Do you hang out with bad people?

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Mr isolated said:

Do any of you hang out with 'friends' who treat you badly?

And if you have the choice between having no friends, or being friends with someone who looks down on you and disrespects you, which would you choose?

Where exactly should we draw the line? I realise that no friendship is perfect, and friends will offend each other from time to time, but I feel that a certain acquantaince of mine is stepping way over the line in many of our interactions.


For example, he will ask me to go into the city with him to a bar - but literally 20 seconds after we get our drinks he will walk off and leave me by myself! And YES he knows I suffer from SA and claims to understand.
As soon as he sees his more important friends, he ditches me. But then every now and then he will wander over to me to try and tell me it's my turn to buy drinks (WTF?). I feel like saying "F*ck off, I'm not even the one you are drinking with!". He seems to think that he can get away with treating me how he likes, and that I will not stand up for myself.
He won't even introduce me to his other friends, and keeps me seperate from them in all circumstances, even at his house. I think if he's that embarassed to be seen around me, he should just leave me alone.

This is just one example of the sort of thing he does, I won't bore you with other stories. Let's just say that when I have contact with him, he offends me more often than not.

So, for a while now I have been ignoring most of his phonecalls and text messages. I have done it so many times that I thought he would have got the message by now. BUT he thinks I don't return his calls much just because of my anxiety lol!
Now I feel like I've got to do something to end this 'friendship' but don't know how to do it without appearing like an a**hole, and I'm concerned that it may affect my relationship with a mutual friend.

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Do you know why these people do this to us?
Because they are afraid and feel inferior themselves.
So they treat us bad because for a few time he will feel superior to some people. Bulliers are like that.
And I must assume I use to do this too.

When I was at school, kid my age use to mock me because I was soooo quiet! And was afraid of playing soccer with them and etc.
So, when I returned home, and my friends at the street were 5 years younger than me, I used to be the king, I used to mock them and make the same things people did to me with them.

Yes, I was a son of a b...

And I regrett for being like that until today.

This guys is for sure a person with problems, and he knows you have Soxial Anxiety, so he feels you are "lower" than him at the survival chain.

How to stop this?
Showing you are stonger than him. Put limits.
Think like a free person should think.
"I will do what I want and no one will make me do things that I don't want."

You are not in Iran or China man... You are free.
And don't tell everyting about yourself to everybody, this is bad...

Yes, the sooner you drop this guy the better. Hopefully he will take the hint it's over on his own, but it's possible you may have to tell him to **** off. If he persisted, I'd do so and hang up right after.

I haven't allowed anyone like that in my life since high school.

Good luck to you.

I think you just can't be subtle with guys.. they will not get it. The way to tell them off without being an a hole is to act assertively. Tell him about the things he's done and how it affected you and tell him how you want to be treated and don't go away without a genuine apology (not the kind that's full of excuses and especially, don't let him blame you or anything else for his actions - that is not an apology - that's called shirking responsibility. So if he goes "I'm sorry but.." or "I apolgize but.." just tell him to shut up because you don't care about the "but" part)

I know confronting him is is real hard to do and ultimately it's up to you to decide whether you're ready.. But know this: if you go through with it, you will be pleasantly surprised by his reaction and he will be VERY surprised and caught off-guard for sure. And afterward he apologizes you don't have to stay friends with him either. Also, it is never too late to confront him really.. there's no such thing as being too late.

I don't know if it's possible, but maybe you could talk to him about what he does when you're together. That might make things better. If you can talk to him about your anxiety, maybe you can talk to him about this, too. I think sometimes people don't realize how horrible they're being to others until it's pointed out to them.

When I was a kid (early teens), I had a friend like the one you described (I didn't realize that throughout most of our "friendship"). But now, I don't have any friends, & I would never be friends with someone unless they were truly my friend.

I suggest you to tell him to f*ck off... or at least let him know that you won't take any more crap, if he doesn't get it, then ditch him. If you are worried it might affect your relationship with any murual friend, you should talk to them maybe? and explain what happened, that you were tired of this person treating you badly.

As for your question, no, I wouldn't be with perople who treat me badly, I'd rather be alone.

Serafina said:

...This seems fair to me...

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Big smiley face from redski.

I had a friend just like this and I completely dropped all contact with him.
I do wish I had confronted him though, even if I would have made a fool
of myself because I was not ready it would have gotten this bitterness
I feel every time I see him or hear of him.

If it your choice and whatever you are ready for.
One thing I have learned is that people like this usually do not change.

I've always been that weird kid alone in a dark corner, but in my first year of high school I was "befriended" by some guy who ended up cuffing me to a dog's cage, hit me with a stick on fire and who tried to gouge one of my eyes out.

That sicko was a total leech and I couldn't get rid of him, and nobody gave a **** about me, so I just stop talking. In fact I didn't speak for the next 7 years afterward. Well, I don't really count saying yes, no, I don't know every once in a while as speaking.

