Conflicted about the behavior of an ex-friend

Let me preface by saying that I removed contact with this person two months ago, since then I've been a bit confused what to make of him and his behaviour. I feel like I'm in a personal conflict. I feel like I have two minds about this person: I have a memory of them, a friend, that I think of as just having a certain sense of humour and then there's something more sinister or distressing: an angry, abusive human being, someone I don't know, and don't understand. I think back feel like I was abused by him, but at the same time, feel like I'm trying to convince myself he wasn't abusive.

In my early childhood I went through a lot of bullying from older students. I was very sensitive, lacked traditional male interests like sports and cars, and would cry a lot when upset. Towards the end of my time in primary school, most of my friends left me. So when I entered high school I was lonely, insecure, socially anxious and suffered from low self-esteem. I was desperate for a friend – any friend – and though I got one, he seemed...sour.

He was incredibly angry and dismissive, he spoke with vitriol about school and its “brainwashing”, he called other people “sheep” and sneered that they couldn't think for themselves. He grew up fairly poor, and spoke with a lot of anger towards his mother (who he often portrayed as being very crazy in his stories), his brother who he seemed to despise greatly, calling him a piece of $#%^, and claimed that he had no father – that he had left - though a few years later he “appeared” and was treated as embarrassing, lazy and jobless (I believe he acted like he had never said that he didn't have a father). He was very dramatic, refused to eat during school – and when he did eat, it was only ever unhealthy foods like crisps, chocolate bars and juice -, blamed another boy for befriending him in his past thus “losing him his better friends”. One time he asked a friend to buy him food, and when he did, he bought him fruit, at which he got very angry and stormed off.

As for me, he would call me retarded and often tell me to “shut the ###$ up”, he made disparaging statements towards me like, “there's no point asking him something, he doesn't know anything you don't!”, he would “block me” when we disagreed during online conversations or when I did something he disliked. He called me pathetic, and acted like I was incredibly stupid at times. He would constantly attack my behaviour – there were times, for example, where I would begin a conversation online with “hey” and he snarled “THINK! Would you say that ######6 $#%^ in real life? It's ######6 pointless!” or when I was listening to a band he dislike he exploded with how awful they are, that I must be a ######6 retard to like them, and then he “blocked me” for a few hours. When I stood up to him and told him that I like the band because I like them, or that I can't change his mind for him, or that it's not my fault he didn't do his homework, he would, again, insult me, deride me, or block me. I don't think those anger issues he had at 13 ever went away. In fact, there were conversations that seemed like full-blown rage. An example I have is this:

"get ######6 work boy
you need to ######6 experience some stress
you need to ###$ up
and waste peoples time
and then think about it all day "

I believe this behaviour helped inflame my insecurities and is partly why I became so passive and sycophantic. I began to seek his approval; never truly being myself around him. I would not speak my mind, give honest opinions, or tell him he was wrong. I mimicked his mannerisms: the way he spoke, laughed, his humour, his demeanor, his comments. He would encourage me to do things and I would follow through: once he tried to coerce me to “jump” down a flight of stairs. Other friends noted my behavioural changes when away and around him, and when they asked why I just tried to avoid the subject. He liked to be the centre of attention and acted very loud, hyper and extroverted. He was always running around, making fun of people, tormenting them with humour, shouting and jumping about. Sometimes, it seemed, when people were not paying attention to him, he would vanish. He made a huge deal out of fairly minor problems in his life, he spoke very loudly of his problems, having very little time for others' issues. Once he spent a whole day complaining about having to buy his mother a gift. One of his girlfriend's apparently was convinced by her friends to dump him (he never involved her in our group, he kept her purely separate and was very annoyed and angry when any of us tried to communicate with her. He insisted we were embarrassing.)

