Friend befriending enemy

[Rubypumped]

I posted this on another thread because it was along the same lines, but realized it would make more sense here, so please answer!

 

I should start this off by saying that we are all in our mid-twenties. In my situation, I dated a guy who put me on an emotional rollercoaster. I complained about him and got advice from a dear long-term friend of mine who also considered me one of his best friends. One day he met the guy through mutual friends and immediately took a liking to him. The next day he told me how great the guy was. Within a week he was very excited about their new friendship and warned me that I shouldn't expect him to take sides. I was very hurt. When I tried to reconcile with the guy, he played me again, and my friend defended him. This was three months after they met. I was hurt enough by that guy, but the real clincher was my friend who wasn't loyal to me. A few months later my friend didn't even have time for me anymore and expected me to understand that his free time was spent with that guy. I tried very hard to see his point of view, but ultimately I just felt so betrayed. When I expressed this to him, he tried to help but said some awful things like that they were very close and more defending. I ultimately couldn't take it and had to end the friendship because I was so hurt. I tried to befriend the guy one last time (this was a year after the last time he did me wrong). He was just cruel this time around. I tried to tell my old friend but he flat out said he wouldn't believe anything I said about that guy and refused to reconcile our friendship.

 

This has left me unbelievably heartbroken and terrified of future friendships and relationships. I see people on here saying "you can't tell people who to be friends with," but I see his choosing to befriend this person as a major lack of respect. He was still there for me in other ways, but asking him to drop this relationship because of how much it hurt me was asking too much. But for me, their friendship was too hurtful. Some people say, "as long as he didn't bad mouth you then their friendship has nothing to do with you," and "well that guy hurt YOU not your friend," but to me it shows that my friend just does not have my back. Isn't that specifically what "I can't take sides" means? I've heard, "maybe he's getting something great out of the friendship" but I figure we already had a great friendship and they barely knew each other, how could it be equal loyalty and worth the pain it caused me? Some people say "a lot can happen in three months" but I don't see how that is equal to years of tightness.

 

If one of my friends was hurt by someone, even if it was a breakup and the other person may have perfectly valid reasoning for their actions, I show loyalty to my closer, older friend first. I have put this into practice multiple times. It seems natural to me and I have a very hard time understanding otherwise. It seems to me like if you want to stay neutral then you're a superficial friend to everybody who just wants to have fun. Not a real friend to anyone. I am so very hurt and just can't see how this is okay. Honestly, the very beginning when they even became friends was the worst pain of it all. That was the backstab right there. I'm not saying my friend should have been rude to him or anything, but befriending him and dismissing how I felt was just awful.

 

I don't think it's immature to tell my friend that I'm not okay with their friendship and consider it none of my business. I think it is immature for the friend to be so inconsiderate and tell me that I shouldn't feel how I do!

Edited March 28, 2014 by Rubypumped

[VeronicaRoss]

This was three months after they met. I was hurt enough by that guy, but the real clincher was my friend who wasn't loyal to me.

 

He was just cruel this time around. I tried to tell my old friend but he flat out said he wouldn't believe anything I said about that guy and refused to reconcile our friendship.

 

This has left me unbelievably heartbroken and terrified of future friendships and relationships.

 

I don't think it's immature to tell my friend that I'm not okay with their friendship and consider it none of my business. I think it is immature for the friend to be so inconsiderate and tell me that I shouldn't feel how I do!

 

Your former friend lost respect for you and turned on you in an amazingly short time. To me that's actually the really interesting question -- why did that happen? What you should accept is this person is not your friend.

 

Either you overestimated his loyalty, your ex is incredibly manipulative (maybe lied about you), your friend very needy to whatever charms he has to offer, he has more in common with your ex than you, or you did something that really appalled him and maybe he hadn't seen in you before. Whatever it is, he did not give you the benefit of the doubt or care about how his actions would affect you. That is NOT the act of a friend.

 

As much as you trusted and liked him, he was not loyal. If he heard something he didn't like if he was loyal to you he would have talked with you about it and that didn't happen. How does he treat other people? Is this the way he is and you just thought you were the special snowflake friend? That's always going to be proven wrong.

 

If you really want to get something out of this, it's understanding not scolding or telling him he's wrong. That will only justify his position. Ask instead: "We were good friends, what happened that changed your attitude toward me so quickly? Is it something I said or did that hurt or offended him or you?" Most people won't open up. If he does don't stop him until he is done. As tempting as it will be to argue, that will only stop your education and shut him up.

