Or, alternatively, what did you do to another person which got you blacklisted from their life?

  • Canopyflyer@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    My (53m) idiot older brothers (61 and 59 respectively).

    The oldest decided to scam me and the middle brother out of our shares of the family farm. It’s not a huge amount of money, but the fact he did what he did is enough.

    My middle brother informed me, at Thanksgiving 2 years ago, that he was a member of the oath keepers and that essentially he was the new patriarch of the family. All of my political beliefs are bullshit and I had to subscribe to the right wingnut bullshit he adhered to. Military this and guns that. The stupid fuck was in the army for 6 years back in the 80’s.

    Haven’t spoken to either of those assholes in years, nor will I ever again.

  • kava@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I cut off a close friend of mine when I decided to get clean from heroin. I used to use drugs with him and he was my weed dealer. He never sold me heroin, but his friends did.

    I feel bad because he messaged me 5 or 6 years later saying he got clean too and said he was sorry for anything he did. He honestly didn’t do anything wrong, I just felt like I had to prioritize my sobriety.

    I still haven’t contacted him. He was my closest friend for years. I wonder how he’s doing.

    • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s never too late to reach out, until it is. I think he will understand, and even if he doesn’t, it’s worth a shot.

      • visak@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I second this. It’s your life and you don’t have to, but it would not be too late to reach out. If you want you can explain that you had to cut ties to get clean. Chances are they had to do something similar and will understand. And you don’t have to jump back into a friendship. Just wishing them well might still be good for both of you.

  • Jaarsh119@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Long time friend turned out to be a sexist pos that was groping my female friends, but would only act this way when I had my back turned. I’m very glad my friends trust me enough to actually tell me what was happening. Am perfectly fine cutting that behaviour out of my life and my social circle.

    • ikka@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      Am perfectly fine cutting that behaviour out of my life and my social circle.

      This sentence feels so performative and cringey, and yet it still must be said aloud because even my ex-friend to this day defends a similarly shitty guy with a well-documented pattern of abuse.

  • linuxduck@nerdly.dev
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    1 year ago

    Family started to make fun of my pronouns. I’m just tired of people choosing to be cruel for cruel sake. So I deleted Facebook, essentially cutting them out.

    My mom refused to use pronouns and I’d given her 6 years to learn and grow, cut her out.

    In the past, a coworker on purpose set up a birthday for one of my best friends and didn’t invite me. They made up super weird reasons why I wasn’t invited. I realized he was manipulative… I cut him out…

    Another co-worker was a friend but then one day he wanted to start touching me. I don’t like being touched. I kept asking him to stop, he did it more. Til one day he pushed me into a cold case (we worked at a grocery store). I cut him out.

    Regardless of who I cut out though, there is ALWAYS room to come back if they change and grow up.

    I’m still hoping my mom will before she passes… : /

  • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    there’s been a few. my (very much evil) step-grandmother was visiting my home with the rest of the family for a weekend barbeque. there were two things that happened that day. First, fairly early on, a new neighbor had brought back this ceramic baking dish I had brought them cookies and lemon bars over in. It was nice of them (they come back about half the time. they’re nice-ish, but not expensive baking dishes. our entire neighborhood bombards the new families with things. We even have it scheduled out for a couple months so they don’t get tossed.)

    in any case, the mother was bringing it back and happened to be muslim. My Step-grandmother yelled- intentionally loud enough to be heard by my new neighbor, “YOU’RE NOT GOING TO INVITE THAT DIRTY TOWEL HEAD IN, ARE YOU?” the neighbor bolted before I could apologize, (i’ve subsequently repaired that damage.) Then my grandfather bitched me out when I told her that it was my house, and I would invite any one in I wanted to invite, and if she has a problem, she can leave.

    then, I came back inside to her call my partner a Slut. Because she was a single mother. my partner heard. And my daughter. I WENT BALLISTIC. we were pretty close to going no-contact already. but that alone was enough.

    of course, the rest of the family thought I was the bad guy for a couple years- and I more or less put them all on no-contact because they kept trying to sneak them over for holidays. after being told explicitly not to do that and if they had an issue, they can host it and we won’t come if they’re there. so they had a big “intervention” over it and things got heated. “You shouldn’t talk to people like that. What you said hurt” was the general gist of it. and that I should forgive the evil step grandma.

    Ultimately, they decided to maybe leave it alone, because, why the hell are you talking to me. the conditions we set for them coming back have yet to be met. (Basically an apology. to me. and to my partner.) and I may have shamed my dad and brother because Evil Step Grandma shifted her vitriol to them. she was a truly vile person.

  • MüThyme@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    A girl I had been seeing for years, and thought I loved more than anything. After a lot of really intense drama that I honestly didn’t think I’d survive, and the following analysis with a psychologist, I realised she’d been emotional manipulating me for a very long time.

