Is length of relationship a sign of a good relationship?

BigAunty

Toucan_Pecan wrote: »

Yes, I see.... He comes across as fiercely independent actually but people who care for him do help him. He is an extremely quiet man who comes across as good listener, dignified and ethical, but I feel a bit dubious because I wonder if he is using us in small cumulative ways now!! As you mentioned with your friend, he would never ever pay for someone else's drink... but allow someone to pay for his.

With me and my ex-friend, it was her violent and abusive reaction to my quite diplomatic challenge about her poor finances and why she wasn't dealing with her debts that made the scales fall off my eyes after years of basically running round after her.

I would spend hours perfecting her extremely under-drafted CV and applications forms, sending her job advertisements, to find that she spent the day on Match.com yet at the time, I never saw anything wrong.

Once I started reviewing the amount of times she effortlessly received help and financial support with little reciprocity on her part to others, I felt really used but never during our friendship, just a little exasperated with her lack of decision-making and general apathy.

I came across a wiki page on 'Passive Aggression' that outlined very well her characteristic behaviour of shunning responsibility, blaming others and offloading her activities onto others which makes it clear that a PA person will explode if they are challenged - they don't like being exposed. I'm not suggesting your friend is a PA but you are free to do research in this area. At its root, I think PA people are not confident in their abilities and learn to exploit others.

She had great social skills, by the way, really funny,sweet and charming but seemed hopelessly disorganised and always came over as sad about something. Now I know that the pity generating provided her with great benefits and that her 'poor me' demeanor actually hid a heart of steel and absolute belief in being entitled to being treated like a queen.

Funnily enough, like your friend, despite a pretty luxurious standard of living (but much wider social circle and social life), she always came over as quite miserable. But then, seeing as it has resulted in a furnished, decorated and upgraded flat (pals fitted her a new kitchen and bathroom, paid for a decorator and paid for window repairs, for example) and going out every night despite low wages with periods of unemployment, she ought to be laughing all the way to the bank.

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Toucan_Pecan wrote: »

My gosh! that's harsh... I mean I do think it's mean to stay with a woman who wants your child and you live there indefinitely knowing that her biological clock is ticking, but I wonder why she is in no way motivated to leave...? It may be that she really loves him and is willing to forgo having children to stay with him (maybe it is more attractive to stay with someone who doesn't say they love you because if you do finally win him over.. wow it would feel like you're really valuable?). She does have an autoimmune disease and I mentioned that means she is long term medication. Maybe she is worried of starting all over again and running the risk of being rejected... but as I said he is so damn miserable with his constricted life!

Harsh but founded in truth. He's only got to get through a few more years and there won't be the children issue anymore. Especially if her current meds mean she can't safely conceive now.

You're all feeling sorry for him. Bet he does the same to her.

If he loved her, he'd let her go. But he doesn't. So he is using her, knowing what it's going to do to her.


I've met so many people who come across as helpless, but what all have in common is that they're actually very skilled manipulators and control people by being so apparently defenceless - female as well as male. Nice people are taken in by them, then chewed up and spat out at the end. But it's never the poor ickle 'victim's' fault.


Happened to my boyfriend with his ex, happened to me, can see it happening to a friend right now.

Toucan_Pecan

BigAunty wrote: »

With me and my ex-friend, it was her violent and abusive reaction to my quite diplomatic challenge about her poor finances and why she wasn't dealing with her debts that made the scales fall off my eyes after years of basically running round after her.

I would spend hours perfecting her extremely under-drafted CV and applications forms, sending her job advertisements, to find that she spent the day on Match.com yet at the time, I never saw anything wrong.

Once I started reviewing the amount of times she effortlessly received help and financial support with little reciprocity on her part to others, I felt really used but never during our friendship, just a little exasperated with her lack of decision-making and general apathy.

I came across a wiki page on 'Passive Aggression' that outlined very well her characteristic behaviour of shunning responsibility, blaming others and offloading her activities onto others which makes it clear that a PA person will explode if they are challenged - they don't like being exposed. I'm not suggesting your friend is a PA but you are free to do research in this area. At its root, I think PA people are not confident in their abilities and learn to exploit others.

