And it Ruined our Friendship
Five years ago, my really good friend, my flatmate and confidante, my shoulder to cry on, my drinking buddy, my shop-till-you-drop pal began dating a slightly unconventional guy. And I was jubilant. We all were. For it had taken her a good couple of years to ‘move on’ after her ex had randomly upped sticks for a new life in Australia. Finally, it seemed she had decided to start living again.
Not that living again centres around finding a brand new partner. What I mean is, she had stopped harbouring thoughts that her ex would sail back to the Northern Hemisphere, arms open wide, sorry for randomly leaving her for another country (as opposed to another woman).
And so it was.
My friend and her new man were inseparable. Eventually those first dates blossomed into small and intimate group dinners with friends (me and my gang), Sunday brunches in our favourite cafe, him reading out poetry declaring his undying love… You know the sort of thing. Often he was the only guy in our group since the rest of us small gaggle of girls, well, we honoured our time together without our other halves; didn’t feel the need for them to accompany us everywhere, knew it was good for us and our respective partners to be having separate get-togethers with our mates.
But not Gerri* . Much less Eric*.
Everywhere that Mary went her lamb did have to go
As per the nursery rhyme.
He followed her to school one day which was against the rules
I suppose that was clue number one that something wasn’t quite adding up.
I mean Gerri* and her ex seemed to have healthy boundaries, but now it was getting to the point that Eric* would turn up to escort her home from work every day (we worked in a call centre at the time) and this raised more than a few eyebrows. From the outside, this may appear romantic, of course. But to those of us who’d started to hone in on his overbearing body language, the hawk eye which was constantly needing to know her exact whereabouts at all times, the nervousness and deceit oozing out of his aura was palpable. The guy was up to tricks.
After countless reports that he’d been restricting her movements in a variety of ways, plus more than a coincidence of grapevine-like accounts of him spotted out and about with a medley of ‘lady friends’ in and around the seaside town where we lived, a cluster of us met up one lunchtime to discuss tactics.
Which for me was akin to lighting the touch paper green.
Yes, myself and another close friend morphed into ‘private detectives’. Slowly at first, of course. But it didn’t take long for us to amass our evidence. And then it came in thick and fast. Worryingly so.
Eric was big on the social media front you see, hiding behind a plethora of inventive names. Traditionalist Gerri on the other hand, was not. We loved her for that, of course. Gerri still used a cheque book, had nothing but disdain for the kindle and hadn’t as much as heard of YouTube. She was one of a kind. Refreshingly so.
Something tells me Eric sniffed her naivety out. The old-fashioned yin to his modern techie yang, she was perfect bait.
I don’t mean to sound cruel, like I say, we had mounting proof of his activities.
-Like the fact he had changed his name approximately 5 times in the past two decades.
-Like the fact he claimed to have worked every career under the sun when we got chatting en masse about anything. For his then 35 years, there just wouldn’t have been enough hours in the day to make that even a remote possibility.
-Like the fact he would suddenly go ‘off radar’, seemingly disappearing into the deep, dark velvety night because he had a sudden ‘work assignment’. Gerri never thought to question this. But my friend and I considered it, well, normal for a partner to disclose to their significant other what they were up to and where they were going. Unless it was MI5. But his transparency to us, in particular, would have made him a lousy spy. And the secrecy his other-wordly deeds were shrouded in made for a hypocritical set-up when one considered the tabs he needed to keep on Gerri!
-Like the fact he had a claim to fame story for just about every celebrity in the land. One of which bizarrely was an alleged half brotherhood to an A-list Hollywood star. But of course, she’d shunned him in their teenage years, their troubled parentage making for ‘too big of a skeleton in the closet style story for the world’s media to handle.’ Although, he did have a key to her LA beach house, as one does… Alrightee then. If you say so. Yet Gerri trusted this, and all of his similarly questionable stories, implicitly.
-Like the tweets to his followers under his various psuedonyms. One such being a picture of the derriere of his new friend for the afternoon in a Czech men’s club. Not to forget the snap he shared with the world on Instagram of the ‘hot legs’ of his fellow train passenger in Paris.
-Like the Facebook statuses announcing he was ‘checking in’ here or there, when in actual fact, but half an hour ago, we’d been sitting with him sipping builder’s tea and eating crumpets in Gerri’s living room!
There are so many snippets and tidbits, I really could write a book.
Suffice it to say, enough was enough.
It was time to take the moral high ground.