    When I finally cut her out, things just became so much better. I’ve learnt what a truely kind and loving person can be like, and what it’s like to not walk on eggshells or have constant anxiety. So many seemingly innocent comments that in hindsight were insanely toxic controlling statements. It’s been incredible to feel free.

    • Rob T Firefly@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You’re not alone in having this sort of story.

      Speaking as someone else who survived an emotionally abusive relationship years ago (with gaslighting so successful that I had to start secretly recording our conversations on my phone to make sure they really happened the way I remembered and not the different story she would tell me later), successfully cut my ex out of my life and worked on myself, and am now happily in a truly wonderful and healthy marriage to an amazing person, congratulations on getting out.

    • hazeebabee@slrpnk.net
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      1 year ago

      Im glad you recognized the manipulation & got her out of your life. Emotional manipulation can be so hard to spot.

  • Doll_Tow_Jet-ski@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Good friend for 5 years or so. He turned into an alt-right fanatic and kept trying to make me upset by spouting “ideas” he knew not only I didn’t agree with, by would actually emotionally upset me (e.g. All street animals should be sacrificed without mercy, all immigrants should be returned to their original county, etc). He pulled this shit at my birthday also, ruinning the night not only for me but everyone present. That was the last time I saw him.

    Another friend of over 10 years. He met a guy with a very strong personality and started copying everything the other guy did. Started dressing like him, having the same ideas, etc. I didn’t play along, so everything about my suddenly became the object of criticism as well. Never talked to him again.

    • jerkface@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Don’t spend too much time worrying about a few street animals, or there won’t be enough time to worry about the billions of farmed animals.

      • Doll_Tow_Jet-ski@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        It’s not an either-or. It’s both. He also made fun of my veganism and made a point of enjoying eating dead, tortured animals, while making fun of me for caring.

  • Anomander@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Whole lot of people here have cut off other people, but no one’s yet shared a story about what got them cut off. This one’s mine.

    I was unceremoniously removed from The List by a group of folks I was close with for years, after clashing with a couple of new additions to the group for a few months. We collectively ran a bit of a sketchy party scene and had been hosting stuff out of the weird end of town for a year or two when it all blew up - we weren’t quite on the scale of underground warehouse raves, but we were like the training-wheels version. We’d get a lead on a place that was slated to be vacant for a month or a commercial building gone dark, arrange a couple bands and an escape plan, and pull a couple hundred bucks each in entry charge and dodgy beer.

    They were great friends in addition to being sort-of in business together, and we had some absolutely great times.

    Except one couple who’d been with us from the start and were OG team members met a new crowd of people. They wanted to bring their friends, we said sure, and … shit started going downhill. The couple weren’t bad. Their friends weren’t bad. Their friends’ friends were awful. I didn’t like the new crowd’s vibe, I didn’t like who they were bringing in, what they were up to, and I didn’t get along with the initial connections in the slightest. I thought they were assholes, they thought I was an asshole, and in hindsight we were both correct.

    As much as each new member of our little scene was more money at the end of an event, I didn’t want them there. I spent a lot of time and everyone’s patience arguing why I felt these specific new people needed to be shown a door and firmly told to be on the other side of it, and I definitely went out of my way to cut them out of anything I had control over. My friends were frustrated, I was frustrated, and everyone was on edge - I was convinced these people were going absolutely ruin what we’d built, my friends were frustrated I wouldn’t drop the grudge and didn’t see the problem I was focused on.

    In my defense, the new people were bringing in their crowd, and their crowd was bad news. It was like they were the scene where all the people other parties didn’t want wound up congregating. There was the sketchy “why are you here?” old dudes, there were the people who did too much of many drugs even for our standards, there was the massive collection of edgy at-risk middleschoolers, there were the aggro bros and the dealers with Connections … to me, inviting those people in the door was a massive heat score and absolutely ruining the vibe for the kind of people we wanted to attract. That said, in my friends’ defense - we had agreed we’d make decisions as a team, and I was outvoted but unwilling to let it go; and we didn’t have a problem with drugs or kids or even weird old dudes in general - half of us started in that community young and most absolutely dabbled in chemicals. We all were those kids a few years prior. My concerns read as hypocritical or gatekeep-y, rather than genuine, because I’d never been concerned about that shit prior.

    The last straw? I paid a guy I knew from the other side of town to drive his dad’s charger slowly past our venue a couple times, for several different events, so that people thought we might be about to get raided. Because the people I didn’t care for were pretty dodgy, they fucked off at the faintest hint of trouble.

    The other people in our crew found out, and I was excised from that group.

    In hindsight, we were both right. I was petty and sabotaged the group to get my way - and those new people did absolutely ruin shit for that scene within a couple years. I’ve connected individually with a few members of that group over the many years since, but am very formally persona non grata at shit they do as a group - I don’t think any of the people I still talk to even admit to the rest that they see me sometimes.

