I’ve often been told I’m “too intense,” “too direct,” or that I “expect too much from people.” But if standing up for myself, holding people accountable, or refusing to play the game of false niceties means I have fewer friends, I’m perfectly fine with that.
Take one recent situation. I had a friend I genuinely tried with. I invited him to events I thought he’d enjoy, repeatedly. Every single time, he either “had no time” or gave some last-minute excuse. Yet, he somehow always had time to go drinking. And when that wasn’t enough, there’d suddenly be a story about his friend being “depressed”, conveniently, right before an event I’d invited him to.
Even while he was coming from Dunoon, I repeatedly offered to cover his expenses, since I was working at the time and wanted to make it easy for him to join. Yet, despite these offers, he still found reasons not to show up, prioritizing drinking and convenience over friendship. Sometimes, he had seemingly reasonable reasons, his friend getting a new house, a new job, or a promotion, and he wanted to celebrate with that friend. The story that his friend was “depressed” that evening came later, alongside claims that the friend might have had undiagnosed PTSD. Even then, going drinking would likely make the depression worse, and that friend had other people to rely on, whereas I didn’t. And this seemed to happen every single time I asked him to attend an event with me. The timing of these excuses wasn’t just suspicious… it became predictable.
Things escalated further when this friend crossed a serious boundary. My partner experienced the interaction as manipulative, and yet when I confronted him, he outright denied it and acted as though it was absurd that I would even think it. He never offered his side of the story, never explained what had actually happened from his perspective. That silence spoke volumes: it wasn’t just denial, it was a refusal to acknowledge my partner’s experience, to take responsibility, or to show basic honesty. Even if he imagined the situation differently, his fragile credibility and repeated disregard for boundaries confirmed exactly why I need to carefully choose who I allow into my life.
And just to be clear: this isn’t a case of real life versus video games, or any harmless difference in interests. This is about friends who lie through their teeth in predictable ways, repeatedly say they’ll make an effort only to fail to keep their word, and then wonder why I feel so betrayed and disappointed. Time and time again, they prove they’d rather prioritize drinking over spending time with people who don’t.
Even in games like Phantasy Star Online Episodes 1 & 2, the distrust became so pronounced that I had to set rules. Any other game I had joined with him, he would swipe rare items I had claimed and keep them to himself. This pattern of disregarding boundaries and exploiting trust wasn’t limited to real life, it carried over into shared activities as well.
When something serious happened, something I’d entrusted him with, like my ships on Discovery GC disappearing, he was the only other person with access, since mine was limited because I didn’t have a Windows PC at the time. Yet he denied deleting them and instead accused me of making false claims and being “toxic.” For the record:
- Asking who had access isn’t an accusation.
- Stating facts isn’t an attack.
- Holding someone accountable isn’t toxic behavior.
I’ve learned this is a pattern with a lot of people. They love the idea of friendship, as long as it’s convenient, costs them nothing, and never challenges them. The moment you ask for honesty, reliability, or a little effort, they vanish or flip the script.
I’ve been ghosted for being honest. I’ve been called “toxic” for standing up for myself. I’ve been labeled “difficult” because I won’t sugarcoat or tolerate being treated like an afterthought.
I’ve been let down by this friend more times than I can count. And yet, he expects me to apologize for all of it. If there is ever to be any chance of re-establishing a friendship, he must first offer a most sincere apology, to both myself and my partner, for his repeated lies, boundary-crossing, and manipulation.
If your idea of friendship requires me to accept blame for things I didn’t do, stay silent when wronged, or put up with lies, excuses, and boundary-crossing behavior, I’m better off without you.
I’d rather have a handful of real friends who show up than a crowd of people who only stick around when it suits them. With so-called friends like this, I have absolutely no need for friends, because I’m better off relying on myself than tolerating lies, excuses, and manipulation.
So if you’re wondering why I don’t have many friends, it’s because I don’t have time for fake ones.
And honestly? I’m good with that.
Postscript (June 2026): Dismantling the Fiction
It has recently come to my attention that the individual referenced in my original post from last year has decided to take to Facebook to air a fictional, highly distorted version of our history. When someone constructs an entire public narrative out of fabrications and inversions, the most thorough response is to shine a bright light on the facts.
Below is a direct, line-by-line teardown of his claims versus the reality of what actually occurred, fully cross-referenced against preserved chat logs.
Claim 1: The Revisionist History of My Life
His Version: “Years ago I had a friend who popped over to mine most weekends to play videogames. They wound up in a relationship with a person that essentially convinced them to give up both jobs, cut off contact with all their friends and family then move down to England with them”
- My Reality: This is a breathtakingly cruel attempt to build a fictional narrative that paints me as isolated, weak-willed, and controlled by my partner. The truth is the exact opposite. My partner did not “convince” me to move to England, give up my career, or change my life; my partner supported me through an incredibly difficult period.The reality is that my career was halted because I was facing a toxic manager who bore down on me maliciously while I was coming out as LGBT. Faced with the immediate prospect of being fired under those hostile conditions, I took voluntary severance instead. My partner didn’t convince me to move to England, it was my own family being absolute dicks that convinced me to leave. Moving away was a deliberate, necessary choice to escape that familial toxicity, protect my autonomy, and rebuild my life in a safe environment.
- By reducing a multi-year friendship down to nothing more than “playing video games,” and reframing my escape from genuine harassment as me being “manipulated,” he completely trivialises the trauma I was navigating. He is twisting my survival and my deliberate choices into a weapon to make my subsequent boundaries look irrational.
- Furthermore, his dismissive claim that our connection was just about video games reveals the ultimate truth of his character: if that is all it was to him, then I was never really a friend to begin with. It proves he never possessed the depth to understand what real friendship actually means, treating a decades-long relationship as nothing more than a convenient, superficial distraction.
