The dude is my wife’s gay best friend for life.
In our early days of me dating my now wife, dude was my wife’s roommate. The two of them moved to a larger apartment to better accommodate two people and pets. Guy almost immediately quit his job and stopped paying rent. He contributed nothing to the household (didn’t cook or clean) while also feeding the cat enough treats to make it obese (something that is having follow on consequences years later). He also didn’t eat home cooking, and racked up a massive debt by eating McDonalds almost daily.
His above actions left my now-wife with a drained bank account and in a horrible mental wellness condition. She needed to travel for work, and so as she left, he moved in with his “big farming daddy” on the other coast and I had hoped he was going to be out of our lives forever.
Apparently that relationship didn’t work for him. So he moved back to his parent’s place where he struggled to keep a job. After ~2 years of no job or education/training, he was eventually kicked out of his parent’s place.
And so right as my wife and I finally have a stable working situation with our careers that we could make work for the next 25-ish year (read as: to a slightly early retirement), ol’ boy shows up on our doorstep with <24 hours notice saying he needs a place to stay while he “attends college”…in one of the most expensive areas to live in the U.S…“just out of coincidence”
He is the same age as I am, and I’m having to take my ass who worked through a STEM college degree, a military enlistment, and YEARS of network building to build a stable life for me and my wife and put it on hold for him. We had hopes of an early retirement that are being postponed to ensure this leech has money for gas and food to eat in campus.
So yeah, I hate that bastard. But he’s my wife’s friend and is reasonably charismatic, so no one “gets what my beef with him is”.
Woah! This guy does suck. But, why won’t your wife very reasonably tell him “no”? He’d throw a fit, but he’s asking an awful lot and giving nothing. You two will have to work more to support him… and that’s not fair. Is he going to be there for the next four years?! Does he pay some rent, utilities, and cover food? Does he have household responsibilities?
For all that is good, you need to convince your wife that this is a terrible idea.
Friend, your wife is enabling his abuse of her good will. If he’s not going to contribute and help out the people helping him, he might just need to figure it out all on his own.
I’ve been in that situation with my own “friend”, and the only way to win is to not play their games. Playing the game just gives them the ability to manipulate your feelings and the sunk cost of time and money from the ‘friendship’ to continue the abuses.
Well I hope it feels better to have vented that. I try to remember people don’t have to do anything to be valued or appreciated. My number will come up someday and despite my best efforts they will find I haven’t done enough. Why kill myself over it, or isolate myself from my friends, if I had any. We all going to kick it one day and if I can just spend my time around people who can also appreciate that fact, I’m good.
My kids know that the only person against whom I hold a grudge is my middle school earth sciences teacher because he borrowed a book from me and never gave it back, and denied for years that he had it.
A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs - not a rare book but my dad had given it to me from his childhood book collection.
Edit: deleted, too risky for the kids to leave it out here
Being trapped by assholes with money because of your own good intentions is just the worst. You try to protect the people affected and can’t get away from others that revolt you to the core. It’s shit like this that lands good people in prison.
Stay strong and tell yourself, it’s just a few more years then I’ll never have to think about them again. In the meantime, protect yourself. He sounds like a lunatic that might go off the deep end when his power is done.
I won’t say actively hate cause that implies a call to action, but probably my remaining parent because she allowed a family friend to abuse her children for years and called me a selfish brat when being sexually abused by an ex brought me to make an attempt on my life. She may be my mother but she ain’t my mom.
I kinda don’t hate. Because I am a lazy person and that takes to much effort. When I was younger my dad had a razor sharp tongue and if we would get into an argument he would call me all things in the world to piss me off. Then like in a couple minutes he was back to normal and I was still pissed off. I was like wtf. Then I learned his trick if you can upset the other person first you win. Then when I got older I knew his strategy and it got to the point where I remained calm as a mother fucker because I did not want him to win. Then when he saw he could no longer piss me off he threatened to fight me. I would laugh and walk away. He never laid a hand on me in my life or his life. Though in hindsight sometimes i probably deserved to get my ass handed to me.