    I don’t want this to read like I was booted for taking some moral highground. I absolutely wasn’t. I took the low road and went behind my friends’ backs to undermine what we were doing, all because I wanted a specific group of people gone from our scene. As much as an adult’s perspective would make it easy to spin this as if I had moral objections to bringing hard drugs and hard druggies and middleschoolers into the same place for underground parties - I wasn’t concerned about those things, morally. Having middleschoolers get wasted at parties wasn’t a problem to me, or even having creepy dudes trying to pick them up, or people shooting hard shit in the living room … I just didn’t like how there was more of “them” than “us” and our events were slowly becoming that scene, instead of just having a little bit of it off in one corner.

    • phillaholic@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Cutting ties seems appropriate in that situation. Turning him in for something like that puts a big burden on you. Maybe he comes after you for doing it? Maybe others get taken down with him and now they’re mad at you? It’s not your burden to stop imo, at least at that level.

  • SoleInvictus@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This is a long one. My shitty first roommate and now former friend. It was originally supposed to be three of us living together, with my then best friend, but she convinced me that best friend was too financially irresponsible. In retrospect, she just wanted the validation of me choosing her.

    Unbeknownst to me, she was extremely emotionally unstable and became dependent on me to keep her level. Lots of crying and big fights over nothing significant. I put my foot down after a couple of months and told her I was moving out if she didn’t get her shit together. The next day, she faked a suicide attempt with aspirin and vitamin C pills. I came home to a trail of them from the front door back to her bedroom. Not knowing at the time what she had taken, I called 911 and she was taken to the hospital. The hospital offered to set her up with psychiatric care but she declined.

    I insisted she needed to get help but she refused, so I started discretely looking for a new place to live. Word got back to her I was doing so, so cue fake suicide attempt number two. I came home to a similar trail of pills, just to find her bedroom empty this time. Turns out she slammed a bottle of NyQuil and threw down a bunch of vitamin C. She became incredibly ill and called an ambulance before I got there.

    I met her in the hospital while she was getting her stomach pumped. She was pretty messed up from the NyQuil and told me she tried to kill herself because I wasn’t supportive enough. The literal quote was “I wouldn’t have tried to do this if you were a better friend.” When the doctor came around and offered to set her up with the local psychiatric hospital, I convinced her to accept. The NyQuil probably helped ease that through.

    I moved out a few days later, while she was still institutionalized. I visited her in the hospital and gave her the news there, where she was being watched and presumably medicated. She lost her shit. After being released, she went on the war path, telling mutual friends I abandoned her after emotionally abusing her. We haven’t talked since.

  • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    In college, I had bought this used bicycle worth substantially more for 50 bucks. I was really happy with it and rode it every day… My roommate, who up until this incident was becoming a very good friend, told his friend visiting our dorm while I wasn’t in the room, that he could take my bike. That other guy never returned my bike, and my roommate kept insisting that it wasn’t a big deal since I got the bike for $50.

    I stopped talking to him after that for the rest of the semester unless it was to remind him to get my bike back or pay me back. Which, of course, never happened.

  • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    This guy told me wife he was suicidal and my wife said to call her if he ever felt like that. So he started calling her all the time over the most petty non emergencies. Also he would tell her how he thought they were soul mates. Bear in mind, this isn’t one of those “my now wife” stories, we were married. Not that it makes okay otherwise. The two of us were at his place for his birthday and I had gotten too drunk. I go to the bathroom thinking I’m going to throw up. Turns out he tried to make out with her while I was gone. That was basically the last straw. We didn’t immediately cut him out after that but that was when we seriously began considering it.

    It took so long because we were younger and more naive but also because he is super nice. He’s the only person I’ve dealt with that is so nice and polite but also so toxic. He was so pathetic. He would just use his sadness to try and get everyone to give him more attention.

    So we ghosted him. Just stopped asking for him to hang out and made excuses as to why we couldn’t. Then just stopped reaching out. I don’t feel bad about it either because he’s used the threat of suicide to keep people close and gain attention before.

  • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    This conservative and I kind of had a truce where one of us would explain in detail our perspective on a situation (this was in 2019) and the other would try to rebut or sometimes just learn about something we hadn’t heard before since we ran in different circles.

    This went on for months and it was a pretty interesting series of a couple dozen conversations at least. We shared contact information and even texted each other when we found relevant articles that may influence the other, being as objective as a political article could be.

    One time, he asked me to provide him with a list of everything Trump had done since he was sure that every single thing Trump was being blamed for was politically motivated and unsubstantial.

