OT- How do I come to terms with my (ex) friend and her decisions?
I have a friend who I met through the National Guard several years ago. She met a man in our battalion and started dating him. Early in their relationship, she discovered she was pregnant. The man stepped up, asked her to move in with him, and several months later proposed. She gave birth a boy and all was well. 5 months later her fiancé (urged by his mom) realizes their son looks nothing like them and gets a DNA test. He finds out he is not the biological father. My friend then told him that she hooked up with another guy shortly before they became official but the doctor told her the wrong dates so it never occurred to her that their son might be the other guys. She tracks down other guy (who was also in the guard but went AWOL) and he tells her he cant afford another kid (He has four children with 3 different women) and he doesn't really want to be there for this one. Her fiancé is pained that he is not the bio dad, but since he has been there for the baby since day 1, he wants to continue to be the father. okay.
About a year ago she met another man in the National guard. She broke it off with her fiancé. Two weeks later she married New Guy. Ex fiancé is devastated. She withheld their son because her new husband doesn't want her to communicate with him. A month after that she finds out she is pregnant with New Guy. My friends civilian job was being a guard in the county jail. Who gets picked up and arrested for drunk and disorderly without his wedding ring on? Her hubby. A woman was also picked up with him. Friend is going crazy. Once her husband gets out of jail he tells her he doesn't want to be a father, and peace's out. Leaves her high and dry.
Friend goes crying to ex fiancé, who reaches out, pays off her debt and she moves back in with him. My friend could not file for divorce as she was pregnant, and our state dictates you can only file 6 months postpartum. Ex fiancé spends her entire pregnancy raising their son, paying medical bills for her doctors appointments and was in the room when she gave birth. He told her he loved her and wanted to marry her and raise the kids. Her Husband does not show up to doctors appointments, begs friend to sign over his rights the entire pregnancy, etc.
My friend gave birth in July and Husbands family reached out to her. She let her husband have visitation when their son was a week old. Both her fiancé and I thought this was a good idea. She was giving him every chance to be a father. Well two weeks ago she comes to me and says she has been spending time with her husband over the past month behind her fiancés back and wants to get back with the husband.
I'm slightly appalled as she tells me Fiancé is a great guy but she's just not feeling it and wants her marriage to work, and for her kids to have one "dad". I did not say anything. She takes the kids to her husbands grandparents, where her husband is now living.
Fiancé calls me and asks me point blank if she's planning on leaving him and where did she take the kids. I admit that my friend is sneaking behind his back and fiancé told me she had been using me as her cover, telling him she comes to my house multiple times a week.
My friend went back to fiances house that night and fiancé confronts her. She says she is choosing her husband. Fiancé tells her to move her shit out. I have not spoken to my friend since and frankly I have no desire to. I have kept in contact with ex fiancé, who told me she has not let him see the son who knows him as Daddy.
I am still overwhelmed with disgust and disappointment. Towards my friend and frankly towards myself. I feel like I enabled her by not telling her she was being a dumbass and throwing away a good man. I hate how I told myself "That's not really my business." I hate how she treated this man, who has stepped up multiple times when she has fucked up. I hate how she used me by lying to him that she was with me when she was cheating.
How do I move past this? Why do I care so much? Has anyone ever been in the position where they cant be friends with someone because of their decisions?
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Comments
What an awful person your
What an awful person your friend has turned out to be.
You know, when you first become friends with someone, you aren't looking so deeply into their character. You just care if they're nice, fun, share interests...
I have absolutely had to end friendships because the respect and affection was lost. In your situation, her behaviour is really low-rent so I can see you losing respect for her. And for her to use you as a cover without your prior ok - well, I can see the affection just disappearing.
I think you'll move past this as you understand yourself and why you care so much a bit more. You might be confronted with some things. For me, in the situations where I've ended friendships... it was being confronted with the fact that people do not behave as they 'should'. The idealism in me was deeply hurt by the lies, even if I wasn't the one directly lied to. Anotehr thing was assuming that my friend wanted to work it out, wanted to be honest and loving towards me. My friend was way more self-serving than that, which really shocked me. I had to admit I'd had blinders on.
