"Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer." Enemies can strengthen you, keeping you on your toes and fueling a competitive spirit, but at what point should a "frenemy" be cut loose?
If any of you remember one of my earlier threads, I had sent a bunch of sexually-inappropriate messages to some chicks on facebook. One of these chicks happened to have a boyfriend, and he got extremely p*ssed off at me. He told all his friends, talked sh*t about me, and word got out. I lost some reputation within his "social circle."
I apologized to him face to face sincerely and shook his hand, but as we all know people will forgive but never forget. After seeing this guy from time to time around town and hanging out with my cousins (he is the friend of some of my cousins' "crew"), he would always avoid me and never acknowledge me. I could tell the dude just hated my guts with a passion.
About a week ago, I ended up hanging out with my cousin and his crew. The guy was there, but I talked to him and we pretended to play it cool like we were buddies. But as the night went on, the dude would put me down in subtle ways. I know the dude has been talking sh*t behind my back for weeks now.
For example, he knows personally that I have addiction issues, and while we were all smoking weed, he started joking with his buddies about "addicts" and "addicts anonymous" groups while I was standing right there. Later on, I could tell he was talking down to me in a patronizing tone of voice, like some 5 year old kid.
Because I was high, I started talking about aliens and jokingly said that weed helps me communicate telepathically with aliens. He thought I was being serious, and asked me all these questions about aliens so all his friends could see how "crazy" or how much of a "loser" I was. He'd give me these other "tests" too to try to make me seem stupid.
He pulled the classic "Put your hands out. What number comes after ten? "*Eleven*". Now how many hands do you have?" Obviously he was tricking me into saying ten, but I said two anyway. So as a back-up, he was like "Oh. Yours are pretty small, eh?" Clever what he did there, especially while he was flirting with some chick at the same time. He was trying to size me up, no pun intended.
The tests continued, and later he asked me questions about if I was happy and told him that, in general, I wasn't, but when I smoke weed, I am. He later told me that I should "hang out" with his crew more often and smoke weed with them. A month or two before, at my cousin's birthday party when we had no beef, he had encouraged me to stay clean. Maybe I'm blowing things out of proportion, but it seems the dude wants to keep me in my place as much as possible.
Right now, all my social circle is based around my cousins and their crew, but with this dude being a focal point of the social circle, I know that hanging around with them would just feed into all the negative energy surrounding me. On the other hand, they are the only true "social circle" I have right now. Finding other friends at this point in my life, let alone building up or joining another social circle, would be extremely difficult for me, especially since I'm relatively new in town.
Should I roll with the punches, or cut off the entire social circle completely?
Thoughts?
If any of you remember one of my earlier threads, I had sent a bunch of sexually-inappropriate messages to some chicks on facebook. One of these chicks happened to have a boyfriend, and he got extremely p*ssed off at me. He told all his friends, talked sh*t about me, and word got out. I lost some reputation within his "social circle."
I apologized to him face to face sincerely and shook his hand, but as we all know people will forgive but never forget. After seeing this guy from time to time around town and hanging out with my cousins (he is the friend of some of my cousins' "crew"), he would always avoid me and never acknowledge me. I could tell the dude just hated my guts with a passion.
About a week ago, I ended up hanging out with my cousin and his crew. The guy was there, but I talked to him and we pretended to play it cool like we were buddies. But as the night went on, the dude would put me down in subtle ways. I know the dude has been talking sh*t behind my back for weeks now.
For example, he knows personally that I have addiction issues, and while we were all smoking weed, he started joking with his buddies about "addicts" and "addicts anonymous" groups while I was standing right there. Later on, I could tell he was talking down to me in a patronizing tone of voice, like some 5 year old kid.
Because I was high, I started talking about aliens and jokingly said that weed helps me communicate telepathically with aliens. He thought I was being serious, and asked me all these questions about aliens so all his friends could see how "crazy" or how much of a "loser" I was. He'd give me these other "tests" too to try to make me seem stupid.
He pulled the classic "Put your hands out. What number comes after ten? "*Eleven*". Now how many hands do you have?" Obviously he was tricking me into saying ten, but I said two anyway. So as a back-up, he was like "Oh. Yours are pretty small, eh?" Clever what he did there, especially while he was flirting with some chick at the same time. He was trying to size me up, no pun intended.
The tests continued, and later he asked me questions about if I was happy and told him that, in general, I wasn't, but when I smoke weed, I am. He later told me that I should "hang out" with his crew more often and smoke weed with them. A month or two before, at my cousin's birthday party when we had no beef, he had encouraged me to stay clean. Maybe I'm blowing things out of proportion, but it seems the dude wants to keep me in my place as much as possible.
Right now, all my social circle is based around my cousins and their crew, but with this dude being a focal point of the social circle, I know that hanging around with them would just feed into all the negative energy surrounding me. On the other hand, they are the only true "social circle" I have right now. Finding other friends at this point in my life, let alone building up or joining another social circle, would be extremely difficult for me, especially since I'm relatively new in town.
Should I roll with the punches, or cut off the entire social circle completely?
Thoughts?
you will soon forget why you cared so much about what this guys thinks of you..