    So I went through one of those megalists online, and only cherry picked a few dozen of the things Trump himself had signed, like raising the limit of allowable mercury disposal in the. I got through about 4 legislative actions that Jeff checked on his phone, then for the first time, Jeff interrupted me and told me to stop talking and insisted that these were all politically motivated slights and not actually trump’s responsibility.

    I pointed out that Trump had signed every single item on this list and these were only his actions as president that directly harmed Americans, and Jeff said that schools were in danger because the DOE was distributing sexually explicit books in elementary schools.

    That threw me since obviously we weren’t talking about that at all (and it was easy to show Jeff that that was like three schools in the whole country that were having discussions about explicit sexual education books in elementary schools, rather than the nationwide curricular upheaval he thought it was).

    Jeff said he had to go, left, said it was great talking to me again, and then literally every subsequent time for the next 2 months I saw him at places we used to both frequent, would put his hands on his hips, look around as if there were more than three people at the track, saunter back to his truck and drive off. I even waved a couple of times and said “hey!” and he just pretended like he didn’t see me from maybe 20 feet away.

  • CorruptBuddha@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    My dad broke up with his girlfriend, and was telling me this plan about fucking with her disability benefits, because she had gone for plastic surgery or some shit. He found this out from stalking her call logs.

    I remember just pacing back and forward in my apartment trying to reason with him on the phone. “Dad, you can’t do this kind of stuff…”

    I talked him down, told him I loved him, and will always love him.

    I don’t know if it was the next day, but the next time we spoke on the phone he went right back into the same mindset. I couldn’t handle it. Sometime after the call I sent a pretty harsh message that I didn’t want to be involved with him. Haven’t spoken to him since.

  • Maharashtra@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I constantly block people on the Internet based on the content they deliver, how they answer, whether they are logical and polite, or leap straight to manipulations, lies and insults.

    Some think it’s a radical approach, but I don’t see it that way. For all its capabilities, the Internet isn’t real and neither are the relationships we have with people on numerous sites that form its social aspect. Thus, there’s really little logic in giving people second chances, wasting time, attention and effort for them, trying to get through their attitudes and suffering to reach “real” them.

    It’s like “you have the chance to be polite and reasonable - resign from this chance, and I’m gonna resign from you”.

        • jerkface@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          What do you do about those people who have spent a lifetime crafting how to best piss in someone’s face while still superficially appearing reasonable and polite? Myself, I tell them to go eat a fuck. They’re not as clever or nearly as decent as they work so hard to believe. It’s just a device that allows them to feel superior and discount others. That’s why it’s so loved by narcissists.

          • Maharashtra@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Family, friends are special people in our lives and so they get special treatment. They aren’t just any people you can throw away, sever ties with and block. If the relationship between you evolved into ping-pong of requests and demands, it’s unhealthy relationship and you need to put the effort and at least try to make it work. It works both way - the same is expected of them.

            You may fail at that, they may fail at that, you all mail fail, unfortunately, but this is in no way the reason to feel good about it, no “victory”, no “yay!” achievement.

            To see people announcing in public that they got rid of their closest family because they “didn’t respect my pronouns”, said in a scornful tone… No. This is wrong. It’s a clear indication of a flawed life.

            You may think otherwise, you may disagree - I have no problem with that, feel free to go about your way, while clicking “block user”. But don’t argue with me that I am wrong about my thinking, because there are no arguments that will change my opinion on this topic.

    • ikka@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      Some think it’s a radical approach, but I don’t see it that way. For all its capabilities, the Internet isn’t real and neither are the relationships we have with people on numerous sites that form its social aspect. Thus, there’s really little logic in giving people second chances, wasting time, attention and effort for them, trying to get through their attitudes and suffering to reach “real” them.

      You’re absolutely correct.

      I think that saying that someone “failed at life” is a bit stupid because, they would do exactly what you recommend in your own comment; they would give friends & family a second chance:

      Regardless of who I cut out though, there is ALWAYS room to come back if they change and grow up.

      I’m still hoping my mom will before she passes… : /

      Maybe you see things differently, but perhaps there is something more interesting and constructive you could say than: “You both failed at life.”

      Of course, arguing online is pretty fun… haha! :)

      • Maharashtra@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Maybe you see things differently, but perhaps there is something more interesting and constructive you could say than: “You both failed at life.”

        I certainly see things differently. I see a person who wastes time in the Internet instead of trying to fix what absolutely should be fixed - it’s not that we have all the time in the world to make things right. Look at the part you quoted - “before she passes”. The guy realizes that the mother may die, but still, talking crap on the Internet seems to him like the better choice to spend the precious time left on.

        For me, selecting Internet upvotes, virtual handshakes and high fives by random, anonymous nobodes, over family is certainly within the definition of “failed at life”, and I’d sooner bite my own tongue off rather than approach such a person with “interesting and constructive” words.

        Of course, arguing online is pretty fun…

        Definitely! 🧐