 

You will be confronted with something in yourself, your ex or your friend that is really hard to hear, heartbreakingly hard. If you ever want this person back as a friend, you need to show him the respect that defines friendship. Given that he didn't talk with you from the beginning and just turned on you in such a nasty way, I think you should thank your lucky stars this happened now and not later when the stakes were higher and let him go. He's been a major jerk.

[KaliLove]

Are you sure their friendship is just a friendship? Is it possible that your ex-friend is in love with your ex-boyfriend? I find it very odd that he flipped on you so quickly for someone he barely knows..there has to be an underlying reason for it.

[preraph]

Your guy friend who was disloyal is one of those people who uses other people's pain and rocky relationships as a foot in the door. He isn't and never was a good friend. So just be aware that those two deserve each other. He'll prey on his women and use him to meet people and he'll get what's coming to him.

 

After my best friend of 17 years slept with my bf, she then went and got my little black book and proceeded to attempt to cry on the shoulder of all my male friends, just as an opportunity/excuse to get to know them. I was never so livid. Only one of them fell for it even momentarily, and that's because he has a huge ego, and I straightened him right out pronto. The others were good enough to tell me about it and call her nasty names!

 

I had a work/social male friend who seemed like a good friend because he was very interested in my romantic problems. Turns out he was one like your friend, who just used every bit of info to seek out the other party and give them the info and get close to them. Some people are just users.

[Rubypumped]

Everybody that has heard the whole story in detail, including me, has been like "gay crush." I gave you guys the gist of it (with all important details left in). If I gave you ALL the details you guys would be like WTF. This is the guy who just weeks before was telling me he would never want to do anything to jeopardize our "kick-trash awesome friendship" and when I told him how hurt I was about a month before the ultimatum he told me that maybe this happened so that the two of us could get closer together. With past guys he would tell me that god wouldn't let them get away with how they treated me, or that this guy was shady and probably a liar, etc. When a mutual friend stopped talking to me a year before, he went and asked her why. He told his girlfriend of a year that I was his best friend. He would calm me down for hours at a time when I was stressing during all nighters during my first year of graduate school. When I asked him repeatedly if doing so was a burden he always laughed and said not at all. He was there when I was in the hospital. We graduated high school together 8 years prior. Our buildings at school only had the student union between them. Our parents were neighbors. The day he met the guy, he called to ask me if I would be attending the party and I said no because the guy would be there and I didn't want to face him. He called the next day to tell me he spent the whole night hanging out with that guy and suddenly there it was...

 

@VeronicaRoss he just defended the guy and said neither of them betrayed me even though everyone I talked to including two counselors said that guys behavior was terrible. He said "you just wanted me to take sides" and that he can't stop being friends with the other guy just because it didn't work out between us. (That is obviously not the case, but even if it were you'd honk he would respect an old friend's feelings over someone new, which some people disagree with.) He said he can't judge the other guy because the guy has "been nothing short of an excellent friend" to him (funny, because he sure was ready to drop me after everything even though he told me he forgave

Me for the ultimatum because forgiveness is moving on and that he doesn't hate me, judge me, or have hard feelings toward me, but of course it should be obvious why we can't be close after that. I don't see how it all applies to me in my situation but not to the guy in his! And I'd like to know his definition of friend.)

 

He kept saying the guy "has a really good head on his shoulders" and "is the best guy I know." When I pointed out the many flaws in my friend's defense of the guy, he said no one could possibly argue with his logic. He said "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." He said I was obsessive because I was still so upset a year later, and because I didn't take his acceptance of the ultimatum lying down ("I moved on. Why can't you?") And when I pointed out that if I didn't care about him I would have just written him off as a jerk right away, and the reason I was so upset a year later is that I had been trying for so long to be okay with it and see his side and I just COULDN'T, he said that wasn't his definition of friendship. And there you go. A year and a half after they met, a year and a half of AGONY for me because the last thing I wanted to do was think ill of my best friend and dump him....and it was so easy for him to choose the other guy over me. Let me tell you, I have been through a lot and NOTHING has ever shocked and frozen me so hard in my life. Nothing has ever hurt and scared me this much. I'm scared of life now because I have never felt so betrayed. And if he heard me say all this, he'd think "obsessive freak" and hate me all the more.