She had great social skills, by the way, really funny,sweet and charming but seemed hopelessly disorganised and always came over as sad about something. Now I know that the pity generating provided her with great benefits and that her 'poor me' demeanor actually hid a heart of steel and absolute belief in being entitled to being treated like a queen.

Funnily enough, like your friend, despite a pretty luxurious standard of living (but much wider social circle and social life), she always came over as quite miserable. But then, seeing as it has resulted in a furnished, decorated and upgraded flat (pals fitted her a new kitchen and bathroom, paid for a decorator and paid for window repairs, for example) and going out every night despite low wages with periods of unemployment, she ought to be laughing all the way to the bank.

Thanks I am going to look up PA! I always felt terrible when he'd say 'no-one understands me', like he's really alone and that I'm useless at reading people.. but...!!!

Toucan_Pecan

Jojo_the_Tightfisted wrote: »

Harsh but founded in truth. He's only got to get through a few more years and there won't be the children issue anymore. Especially if her current meds mean she can't safely conceive now.

You're all feeling sorry for him. Bet he does the same to her.

If he loved her, he'd let her go. But he doesn't. So he is using her, knowing what it's going to do to her.


I've met so many people who come across as helpless, but what all have in common is that they're actually very skilled manipulators and control people by being so apparently defenceless - female as well as male. Nice people are taken in by them, then chewed up and spat out at the end. But it's never the poor ickle 'victim's' fault.


Happened to my boyfriend with his ex, happened to me, can see it happening to a friend right now.

I feel sick reading this...

BigAunty

Toucan_Pecan wrote: »

She does have an autoimmune disease and I mentioned that means she is long term medication. Maybe she is worried of starting all over again and running the risk of being rejected... but as I said he is so damn miserable with his constricted life!

The following is just a cynical and pessimistic interpretation, devils advocacy.

Perhaps it suits him better to shack up with someone who is vulnerable in some way? Because their expectations could be lower and they may worry that they will not be able to find someone who will also be a care-giver as well as a lover? So she accepts a lower quality relationship because of this risk?

What has given me food for thought on this issue of women having unsuitable partners is an ex-policeman's blog that covered the sad murder of a south london school girl by her !!!!!phile step-dad who lived in the council house of his partner who had kids from a previous marriage and who formerly lived with her mother.

This policeman (or perhaps a commentator on the thread, can't remember) noted that essentially homeless men deliberately target lone parents who would then produce step-children through serial monogamy, with many of the men having issues like addictions, !!!!!philia, poor mental health. He said they target the vulnerable, such as lone parents, in order to secure housing as the current social housing allocation system shuts out single men from being housed but prioritises those with dependents.

It is different in the OPs scenario - private housing, I assume, and no kids - but this blog did say that the UK essentially forces homeless men to target vulnerable women to get a roof over their heads.

The OPs friend seems obsessed with living there, even if the relationship ends, so it does seem somehow exploitative, letting him off the pressure of having to work and fund his own accommodation. And perhaps a well woman would be less likely to let off their male partner from seeking employment?

One of my friends is about to marry a woman with disabilities (whom I like very much, btw) but somehow I think there is something in him that made him prefer a meeker, vulnerable woman compared to his previous partner who was a high-flying management consultant where I felt her independence made him feel less of a man.

skattykatty

He IS really alone. They both are really. Maybe they are both 'using' each other. Don't we all use each other? It's just that when we're in a loving relationship it all kind of balances out and doesn't feel like an imposition.

You sound like a sensitive friend that's why you feel terrible every time he says noone understands me. It also suits a certain sense of being 'special' and, even superior, to believe that you are misunderstood. Does that resonate or seem bang out of order in this case?

Toucan_Pecan

skattykatty wrote: »

He IS really alone. They both are really. Maybe they are both 'using' each other. Don't we all use each other? It's just that when we're in a loving relationship it all kind of balances out and doesn't feel like an imposition.

You sound like a sensitive friend that's why you feel terrible every time he says noone understands me. It also suits a certain sense of being 'special' and, even superior, to believe that you are misunderstood. Does that resonate or seem bang out of order in this case?