To be honest, when it happened to me, I was really angry and hurt for almost a year. It was my two 'best' friends, so maybe that is a bit different than your situation. Anyway, that was about 4 years ago, and I'm still experiencing effects - like, I notice it's harder for me to expect others to like me. And I'm a lot more direct about what I want from someone else, so that there's less room for 'feelings', if that makes any sense.
I wish you a lot of peace.
I would certainly drop her.
I would certainly drop her. Over the course of your life you will drift away from many friends -- some for cause, some for lack of interest, some for simple geography. This woman is a ricocheting bullet of heartache and trouble. If you stick around you will be inviting more mess and sorrow into your life. She needs to be dropped for cause.
If I were you I would apologize profusely to the cuckolded fiancee. Tell him you knew nothing about being used as a cover story. Tell him you found out about the other man only shortly before he did. You think he's a fabulous guy and you're so sorry he was treated so poorly. Then tell him you're done with whatsername yourself.
I would not take any more calls from her.
Sueu2 - you're exactly right,
Sueu2 - you're exactly right, at least in my case (as commented above). It was absolutely about having appropriate boundaries. I expected too much, I gave too much, and I was too affected by the other person. Thanks for how you explained that above, it helps me too!
I had a best friend who was
I had a best friend who was like a sister to me. We were so close for many years. She was the funniest person ever and would do anything for me. I had a key to her house and could always stay there. I knew her husband really well too - great guy. I would have trusted her with anything.
When she lost her job (company restructuring - I lost mine too earlier) I helped her get a new job with the husband of a friend. A couple of years later I was told that she embezzled from them. I defended her to the death as the husband of my friend was a total sleeze bag. I was never going to believe him.
But when it all came to the surface she 1)had embezzled the money 2) was cheating on her great husband (and using me for a cover at times) and 3) had not paid the mortgage in months and the house was being repossessed to her husband's horror (he did manage to save it).
She was a total fraud of a human being. I felt disgusted - but in some ways I missed her humor and how fun she could be. But I just cut her out of my life 100%. We had many mutual friends, but I did not share the sordid details with them. I just left it like we had drifted apart.
Why would you automatically
Why would you automatically brand the betrayed husband as the cause of all the problems? I am still friends with my ex friend's ex husband. He really is a great guy. He's remarried and lives a nice life. His only mistake was helping his ex hide her problems for years. Turns out she had stolen money before from relatives. When he found out he paid everything back. She promised that it would never happen again. Just lies.
But even if he'd been a real son of a bitch nobody deserves to be cheated on, lied to, used and abused. It's terrible when men to it to women. But it's just as bad when a woman does it to a man.
It always hurts to lose a
It always hurts to lose a friend. But with drama like this, there is a mantra. "Not my monkeys, not my circus."
No you are the one being
No you are the one being fucking ridiculous. You called me out by name and said I did not know what on behind closed doors. Of course no one knows what goes on behind closed doors. What the fuck was that supposed to mean except that I was being unduly judgmental? The issue was not whether the guy was nice or not.
But how the fuck does that mean that my ex friend should be excused for her actions? The cheating on her husband pissed me off because she lied and used me for an excuse. Maybe that's okay in your world - but it does not work for me. Go fuck the masses if you must but I don't want anyone using me as an excuse to lie and cheat. I will not cover for someone like that.
Lots of women are married to assholes unfortunately. They should leave their asses and never look back. Staying, lying, cheating, and stealing are not viable solutions to being with an asshole.
And how is my "reading comprehension" supposed to tell which one of us you have picked to use as an example when you did not specify which one.
But your reading comprehension missed the whole fucking point. A woman that I trusted with my soul used and abused me. What she did to her DH is not the issue. It's what she did to ME.
Maybe you need to consider
Maybe you need to consider your criterion for friends. For myself, I learned that I allowed friendships of 25 years to limp along with daily phone calls and quarterly visits when the reality is that we had grown beyond and away from each other. Her stories, her morality didn't mesh with mine --- even though we'd been friends through so much.
What is that axiom: " by their actions shall they be known."
I learned that how/who I choose to be friends with reflects upon me. So our brilliantly vibrant claims of friend betrayal are really dialogues about ourselves and our sense of value as people.