Friend who handles everything in all the wrong ways...

[FlareHeart]

I am having troubles coping with someone who I used to consider a friend. He used to be a great guy and someone who was genuinely caring and considerate. Somewhere along the line, he felt that we had wronged him, but he never came forward to talk to us about it. He bottled it all up. Over the past few days he has posted some very hateful, sarcastic, and snarky remarks publicly (on facebook status messages). He then sent me an email containing all of it (since I am not on facebook) and thought I probably hadn't seen it. Thanks to my friends that are on facebook, I had already.

 

He is doing all of this to try to "catch my attention" as he put it in his email so that I could see how he feels and apologize to him for the things that I had done "wrong."

 

The problem is, all I see is a child throwing a fit in a public place to make the target give them what they want. He did not come to me once with these things privately and never once apologized to me for his poor behavior (we used to play DnD together, and he continually would ruin the fun) at my house when we did have him over.

 

He outright refuses to speak to me in person, and at this point, after all of his poor behavior, and now this tantrum on facebook, I don't want anything to do with him anymore (there is a lot more to this story, but it's WAY too long to post the whole thing, I am summarizing as best I can).

 

Does anyone have any advice on this? I don't want to speak to him at all since that would be biting his bait. I am trying to go NC and get rid of him from all contact methods (XBOX Live, PSN, MSN, etc). Has anyone else had someone that they thought was a friend do something like this?

 

I am just so stressed out and angry that I don't know what to do with myself. I just want him to leave me alone and never try to talk to me ever again as long as he lives. ](*,)

[sidehop]

Ignore him, let him cool his head for a bit and see what happens. He is acting childish like you said. The more you try to reason with him or try to contact him you'll only add more fuel to the fire.

[fLuiD]

I agree that he is acting childish. But what exactly is this 'wrong' he claims you did to him? Not that it justifies his behavior or anything, but if he feels betrayed or you have somehow broken his trust, I think he has a genuine right to be upset about it. Of course he is handling it in all the wrong ways, but that is a personality thing that he probably willl never change. Your best bet is to ignore him if you want him to stop. Don't ask him to stop contacting you because that won't work. He will eventually get bored of no response from his contact and sarcastic Facebook statuses.

[FlareHeart]

He feels that we (my husband and I) didn't invite him over often enough and didn't treat him like a friend.

 

1) We invited him over at least twice per week, and my husband offered him a beer every time that we had beer in the house.

2) We made an effort to show up at his birthday party even though we felt sick, we even brought him a present and wished him happy birthday like good friends do.

 

So I honestly don't know what more he wants.

[FlareHeart]

Now that I have removed all traces of him from my devices (XBOX, PS3, MSN, etc) it is getting easier to not think about him and ignore any communications he may initiate. I keep him in my phone only for screening purposes so that I can set a muted ring tone and text tone for him so I don't hear his messages/calls. My provider cannot block calls for me, so I have to do it this way.

 

But now that I am starting to cool off, things are getting better. His comments on facebook were exaggerated (and twisted into lies) almost to the point of slander/libel, so I was very upset...thankfully it's all calming down in my head and I'm not ready to kill something anymore. He was a cancer and the removal appears to be helping.

 

I have decided that he is not going to be a part of my life anymore, and I may be able to forgive him later, but he will never be considered a friend again. His actions over the past several months have shown that he will not change his behavior, so I have just written him out of the story of my life.

 

Here's to hoping that he understands my lack of communication as meaning "go away" and doesn't continue his tirade.