 

@preraph a few people said maybe he is secretly in love with me and trying to sabotage the guy, etc. but that's really not the case. I think he's into the GUY. I don't think he ever used our info against each other, he only used my definitions of pain against me by cattily throwing them in my face after he supposedly forgave me for the ultimatum. If anything, he probably asked what the guy's reasons were and accepted them, even though everyone and their dog was like that makes no sense. He just automatically had the same level of loyalty and this major attraction to him! Contacting him, spending time together, etc. and telling me how great he was today and then again a few hours later etc. When I pointed out how the guy had hurts he said "Yeahhhhh, but I won't be in a dating relationship with him so it's not going to happen to ME." He basically thought it was all just relationship drama. Funny because he was a fan of stealing a girl you like from your best friend, etc. I'm like, do you think all relationships are shallow? My other friends said just to ask him not to tell me when they hang out but I didn't want to give my friend a reason to feel he couldn't be honest with me. And he was honest. "Hey, what are you up to?" "Nothing, just got done hanging out with that guy, what are you up to?" Besides, it wasn't hearing about the guy that was the problem. It was their friendship and the betrayal to me that was the problem.

 

And yes they do have a lot in common. Doesn't make it any less of a backstab though. He seemed to have changed a lot starting right before they met, like he started saying it's ok to steal someone if they are still working things out with their SO without caring about the SO (who is a stranger) because you should take what you want. He also made out with his roommate's date, admitted it was ****ty but decided that was reason to excuse someone else when she went after her friend's ex-fiancé right after hey broke up. "People do ****y things" was the excuse. I would never act that way or condone my friends doing it.

Edited March 29, 2014 by Rubypumped
Added response to VeronicaRoss and preraph

[preraph]

He just isn't at all loyal, and that's not good in a friend.

 

I got really mad at a close friend of mine for much less. I was being flamed online by an old male friend's ex and my friend saw it all. His ex was acting like I broke up their marriage, but she's the one who tried sleeping with three of his friends, and before that, her husband never cheated, and he still never did because he filed for divorce after she did that. I wasn't doing anything with him. I was in love with someone else at the time. But that didn't stop her from trashing me.

 

Then my girlfriend, who saw all that online, started saying how she read how the b**th ex wants to move out in the country to this certain place where my friend has vacationed and keeps going on about how neat that is, etc. And she wouldn't shut up about it even though I kept interrupting with "You SAW the crap she was saying about me, so you can think she's neat all you want, but I don't want to hear about it." I think she got a perverse thrill out of bugging me. I mean, if someone is lying about a friend of mine, I'd take my friend's side and be loyal, you know. That's what friends are for.

[VeronicaRoss]

 

and it was so easy for him to choose the other guy over me. Let me tell you, I have been through a lot and NOTHING has ever shocked and frozen me so hard in my life. Nothing has ever hurt and scared me this much. I'm scared of life now because I have never felt so betrayed. And if he heard me say all this, he'd think "obsessive freak" and hate me all the more.

 

Wow. What a manipulative jerk.

 

Listen, don't get down on yourself or all of humanity because of one person's horrible behavior. That would be crazy of you. It makes sense you feel betrayed and hurt by one person's behavior but when you make it a catastrophe and about others, you've lost touch with reality and are causing damage to yourself and anyone else who is really good that you might come in contact with.

 

There are many sides to people and it takes time to get to see enough of those sides. It takes time! Now you know what some people are capable of and have grown up that much more, we all go through it.

 

Words are easy to say, like the jerk's big friendship claim, so don't be so easily charmed moving forward. It's people's actions you need to pay attention to and believe, not their words.

[Rubypumped]

My big worry for the future is that so many people I've talked to think it was okay for this guy to be neutral and befriend the other guy! When it gets to the end of the story with how he was treating me a year later people are like ok now he's a jerk. But for the first few months of it, people were like "YOU'RE being selfish, you can't tell people who to be friends with, he didn't do anything to HIM, etc." As far as I'm concerned, the initial striking up of the friendship was the most painful to me, and honestly the biggest backstab. Considering the rest of the events that transpired, you can see just how bad that must have hurt. It doesn't matter if he didn't do anything to my friend. He did it to me, and my best friend should have my back.

[preraph]

People who think that's okay are like that themselves and either don't have enough empathy or haven't been hurt so that they know what it feels like. I hate to say it, but guys are more likely to not care if a girlfriend is passed around, and I think it's because they just don't value anyone very much or else they don't want their so-called friends to think they're weak.

[VeronicaRoss]

"YOU'RE being selfish, you can't tell people who to be friends with, he didn't do anything to HIM, etc." As far as I'm concerned, the initial striking up of the friendship was the most painful to me, and honestly the biggest backstab. Considering the rest of the events that transpired, you can see just how bad that must have hurt. It doesn't matter if he didn't do anything to my friend. He did it to me, and my best friend should have my back.

