I won’t be able to respond to answers until tomorrow on this but I will come back.
So, I’m early 40’s and had the same group of like 10+ friends since my mid teens. I am unique in that I’m a nerd but also quite streetwise because I spent all my time with my chav mates. I only mention this for context that we may all have been fundamentally different people and it’s just due to a shit home life I ended up wanting to chill with friends more than my desire to just geek out and learn random stuff or pursue whatever special interest I have at the time.
Around 5 years ago I got diagnosed with ADHD and it really got my life on track after medication. At the same time I was lucky enough to land a job on the Genius Bar for Apple and they supported me through the diagnosis and then bettering my life.
I managed to upskill and I’m now a software developer. Now during this time I was still abusing a lot of drugs: cocaine socially, Xanax (from the darkweb) when depressed, and weed lots of fucking weed.
Gradually I started making better choices and not really touching cocaine aside from as a treat every so often. Weed I can smoke at weekend whilst I go rock climbing and not do it in the week and don’t need to do it at weekend either. Xanax I stopped cold turkey and almost died.
I then started to notice that most of my friends were fair weather friends and they didn’t treat our friendship with the same consideration I would when making decisions. So me and my longest friend decided to just cut out those people from our lives and it’s been just me and him chilling together a lot, but now he is really annoying and I’m noticing more and more how selfish and negative he is.
To give a couple of examples:
- If I tell someone I’m going to be there in 30 minutes. Then I’m going to be there around that time and if not I would keep them updating or rush to keep time. He last week text to say he was dropping his dad off and will be at mine. Now we have each other on FindMy so if one loses our phone we can still find it. So I know how long it takes to get to his dads and then to mine. I get offered lunch at home and decline cause I think he won’t be long. 2.5 hours later no word and on FindMy he is still at his dads. So I text to say I’m going out for cause I’m hungry and he is a long guy. No remorse from him at all. He will message sometimes to say come out (as he is coming to pick me up) but I check FindMy and he’s 10-15 mins away. So why inconvenience me and make me stand outside when he ain’t even close.
- again tonight I was coming back from work on the train and we were going to link up, but he had football training and said he would be back at 20:20. I get to town at 18:00 so it’s not worth getting home at 19:15 to go back out an hour later so I said no worries I’ll chill in town and get some food and be back in our town at 20:20. I get off the tram at 20:16 and text to say hey just getting off tram and he replies I’ve got 4 lads to take home then drop my kid at his mums (adult kid) and then he’ll be back. Which means about 21:00. So why tell me 20:20? I just said no worries I’m going home to bed.
- these things happen several times a week and it frustrates me that they don’t think of me with the same consideration as I do them.
- last example even though I have hundreds. He owes me £600 and on Monday asked for another £70 but this is until Wednesday. This morning I put a question mark next to the message that he asked for the money, as a prod to say did you forget. He responded with I said Wednesday it’s only Thursday stop sweating me 😂. Like WTF. Thursday is after Wednesday and all I did was ask.
So i guess my question is how do i deal with the fact I’ve wasted so much time on these people that clearly don’t care as much as i do and that the friendship is one sided.
I honestly feel like writing the £600 off as the price to just fuck him off and do my own thing. I don’t think I can find new friends as I’m older now but honestly I would spend more than £600 paying for things like food and days out on him before I actually get the money he owes me back and it hurts man. Like really bad and I don’t know what to do.
The other thing, and I’ll try keep this the final thing as I know I’m rambling now due to frustration and just being sad, is that although I can be depressed a lot and not want to be alive, not that I want to end it, but I’d rather not be here type thing. Is I keep that shit bottled up and try and be positive around other people and I genuinely always try not to dwell on negatives and use positive intent with people as negatively is crippling. This guy is the epitome of negativity, like just moans all the time. Moans about traffic whilst he is traffic, moans about cyclists even though that’s one less car on the road, moans about literally anything. He could find £20 on the floor and find a negative in it.
Fuck. I feel better just getting this off my chest to be honest but would appreciate any insights, advice, or similar stories that might help me not be impulsive.
Edit: He did just message to say sorry about that football was a piss take, which shows he did actually think about it when he got finished, but he still would have known he had to stop people off before we made our arrangements.
Yo, chill. Some people are really bad at time estimation. Some people forget about shit. Sometimes life just happens. He may not be certain why he’s doing the things he’s doing, or he may think it’s not a big deal. Communication is important, but often neglected when it comes to male platonic relationships. If you haven’t been communicating these things, do it. And be gentle. There’s the chance that he may honestly be aware but doesn’t know why these things are happening; he just hasn’t said anything because you haven’t.
