I said I was going to stop writing about this but I'm afraid it continues to consume my every day's thoughts and it is going to be a bit more time before I am going to be over it.
I mentioned before that an ex of mine that I lived with for a while moved to the same city as me and I tried to help her out instead of just ignoring her. I don't know if I was hoping that we would get back together or what my objective is. I try to say that I was just being a nice guy because the first couple of times we saw one another our interactions were completely platonic or even distant, they were not romantic in any way and honestly, I should have just bid her adieu at that point and had nothing else to do with her. This city is large enough that we would have been able to keep a safe distance from one another but I made a terrible mistake at this point instead: I felt bad that she had close to no friends so I invited her to come and do stuff with my friends. It wasn't even two weeks later before she had hooked up with one of them, a person who is now my ex-friend.
Now the difference between my situation and the situation described in the meme above is that I wasn't necessarily wanting to get back together with this girl. The way in which she left my life burned me badly, and I was in no hurry to touch that fire again. I just wanted to be nice to her and thought in my mind that "if it happens, it happens." This was a foolish thing for me to do and it has seriously negatively impacted my life because now she hangs out in my circles to the point where it makes me uneasy when she is around. She goes to my local pub every night and I approach the entrance with some level of apprehension.
But lets stick to the point of all of this. When she hooked up with my now ex-friend, who was probably one of my best friends who has now been exposed as the Judas that he is, things did not go well for either of them afterwards.
For one thing, their singular hook-up was a drunken one, and both of them have attempted to explain it away as being just that. I am one of those people that believes that being drunk can excuse you from some things in life, but betraying your friend in this way is not one of them. There is no excuse for doing that to a friend in existence and I was never going to forgive him for this no matter what he said or did. He had attempted to reach out to me on a number of occasions basically begging me for forgiveness, but it falls on deaf ears. In my mind and the mind of most people who understand the dynamics of friendships knows, this violation on his part is one of the WORST possible things you can do to someone you call a friend, second only to perhaps murdering them.
The fallout for him and the ex of mine has been rather extreme, and while I do feel a little bit bad for the ex because of my residual feelings for her that aren't just something that goes away, I don't feel the slightest amount of sympathy towards him.
While I did not tell very many people about this situation because I was humiliated by all of it, he told just about anyone with ears about it. He was not bragging as far as I can tell, but was instead trying to explain his side of the story, as if there was any possible excuse for what he did. Everyone that he spoke to about it called him a piece of shit, including some of his best friends that have known him for years. It seems as though everyone knows that this is a cardinal rule that you simply do not violate: You NEVER hook up with a ex of a friend under any circumstances. The only exception would be if you asked the friend permission beforehand and he definitely did not do that with me.
What has happened to him as a result is a near complete shunning by the rather small community that we have here and while I do not revel in anyone's misery, he completely deserves this. I'm not the most popular guy in the world, but I am regarded by just about everyone as someone that can be depended on and is nice to everyone. This other guy is seen as a bit of a loose cannon and was kind of a drunken troublemaker in the first place.
Every now and then I will encounter him when I am out walking around or getting food and he is always on his own. Nobody will talk to him or hang out with him anymore. A few times he has wandered into pubs that I frequent and the place has been pretty busy, and other than people who do not know him yet, no one will speak to him. The ones that do, do so in short and unfriendly bursts that let him know rather rapidly that he is not welcome there.
It is evident that he is attempting to do his penance for what he has done, but nobody is having it. While I am kind of happy that my group of friends are sticking by me in this, I want to make it very clear that I never asked anyone to do this for me. This makes me feel kind of good because it shows me that a vast majority of the people that I know have the same code of ethics as I do. It also shows that a vast majority of society are decent people who just want others to also do the "right" thing.
I know that for me, if a friend of mine's ex were to approach me just to talk, I would be quite hesitant to even allow that especially if they broke up on bad terms the way that me and my ex did. In those sorts of breakups, the friends unfortunately have to choose a side because attempting to stay friends with both of them just isn't going to work. If my friend's ex were to approach me and want to go out or hook up, the situation surrounding it wouldn't matter to me. It wouldn't matter how hot she was or how drunk we both were, there are some things in life that are simply taboo and there's ZERO chance that I would ever hook up with a friend's ex.
Now as far as how the ex is being treated by the community, I'm afraid it isn't much better for her than it is for the ex-friend of mine that hooked up with her. She is behaving a lot more civil at the bars now, but for the most part the men either know what she did to me and will have nothing to do with her, or they already had a go at her and she is already known for being a mean drunk and a troublemaker. She can be seen sitting on her own on a regular basis, with the people in the bar mostly ignoring her.
She also has a reputation for being "easy" now too and therefore the people that do approach her are aware of this. Ladies, these are not the quality type of men and I think you know this. It's kind of interesting to watch how things pan out for her from across the bar, not that I am spying, but the ONLY people that approach her are people that are trying to fuck her, and if they get the signal that she is not down with that they walk away and don't speak to her anymore. It's tragic, but she did this to herself.
Once she became aware of the fact that this was her reputation she has apparently been trying to change that and hasn't gone home with anyone since the time she went home with my now ex-friend... However, the community here is not a big one and her reputation is tarnished in a way that will take a lot of time to repair if it can be repaired at all. It's easier for her than the ex-friend because she is good-looking and female, but for the most part she is just sitting there on her own, alone and looking sad and dejected.
When I see her in this bar, because it is my local establishment that I have been going to for years, she will sometimes come and try to sit next to me. This makes me very uneasy but I do not get up and walk away. There really isn't a lot for us to talk about other than nostalgic moments from the past but I don't think bringing that up is really benefitting either one of us. The conversations don't last long and usually I will end up moving to another part of the bar to speak to other friends of mine. Although I have not instructed any of my friends to do this, almost none of them will speak to her.
She has told me on a number of occasions that "I don't think such and such person likes me" and I am honest with her and tell her that "you are right, they do not like you and never will because of what you have done."
I don't like to see her sad, but she has brought this on herself as did my now ex-friend. I guess you could say that I am happy that the community that found out about what happens unanimously agrees that the two of them were absolute scumbags to do that to me, and are standing by my side on this.
The problem is, none of that makes me feel any better and it is just going to take a lot of time for me to get past this. I have contemplated moving because of it. It's crazy how one person can be capable of making another person's life so miserable isn't it?
My apologies to anyone out there that thinks I am talking about this too much, but putting the words on the screen is a sort of therapy for me and it makes me feel a bit better to do it.