Ask Lemmy

no matter ho painful (and humbling), it's a great way to filter out friends from 'people you like spending time with'. I mean, if not a single one of them was willing to ask for your point of view on the situation, what does it say about them? Most certainly that none were a friend of yours. Friends do care about one another.

Many years ago, when I quit my 'dream' job (that came with good money and some prestige attached to it), a job I was even quite good at, my spouse and I witnessed almost all our 'dear friends' ghosting us. Suddenly, I was a nobody they had no use for. So be it. People come and go.

It helps to realize real friends are very rare: I know many people, quite a few of them I may even enjoy spending time with, but I have one friend. A single one, we've been friends for the last 40+ years and we've been through a lot of hard times together (despite each of us living in a different country, and not meeting that often), never failing the other. Someone like that is rare, very much unlike those 'people one may enjoy spending time with' that will often come and go, on a whim.

Getting rid of them is an opportunity to meet new people this time not making the same mistake: don't think all the people you enjoy are friends. Most, the very large majority, will not be. And that's fine.

Yeah, mate. When my ex left me, even my older brother asked me to not come to parties at his place because it made her uncomfortable.

She was there with my brothers' friend. She had been seeing him for a while and I was the last person to know. The whole time she had been telling anyone who found out about them that I was abusive and to keep it quiet for her protection (yet she was verbally and financially abusing me).

In the end I was shunned by almost everyone that I knew. I lost my home, my friends, most of my family and ended up in debt for years as a result.

Only my younger brother stood by me and stood up for me. Everyone else believed her. When I started dating my (now) wife, she was approached by several of my old "friends" and told that I was 'bad news' and to avoid me because I was abusive. My (now) wife told them she was "a grown woman and capable of making up her own mind, thank you very much!" We've been together 22 years, married for 17 years and have two amazing kids. In the end, though I suffered, I have come through way better off than I was then. The perspective that I have gained has made me much more aware of the value loyalty, friendship and love.

My ex married and had a kid with the brother's friend. They didn't last 5 years. She pulled the same shit with him, but nobody believed her this time. They had seen the same playbook when she cheated on me. He's still single, and she's with another ex-friend's brother, burning bridges as she goes...

Just take small steps, my friend. Start a journal. See a counselor. Get up every day and see what it brings. You never know what's around the corner. Eat right. Exercise. Just exist in the world without expectation and you'll find your place. May it be filled with joy.

Is the breakup and ending of friendships related to the rape accusations levied against you that you posted about 20 days ago?

https://lemmy.ca/comment/23387798

Burying the lede there a bit if that's the fuller context to your situation.

Edit: I'm not saying I think you're a rapist. I don't have enough information to formulate an opinion responsibly. I'm pointing out your former friends seem to have that perception, so that might contribute to you feeling like they're all staring a hole into the side of your head.

I'm going to apply a user tag and stop engaging now. Arguing with me is not where you need to spend your energy, nor I with you.

You're over thinking it. No need for the drama.

If you feel like hanging out with someone then do so, if not then dont.

Spend the time on hobbies, exercise, cultivating new relationships or reinvigorating old ones.

Did you know the friends first, or did your partner know them first? Or did you meet them at the same time?

Normally people back their friends up even when they are the bad guy but if you were equally as much a friend they should stay neutral.

I went through a rough breakup with a cokehead. She partied really hard, and i had no idea until we lived together. I broke up with her, and all of my friends chose her...because she was more fun than i was. The day after we broke up, i had 300 less friends on facebook as i had the day before.

Not a single person sent me a message. They just dumped me for the party.

In my experience, people often to make choices based on not cool things. Sometimes it depends on the personalities of people involved and he was in a bigger position of power. It can also depend on the information that they provided or have access to. For instance, if you broke up with someone who is vengeful or dishonest, they might spread a lot of lies about you. They can be very sneaky in plant the seeds of suspicion. Unfortunately, I’ve also learned that some people will just believe anything without actual evidence or even logic.

For example, one person I split up with ran a Web for him about 20 years ago. She immediately banned me from the forum, and then was saying a bunch of really exaggerated or just plain false things about me in a private area of the forum to a couple dozen people we had both known for years. I was blocked from there, so I didn’t even know what she was saying and I couldn’t defend myself, and these people believed all these crazy things about me.

More recently I’ve seen stuff like so and had a live stream, and we had a handful of friends and acquaintances he would go watch it. After we split up there are people doing pretty weird and annoying trolling on there. She just kept saying without any evidence that it was obviously me and I’m so crazy, so nuts, so lonely, so drunk and so on. And then if I go on and I’m like what what the hell? I’m not doing this, I just get blocked and ridiculed.

So in either situation, some people around still talked to me and stayed friends, they said things like “well, we didn’t even know of what she was saying was Tru”, but it definitely raised a lot of really bad distrust and suspicions that harmed friendships.

So in general, it seems to me like people go to one side or the other. It’s hard to be friends with people who totally hate each other. You have to make sure you don’t mention one to the other. And also, it leads to resentment. Like if there’s this person who totally screwed me over, it irritates me that someone would still be friends with them after seeing what an awful person they can be and I feel like if they’re still friends with them, they’re not standing up for me. I don’t like people trying to dictate who I’m friends with myself, but still I think OK, so my ex lied to me cheated on me stole from me, and is still trying to harm me, and they’re just like oh, that’s cool.

Microdose ketamine. You’ll be able to actually process and work through this shit in much less time than years of therapy. (Therapy is still great though. Do that too.) I can’t recommend it enough. Ruminating on this kind of thing is brutal; I speak from experience. Ketamine derails that spiral and lets you move on and feel good about yourself.

OP your post history is public. The reason your friends abandoned you is because you raped your ex gf. Any other questions?

And to think you want a safe space. What a fucking joke.