As he grew older, he became much more openly superficial: he judged people solely on looks, describing them as “ugly”, “hideous”, “disgusting”, “unwashed” “goblins”. He hated our social circle, who were not very popular, and deemed them “embarrassing” often going on long rants about how odd and awkward and weird they were. I'm ashamed to say I never really stood up for them, even though I did like them, and was probably closer to them and more honest with them I ever was with him. I was afraid of him, actually, and what he might do if we were to come into conflict, so I guess that's another reason why I made myself very inoffensive and passive. When people did argue with him or called him out on his bullying, he'd become dismissive, accusing them of trying to “guilt-trip” him; he said it's not his fault they can't take a joke and should, “get thicker skin”.

He would tell me to ﾓfix my appearanceﾔ, often making comments on my hair, eyebrows and so on. Later, when I did change my hairstyle, after we had left school, he said: ﾓWhy couldn't you do this when I had to look at you every day?ﾔ. When I updated a status saying that I was feeling sad he said: ﾓOh, good, you're still being needyﾔ and when I told him that my dog had died that day he responded, ﾓI'm sorry, but this won't helpﾔ and began to talk about his current troubles. Other times he'd say things like, "I remember when you used to be funny", "You were more interesting back then" etc. It felt like was trying to say that I didn't live up to his "standards".

I guess I just told myself that a lot of what he said was “just humour”, that I might be over-sensitive or that I was taking it too personally. Yet there were times when I thought about things he had said and just felt a surge of anger and frustration and confusion. I get the impression he would subtly imply flaws or remind me of mistakes I had made. I had once been very codependent and clingy romantically, and so he would refer to me with terms like, “needy”, “desperate boy”, “rapist”. I always felt annoyed, upset and downright angry at him. I tried to play it off, make it seem like he wasn't getting to me.


Occasionally he would ask about me, after we left school, about how my course was going, how I had grown as a person and so on and I just felt nervous about this. I didn't really want to answer, I felt like there was judgement behind those words. I never really expressed myself to him: I didn't tell him about family troubles, girls I liked, emotional problems. I didn't trust him with sensitive information like that; I expected him to mock me or embarrass me about it. When leaving high school I began to notice how little I liked him, and thought to cut him off a few times, but didn't because I felt I was overacting, being 'too sensitive'. Interestingly, a few months after school ended, and we were having much less contact, I began to realise how much I disliked him, how he had encouraged some of my worst behaviour as a teenager, how little I liked and trusted him. One day he sent a message basically saying he couldn't wait to move on and find “better people”, that I was a “decent person to bitch to” but implied I was pretty worthless else wise.

He talked quite a lot about his memory and how 'bad' it was. He would often say he was struggling to remember things, that it was like he was losing his memory. He would bring this up at random points, often smiling about it, as if it were humour. Once I recall we discussed a band at lunch one day, then the very next day, when I brought them up again, he acted like he had never heard them. Another example was when I brought up a story he had told me which he claimed “never happened”. Other times he would claim I did something, or said something, that I really do not recall saying. At all. He said he was 'shocked' that I could say something so mean about a 'nice person'.

Once, after having a really bad night out, I felt a bit of third wheel, and so I contacted him and began ranting about it to let it all out. And he was very much laughing at my frustration and anger, making a few disparaging statements such as calling me a “pussy”, and then, randomly, brought up a relationship he had a year ago, saying why I didn't help him out there. In anger, I basically told him that was his problem, to which he said, “See? You sound like a real jerk”. This wasn't uncommon, he would often laugh at people in emotional distress when they expressed feeling “defeated” and “broken-hearted” and “never be happy again” when a relationship ended.

I guess I just don't understand him, I find it hard to believe someone would live with us vitriol and say these things to others. I find it hard to believe someone would enjoy constantly hurting feelings and putting people down, and that may be why I'm struggling to accept that what he threw at me was abuse.

long post lol


um...you did the right thing by no contact and he seems like he has many issues of his own to deal with
many of them were projected on you and all the other people. and yes he was verbally abusive and a real friend would not act this way
he has anger issues and keep away from this kind of people.