I think he feels misunderstood because it is something he says he has felt from childhood (very anxious.... alcoholic father who wasn't around much, negligent mother who never said she loved him)... So I wonder if it's something that could have been helped quite early on and somehow it has escalated with his isolation - he hasn't really had a chance to test his theory, has he? It is so entrenched I feel like as a friend I want to help but I don't think I can't battle against the idea of being completely misunderstood by everyone if it means he doesn't take on board any suggestions from anyone.

BigAunty

Toucan_Pecan wrote: »

Thanks I am going to look up PA! I always felt terrible when he'd say 'no-one understands me', like he's really alone and that I'm useless at reading people.. but...!!!

I'm not sure the PA thing is necessarily going to be appropriate with your friend. PAs are tardy, disorganised people who blame others for all their issues. She had a veneer which masked a lot of her contempt for others.

Clearly, he is in a rut by anyone's standards - low income, not employed, in a stale relationship with each having different needs/wishes. He could truly be feeling low and blue, even though its not enough to inspire him to make changes to address it.

Even though my friend was essentially an exploitative user of people with superb social skills, I'm not sure she was deliberately scrounging, nor do I necessarily think her routine self-pitying behaviour was a conscious one.

For me, it was a pattern of behaviour that she was stuck in because at a sub-conscious level, she had learned that the more sob-stories that she came out with, the more people stepped up and done things for her, and this probably eroded confidence in being pro-active, or at the very least, meant she learned that by doing nothing, somebody else would do it for her. Yes, she was devious but how much of this was deliberate is debateable.

I had other Light Bulb Moments later on about other long-term friendships she seemed to inexplicably end and I think, again, once the friend had stopped performing errands and financing to her or had the temerity to call in a favour and not be happy about how she ruined or shunned it, she summarily dropped them. I don't get this sense from your outline of your friend unless you are now only remembering similar examples of behaviour, as a good PA person or general user will mask their exploitation.

System

I don't think the length of a relationship=a happy one

I was with my ex 3 1/2 years and should really have left after a year, but stupidly I loved him and he'd told me so many times nobody else would ever want me or put up with me that I think I stayed out of fear of not being able to cope on my own. I was miserable but couldn't see it at the time, he can't have been much happier seeing as he cheated on me. That said I know why I stayed with him (for mentioned reasons) but I have no idea why he stayed with me...

Toucan_Pecan

BigAunty wrote: »

The following is just a cynical and pessimistic interpretation, devils advocacy.

Perhaps it suits him better to shack up with someone who is vulnerable in some way? Because their expectations could be lower and they may worry that they will not be able to find someone who will also be a care-giver as well as a lover? So she accepts a lower quality relationship because of this risk?

What has given me food for thought on this issue of women having unsuitable partners is an ex-policeman's blog that covered the sad murder of a south london school girl by her !!!!!phile step-dad who lived in the council house of his partner who had kids from a previous marriage and who formerly lived with her mother.

This policeman (or perhaps a commentator on the thread, can't remember) noted that essentially homeless men deliberately target lone parents who would then produce step-children through serial monogamy, with many of the men having issues like addictions, !!!!!philia, poor mental health. He said they target the vulnerable, such as lone parents, in order to secure housing as the current social housing allocation system shuts out single men from being housed but prioritises those with dependents.

It is different in the OPs scenario - private housing, I assume, and no kids - but this blog did say that the UK essentially forces homeless men to target vulnerable women to get a roof over their heads.

The OPs friend seems obsessed with living there, even if the relationship ends, so it does seem somehow exploitative, letting him off the pressure of having to work and fund his own accommodation. And perhaps a well woman would be less likely to let off their male partner from seeking employment?

One of my friends is about to marry a woman with disabilities (whom I like very much, btw) but somehow I think there is something in him that made him prefer a meeker, vulnerable woman compared to his previous partner who was a high-flying management consultant where I felt her independence made him feel less of a man.

I found the blog! http://thethinkingpoliceman.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/tia-sharp-victim-of-underclass.html?showComment=1344694473740#c3420257413131802145

Well of course my friend's gf doesn't have children and my friend is very polite and quiet and hasn't been in trouble with the law... but his phrase of 'resting place' to describe her is quite telling...