He is so uncomfortable in his own skin.

Its such a sad situation  

Anyway, this friend was having a BBQ to celebrate his younger brothers birthday and i got invited (i thought that would be too goo to be true) the week leading up to it, my ex boyfriends so called friend ignored all calls and text from him assuming it was a bid to stop me from going. My ex was annoyed at this and hurt but as men do, they put it to one side and still be friends. They all go out as couples but we was never invited, this friend uses my boyfriend for a place to stay after a night out, money, lifts to places and non of it is reciprocated. This friend drink drives, cheats on his girlfriend. The funny part is when i am around he is so nice to me telling me how much he likes me – he is such a patronising little ****! 

Another time we was out in town, and i was at the bar, it was busy and some bloke has his elbow near mine, this friend began to have cross words with this fella because he thought he was elbowing me. The bloke at the bar the became a bit angry at this friend and do u know what he did????? He, the friend, turned around and let everyone else get him out of the situation and probably stopped him from being in a fight!! What an absolute dick!!!! 

It took its toll on me, i tried to tell my boyfriend how much it was upsetting me, after a million buckets of tears and stuff i just felt like he didn’t have my back and i wasn’t supported. So i did the same as the original poster, i  decided to follow my gut, end the relationship and see who he chose. Its been 3 months now and we have had contact, seen each other now and again, but recently my ex has decided its best to not speak anymore because i dunno he has his own reasons.

I’m so sad, im so angry and im so hurt. I cant understand why anyone would chose to go from  having their own flat, and cat and holiday booked to america next year to being used by a friend and pissing all their money up the wall. 

I’m finding this no contact thing really hard, really hard. But now i have to accept he has blatantly chosen his friends and the single lifestyle over me
It hurts so bad……I don’t know what else to do now but give up.  

I’m still glad I held my tongue and just broke things off. (I think I was fairly balanced in the way I told him that I was simply looking for something different in a relationship.) I believe it would have been an uphill battle to change the situation.

I think the other lesson I learned here was to listen to my gut, especially when it seems to have common sense on its side.

If anything, this might be a case of Valerie’s gut instincts being on target, but who knows? What if it had gone the other way? A cautionary tale to be sure.

“The original poster wrote that her boyfriend does not act like his friends and does not seem to be influenced by them”

You just gonna let this hang on out there? Still so sure this is the case?

Valerie, I’m sorry for what happened. I think women in this culture are so influenced to bite their tongues, and not comment on the anti-social (and often dangerous bordering on fatal, like the drunk driving thing) to avoid being branded “not nice”, or at worst, “the bitch”.

All for pointing out that someone else’s behavior might just suck, to the point of wreaking horrible havoc in other people’s lives. (People they care about, even! Frequently those people get the worst of it!) ‘Cause you can’t tell them anything; they’re always right, can’t tell THEM what to do!!!

I hope your dynamics are different next time.

Sometimes it can be confusing when it comes to a guy friends. Because as a general rule YOU ARE like the people you hang around.

My initial response to your post was actually .. you should accept his friends the way that they are .. or not date him at all.

And i was going to bring up a point about not changing him and what not.

I’m very glad that you did everything you could to respect who he is as a person and I’m glad that you had the self esteem to know that you deserve so much better!!

You go girl

Hot Alpha Female

htp://www.hotalphafemale.blogspot.com

All told, I never once said a thing to this guy about his friends, because I was thoroughly paranoid that my doing so would be subject to the unfair speculation (a-la-Verbosity) that I was “engaging in some unconscious effort to see if [my] boyfriend would choose his friends over [me]“. I kept my feelings to myself entirely. I tried to have plans with my girlfriends
when it looked like I’d be spending time with his friends. I was cordial to his pals when in their company. Still, I started to notice my boyfriend’s behavior changing, presumably because he was starting to get comfortable and didn’t feel the need to be on his best behavior around me.

Here is the short list: He got behind the wheel and drove home stinking drunk after a night out with his buddies. He lied to help his best friend cover for
cheating on a girlfriend. He loaned the same guy “get-laid-with-someone-new”
money that he’ll probably never see again. He joined in when his friend ridiculed an opinion of mine (which he happened to agree with, by the way). Finally, we had to leave early from an expensive concert I paid for because his loud/drunk friend got
ejected; afterwards, he wasn’t the least bit apologetic about it.

Perhaps the mature thing would have been to have the discussion about his friends at least once to give him the chance to say something on his own behalf. But
I guess I just realized I really didn’t have the energy or will to make things work with this man. I didn’t feel it would be worth it to criticize him if I was just going to break up with him anyway.

So, if there’s anything to take away from this experience, maybe the absence of healthy friendships shouldn’t count against a potential mate. But from now on, I think I’m going to add the quality of one’s friendships (a subjective assessment, I know) to my list of Highly Desirable Traits In A Man from now on.

Fondly,
Valerie