I simply had to confront my friend. I mean, isn’t that what any decent mate would do in these circumstances? How could I possibly not tell her what I knew. We had all the substantiation in the world… and more. I don’t think I could have lived with myself if I’d kept all of that a secret. Egged on by my friend, who naturally felt exactly the same, we decided that as a duo we’d probably come on way too strong. It was best if this was done in a paving-the-way kind of a conversation. We couldn’t just bombard her with this. It was a lot to take on board. Although, she was as intellectual as they came, she had a first class degree from Oxbridge (yep, sometimes even first class degree students find themselves working in a call centre – not that there is anything wrong with picking up phones for a living, don’t get me wrong – but I guess that really should have told me all I needed to know as to how things were going to unfold when I ‘confronted Gerri’, she obviously didn’t have a whole lot of self-belief).
I was so sure she’d thank me for her lucky escape.
So sure she’d be eternally grateful that I’d saved her from who knows what would come next, not to mention the humiliation and embarrassment, that the alternative didn’t as much as enter my head.
But she took a virtual knife to my stomach instead!
As kindly as I put it, as gently as I revealed each and every incident that we’d come to learn about that Autumn afternoon over a cuppa, I was thrown out of her apartment and onto my ear. It was beyond frustrating. He had won. The Conman was victorious. And I had, without a shadow of a doubt, lost a good friend.
This is the risk we take when we try to tell others how to select their partners.
And it was a very bitter pill to swallow. Whilst my close friend with whom I’d played detective, never received the sterile treatment I had, and continued to be anything but the scapegoat for Eric’s shenanigans, I was The Bitch From Hell. Your worst nightmare. Relationship Wrecker. Jealous Gooseberry trying to break up the ‘happiness’ of their perfect coupledom. And whilst I knew that none of that was true, that I was in my mind, 101% in the right, the caring and thoughtful friend. Apparently not to Gerri. In fact, never again to Gerri.
Our friendship was well and truly over.
And still is to this day, whilst the two of them remain very much together (although the regular reports I receive from my close former private detective friend suggest nothing much has changed as far as Eric’s behaviour is concerned).
Oh, he became a little more street-wise.
He put blocks on certain social media accounts. I discovered (yes, I know I shouldn’t have, but there’s a certain amount of satisfaction to be gained from proving to yourself… just in case you had totally lost the plot after all and gone off at some ridiculous tangents, that you were indeed right to be suspicious) that he has changed his online title again and again, ever two steps ahead when it comes to Twitter, MySpace, Facebook and Instagram. Even Pinterest too!
Because when it comes to the conmen and conwomen of this world…
they’re as well scripted and as manipulative as any abuser. In fact, many of their gas lighting traits share a common thread with the behaviour of domestic violence perpetrators (especially those who specialise in mental exploitation). And as a friend, this makes for a tough battle. One only to be taken on if you are prepared to lose. Because nine times out of ten, lose your friendship you WILL.
But then again, often you truly have nothing to lose.
Sadly, that person IS already lost. I used to think that if I could turn back time, I’d do it all differently, turn a blind eye, bury my head in the sand, smile sweetly at Eric and encourage and applaud his outlandish tales. Now I have written this I know I did the best thing possible. Would I have been true to me and my character to let him carry on un-challenged? No. As mush as I agree with the saying ‘don’t meddle in other people’s affairs’, five years ago, who knows, maybe I could have inspired Gerri to see the light? It was always worth a punt. Not only that, but our friendship had become something quite different to the one we first had anyway. The real Gerri didn’t exist anymore. In that sense, perhaps I had lost a great friendship, but I had also gained the freedom for new friendships to enter my life.
It’s amazing how much this goes on.
I hear stories all the time that ring similar bells – particularly amidst the baby boom generation. Conmen in that age bracket are rife!
My advice each and every time is only confront your friend IF you are prepared to relinquish what you have. Which really means what you had. A friend is rarely the same when in the grip of a con, after all. Your friend is sleepwalking through his or her life. He or she has to want better for themselves, to realise for themselves that what is going on is so far removed from a normal and loving relationship, that it’s time to get out. Often, unbelievably, it is those who are the most educated who fall prey to the sharks.
When all’s said and done, there’s a lot to be said for teaching emotional intelligence in the school curriculum and promoting the basics which constitute a healthy relationship.
*NB: The names in this article have been changed to protect the identity of those involved.
(Note from The Editor: Many thanks again to Freya for contributing to The Glass House. To read more from Freya, you can check out her author page here.)