Like this right here. No. You don’t say this unless you mean it. Don’t lie to your friends, don’t lie to yourself. If it bothers you, say something.
And the most important thing about all this is to try not to be confrontational. Again, he may be aware that he’s fucking up. It may be something he’s very insecure about.
Like, this suggests to me that he may be aware and that it’s possibly eating him. Or maybe he meant next Wednesday.
Also, take it from someone who used to do this, this is extremely toxic to yourself; and your friend’s constant negativity isn’t healthy either. You’re both on the extremes here, it might be worth trying to help him find the good things by talking to him and pointing out the silver linings in things while asking him to let you vent when life’s eating you up.
Thanks for the reply.
I absolutely get that some people are bad with time estimations, as it’s one of the hurdles for someone with ADHD and I have had to really work hard to improve on my time planning skills.
I think it’s more than life just happens though as it’s consistent. Like every time we are linking up. He sets expectations of me that I can’t set of him. He will be late 99% of the time and shrug it off likes it’s nothing, but if I leave my house a few mins later because I was speaking to family longer than expected then he would call me out for it. Like we live in Manchester and we could be in Liverpool where we all know it’s 50 mins to drive back home. His son could ring and he would say I’ll be back in 20 mins. Even if I said bro it’s an hour drive he would just say yeah it’s fine he’s slow anyway. Like that is not bad time keeping that is just thinking about him not wanting to wait when he gets back but his kid could be ready 40 mins early now.
Do you mean don’t say no worries if I don’t mean it? As I agree I shouldn’t have done that, but I also didn’t want to just moan as whenever I do he shrugs it off as not an issue.
I’ve given him the benefit of the doubt for 25 years and his behaviour isn’t changing and perhaps he has undiagnosed issues that he needs to address, but that is something he has to want to do and I would support him in that.
The money thing I don’t think was eating him, just that he was a day late and I don’t care about it being late. Shit I probably spend £200 a month just funding him cause he never has money. It was the putting blame on me for having the audacity to prod him.
I know I am an idiot for isolating when down because when I spiral I can spiral bad and it’s a self feeding cycle then that becomes hard to get out of and I do try these days to still socialise even if I don’t want to be here.
Finally, I have tried for so long to point out silver linings, but he just isn’t receptive to change or growth. Like the moaning about cyclists example, if I say that’s one less car on the road taking up space he’s like nah fuck em they’re assholes and they don’t pay road tax. Like WTF that doesn’t even make sense. Why hate something so much when it means nothing.
The same for complaining about traffic when we are part of the traffic. What makes our journey more important than anyone’s else’s journey?
If he complains about immigrants and I try and say hey these people are all coming here working jobs and paying taxes and spending that money I our community, maybe we should think why the media wants us hating poor people instead of the dude with billions of pounds.
Or how he hates on trans people, when I try and ask why he doesn’t know. He just reads the news and has hatred for people he has never met.
This is actually something all our other friends used to comment on that he is exhausting to be around as he literally never sees the good in anything.
I am aware I am emotional right now so I’m not making any decisions in this state and just wanted to vent a little and get some perspectives of others.
What’s amusing about the negativity is he works with another friend who we all lost contact with 10 years ago as he got married and stuff and he complains about that guys negativity and how it drains him, so perhaps he doesn’t realise he is almost as bad as that guy but it was amusing to hear him complain about the same things he does.
Yeah, I can see how that’d get to you. I’d highly recommend seeing if you can get him to sit down with you and have a chat about this stuff. Based on what you’ve said, however, he does seem like a toxic person. I dunno what else to say. I’ve been on both sides of this and it sucks both ways. It sucks when you have to break off a friendship because they’re toxic and won’t address it, and it sucks when someone breaks off from you because you’re the toxic one.
The only thing I can suggest is to spend some time talking, you know? Just… try to avoid sounding confrontational or angry. That’ll potentially cause the two of you to escalate. If it doesn’t work, then I’d consider leaving him but doing so with an olive branch: that if he works on himself then you’ll be happy to be friends again, but that you need space right now because he’s dragging you down. That said, it’d leave you friendless buuuuut… you could look around and see if there are any clubs, like gardening, automotive, books, etc that you might be interested in, even if it’s just a passing interest. That might allow you to make some new friends in the meantime.
Edit: also, give him some time after you chat. If this is truly habitual then it might take some time and multiple reminders for him to “get with the program”.