 

Completely agree with you. I don't know how this became ok and it is ok for a lot of people, but they're doing you a favor by telling you, you know not to rely on them either.

[Rubypumped]

Thank you!! Yeah I've even had two divorced friends (one abusive husband one the husband cheated after 11 years together) say that it's ok for their friends to become/stay friends with the ex because the spouse didn't do anything to the friend and they can't tell anyone who to be friends with. It's crazy to me. I'm like, that's right you can't, but if they choose to then it sure says a lot!

 

To me it screams that they don't care that you're hurt. But I've had people say that's a big leap of logic and maybe they care about your pain but they just don't hold the other person responsible. I think that only works sometimes, like if your boyfriend kindly breaks up with you and there's no abuse or messy ending, and even then your real friends will act with sensitivity.

 

Seriously, is a new fun person worth causing pain to an old close friend? But they blame the friend for having the pain.

 

I've also had people say that the only responsibility of a friend is to beware that they same thing might happen to them and if it does they can't complain. Uhhhh that is an ACQUAINTANCE or even a stranger's job to not judge and just be wary! A real friend has respect and love for you, and in addition would feel your pain!!!

[DArtagnan2]

Friends just dont do that to other friends. He was most likely someone who cared about you, but his friendship only ran so deep.

[Rubypumped]

Friends just dont do that to other friends. He was most likely someone who cared about you, but his friendship only ran so deep.

 

I'm just so worried because so many people I've talked to think it's okay for my friend to be so neutral. Basically, loyalty means nothing. They say, "That guy didn't do anything to HIM," "You can't tell people who to be friends with," and a million other things. To me, my friend's biggest backstab was right at the beginning when he befriended the guy and thought he was so great. And also when he stayed so close with him after he played me the second time. So many people told me it was okay for my friend to have equal loyalty because "a lot can happen in three months." I don't see how three months replaces years!!!

[Sugarkane]

I've had very similar situations happen to me too. Everyone took the lying, cheaters side, every time. People don't really care unless they're the one getting screwed over. I'm getting cynical I know. I'd ask this ex friend, are you in a homosexual relationship? It sounds like it. If he says you're controlling/ doesn't want to take sides, ask why you're being dropped then?! If you're "not supposed to take sides".

[Rubypumped]

I've had very similar situations happen to me too. Everyone took the lying, cheaters side, every time. People don't really care unless they're the one getting screwed over. I'm getting cynical I know. I'd ask this ex friend, are you in a homosexual relationship? It sounds like it. If he says you're controlling/ doesn't want to take sides, ask why you're being dropped then?! If you're "not supposed to take sides".

 

I guess he got fed up with me not being okay with it? People say he was looking for a way to get rid of me because I wasn't fun anymore. Uhh excuse me but eight years of friendship sometimes takes some "drama" to keep healthy. Otherwise it's a fair-weather friendship and that's pretty sad. And yes, everyone says homosexual crush. He took sides by defending the guy, and honestly he even took sides by befriending him and stating that he was neutral. People say, "He didn't befriend he guy BECAUSE he hurt you." I say that doesn't matter. He didn't know the guy and his best friend was so hurt. He should have been sensitive and respectful. By befriending the guy he was saying he condones the behavior. By telling me he wasn't taking sides, he was taking the other guy's side by not standing up for me. It wasn't a peaceful breakup, it was quite mean. And even if it were, a sensitive friend would be less in love with the guy right off the bat.

[Rubypumped]

Oh yeah. ONE MORE THING: What do you guys think of the idea that "Their friendship has nothing to do with our friendship"? My friend said that and others have said that. I said it does because it shows my friend doesn't care that I was hurt, which is discussed above. Then they say that as long as it doesn't actually affect our friendship it's okay. Well then when I say I'm hurt they got closer I hear that sometimes people grow closer and further, but that's so insensitive and rooted in neutrality which I think is so unfair!!

[Sugarkane]

I'd think I'd say something like "I'm going to find new friends that don't drop me whenever they meet a new boyfriend. Amd how say people shouldn't take sides, but then do just that. Then go NC.

Oh yeah. ONE MORE THING: What do you guys think of the idea that "Their friendship has nothing to do with our friendship"? My friend said that and others have said that. I said it does because it shows my friend doesn't care that I was hurt, which is discussed above. Then they say that as long as it doesn't actually affect our friendship it's okay. Well then when I say I'm hurt they got closer I hear that sometimes people grow closer and further, but that's so insensitive and rooted in neutrality which I think is so unfair!!