things to get too overwhelming because my autism." I found it hurtful and confronted him for taking the invitation away from me. He started crying and said, "I'm sorry, have a been a good friend?" Uh no. However, I was not as close to him as my friend has been to him.

Strike 2: He one time said he would like to get together with me only if I could pay for his meal being that he a very tight budget. So I offered to go swimming and then get some things as a local convenient store but he wasn't interested

Strike 3: I noticed that he wasn't interested in making time to celebrate my friend's birthday after ditching for other people who were a higher priority.

He is also a very unhealthy person to be around because I think he's extremely negative on so many levels that I will not go into.



Mona Pereth
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07 Oct 2022, 5:21 pm

Inviting someone, then un-inviting them, is definitely not a nice thing to do. Hopefully you and/or your friend have told him this in no uncertain terms?

Both you and your friend are certainly justified in distancing yourself from this guy.

But cutting off contact completely might NOT be a good idea -- especially if you have mutual acquaintances. In that case, it seems to me that cutting off communication completely, or blocking him on social media, is likely to result in more drama than just telling him that, given his behavior, you no longer want to hang out with him very often.


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Summer_Twilight
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08 Oct 2022, 7:33 pm

Hi Mona, thanks for the great advice and I am currently talking to him about this.


However, I am not really close to this person and nor did I consider him a friend. We were just getting to know each other. Yes, I was very upset that he took that invitation away from me and then boasted about on the phone after wards. Believe me, my feelings got hurt. That said, I was more upset with him for taking the invitation away from my friend.

Yes, we both explained to him and through he apologized to me, my shifted the blame on my friend by saying he was being mean to him.