I did got rid of him, and even though I still got bullied by a million others, I didn't care at the time, because I hid at the empty library all day long, waiting for the end of the day to lock myself in my room where I could forget about it by watching tv.

Also at school, when it was time for team work I always ended up either with a parasitic bum, doing all the work for him or alone. I once did a 4-people project all to myself, but it's not like I had anything else to do.

DarkSeeker said:

in my first year of high school I was "befriended" by some guy who ended up cuffing me to a dog's cage, hit me with a stick on fire and who tried to gouge one of my eyes out.

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I seriously hope that "person" is dead now =/

Mr isolated said:

Do any of you hang out with 'friends' who treat you badly?

And if you have the choice between having no friends, or being friends with someone who looks down on you and disrespects you, which would you choose?

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I did in high school. They would sometimes make fun of my stuttering or imply that I was stupid. I really don't think they meant any harm in it. I didn't see it then, but looking back I think they had/have lower self esteem than I had.

And that's a good question...I'm not sure.

DarkSeeker said:

...
Also at school, when it was time for team work I always ended up either with a parasitic bum, doing all the work for him or alone. I once did a 4-people project all to myself, but it's not like I had anything else to do.

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Somehow I always tend to end up with these kind of people and I am 29 and
a university student.
So many times I have asked myself if I have some radiance of "hey I am a nice guy come work with me and I will do all the work"

I truly and utterly hate it. I have failed credits because I had to put more
work into one class because nobody did anything.

I have been in "friendships" like this before, and I found it very difficult to get away. I had difficulty in quantifying how bad it was, I didn't like to create conflict, and I also had difficulty believing that I deserved better. At one time a friend whipped me with a bicycle chain and it hurt really bad. After the second whip I started protesting very loudly how bad it hurt and he told me with a smile on his face that it was a bicycle chain. I then quietly waited for him to whip me again, at which time I was going to unremorsefully proceed to seriously maim him. But he saw that it was not going to go well for him and he chickened out. He did things like this all the time as he knew that I would just take it. The bicycle chain was the only incident that I protested. It’s surprising how much that really hurts. Most of it didn't hurt too bad and I was pretty tough and shielded myself enough that it would not seriously harm me. It was easier to just take a bit of pain once in a while than to try to get out of the situation and cause a fuss. The sad part was I was friends with him for quite a while. I eventually got away when my family moved to another town. Then I ended up gravitating to the same type of treatment, but I was at least smart enough to avoid it this time round. Thus I ended up being friendless through my entire high school years. I think at the time a "good" friendship made me very anxious, and I didn't think I was worthy of having a good friend, so when you try to have a friend it ends up being “not good”. And the bad treatment seems to rob you of the self worth you need to be able to remove yourself. I can't imagine what it would be like to be in a sexual relationship where you are treated this way. That would have to be very hard to deal with.

To make a long story short, you should stay away from this "friend" in whatever way you can manage it and you have absolutely no need to feel bad about it. You have full freedom to judge and decide this for yourself, and no one has the right to limit you or judge you in any way. If you do not tolerate this kind of treatment the happiness vultures will go and feed elsewhere. I call them vultures as instead of creating their own happiness they fulfill their emptiness by scavenging happiness from others around them. But they can only take it if you let them.

goldenholds said:

...I call them vultures as instead of creating their own happiness they fulfill their emptiness by scavenging happiness from others around them. But they can only take it if you let them.

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Well said!

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And if you have the choice between having no friends, or being friends with someone who looks down on you and disrespects you, which would you choose?

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I made this decision like ten years ago when i was in high school, i choosed to not hang out with the ones who look down on me, but now after all this time i must admit it was a mistake, because now i don't have friends at all, it would been better to cope with this people rather than not facing them cause now i've realized that there are so many out there and i can't manage to face them

itay said:

I made this decision like ten years ago when i was in high school, i choosed to not hang out with the ones who look down on me, but now after all this time i must admit it was a mistake, because now i don't have friends at all, it would been better to cope with this people rather than not facing them cause now i've realized that there are so many out there and i can't manage to face them

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I think this would have just been another mistake. Hanging out with people who continuously puts you down just makes you feel like you don't deserve anything better. I'm still shocked today to see people getting insulted by insults, those are totally meaningless to me at this point and I most certainly would deserve it anyway.

At any rate, being by yourself all the time is not good either. The right, but very difficult, thing to do would have been to ditch these bad people and find good people to hang out with, but the tricky part is that hanging out with bad people for so long makes you feel unworthy of anything better and can also make you unconsciously act like them toward others which only strengthens the first belief.

I ignore people until they go away, good or bad.

I've had bad friends in the past. One of them was a victim of bullying and often exploited people who were nice to him to feel better about himself.

Yeah I saw a friend of mine last night for the first time in 4 months so we all met up to welcome him home from uni and he pretty much spent the entire night putting me down. I know he has really bad self esteem issues and I'm not the only one in the group he makes comments about but it's so difficult dealing with people like this when they're one of the central people in your circle of friends. It'd be too socially awkward to just cut him out from my life.