Claim 2: The Inversion of the Truth
His Version: “I was accused by them of attempting to sexually assault their partner – I volunteered to go with them to the police to get the truth of the matter determined – they vanished to England without another word.”
- My Reality: This is a complete inversion of what actually happened. He claims he nobly “volunteered to go to the police,” but when I confronted him directly about crossing a serious boundary and attempting to push my partner for sex, he offered absolutely nothing of the sort. He did not ask for a formal investigation; he panicked, threw up a defensive “how dare you” wall of outright denial, and refused to offer any explanation or perspective. He didn’t face the music, he shut down and deflected because his fragile credibility couldn’t handle being held accountable for his manipulative behaviour.Furthermore, I explicitly told him at the time that if my partner tells me they were sexually assaulted or that their boundaries were violated by anyone, then of course I have to trust that is how they felt. My personal opinion of him or our historical friendship is entirely moot at that point. A real partner protects and trusts their significant other; they do not play detective or prioritize the fragile ego of a dishonest friend. His attempt to frame himself as a victim seeking justice completely ignores the absolute necessity of believing and protecting my partner.
Claim 3: The Faux-Magnanimity Text
His Version: “On Monday, they contacted me – saying little more than ‘Sorry for a few years ago. Do you fancy meeting up for a drink?’ – they’re teetotal. I gave them until yesterday to cover the whole situation.”
- My Reality: He is attempting to frame himself as the calm, rational arbiter granting me a “deadline” to explain myself. In truth, his casual attempt to sweep a massive boundary violation under the rug with a surface-level message completely minimises the gravity of what he did. Demanding an apology or a full explanation while feigning bewilderment is just another tactic to shift the burden of guilt onto me, completely ignoring the fact that his own unresolved actions are the reason the friendship ended in the first place.Furthermore, his sneering comment about me being teetotal shows just how small-minded his worldview is. Being teetotal does not mean I am incapable of going out for a drink; it simply means my drink will not be alcoholic. The fact that he cannot fathom socialising without alcohol speaks volumes about his own priorities, not my social habits. I even warned him years ago that if his entire life revolves around going to the pub to pick up a lassie, the only sort of person he will ever attract is another boozer. He chose to ignore that mirror, and he is still trapped in the exact same empty cycle today.
Claim 4: The Weaponisation of Grief and the Real Logistics
His Version: “Their response this morning was a little – shall we say – ‘unhinged’ – taking me attending a family funeral years ago rather than spending an afternoon playing videogames with them as a personal attack and sign I ‘can’t be trusted’.”
- My Reality: This is his most malicious piece of manipulation, deliberately reframing a basic request for human courtesy into a heartless attack on a grieving family. As documented in our preserved chat logs, he explicitly wrote that when it comes to a choice of an afternoon playing video games or dealing with real world events affecting the people he cares about, then video games are going to lose. This was a calculated gaslighting tactic. I repeatedly and explicitly told him that the family emergency itself was never the issue; I was entirely angry at his complete lack of basic decency and communication.
- By his own admission, he left his flat at around 7am that morning. Knowing full well that I would not even begin making my way over until around 10am, he had a massive three-hour window to simply drop a short message saying a family emergency had come up and telling me not to come over. Instead of taking thirty seconds to show basic courtesy while he was travelling, he chose to send absolutely nothing.
- As the logistics clearly demonstrate, a journey from Morar Road in Port Glasgow to Dunoon was an immense, multi-stage undertaking. It required me to take a short walk to a bus stop, take the local bus down to Port Glasgow station, catch a ScotRail train to Gourock, and finally take the boat across the water. This was a massive commitment of nearly two hours each way, completely using up my Saturday.
- To let a friend embark on a complex, four-hour return journey involving a bus, a train, and a boat when he had hours of advance warning to prevent it is incredibly disrespectful. Had he possessed the basic decency to send that text, I could have simply headed east into Glasgow for the day instead of wasting my entire Saturday travelling west for absolutely nothing.
- By focusing entirely on the reason he was away (the funeral) rather than the issue (failing to send a simple text to prevent a wasted journey), he builds a shield of false martyrdom to hide his own selfishness. As my response in our text messages explicitly noted, it was never about a funeral versus video games, it was about basic communication and respect for someone else’s time and energy.
- I recently described this exact setup to my mum, explaining that he is simply an alcoholic who enjoys the drink too much to make an effort or cross over to this side. Instead of showing real reliability, he ran away and fabricated a sob story about his friend being depressed to shield himself from his own thoughtless behaviour. Flipped on its head, his narrative tries to claim he cannot be trusted just because he was not around to play video games, completely ignoring the reality of the disrespect he showed for my time.
Claim 5: Characterising My Loyalty as a Flaw
His Version: “Seemingly helping a different friend through some really tough times in their life was another indication he couldn’t trust me.”
- My Reality: He twists my frustration with his predictable patterns into a claim that I am against him helping others. As detailed in the original post above, his excuses followed a highly predictable, shifting cycle, conveniently popping up right before events I had invited him to, whilst he always miraculously maintained the time and energy to go drinking.As preserved in our written exchange, I explicitly called out this pattern, noting that his drinking started off being about celebrating things like a new house or a new job, but later became a shifting narrative about someone being depressed every single time to suit his own convenience. Pointing out a pattern of flaky, unreliable behaviour and transparent excuses is not an attack on his charity; it is holding a dishonest person accountable to their word.
Claim 6: The Final Triumph of Projection
His Version: “I think I’ve definitely dodged a bullet there – but I’ve told them that all communications will be online or text only and will be logged and recorded… Suffice to say, I’ll not be in a rush to contact the person this entire post was about – but I will be civil to them.”
- My Reality: This is pure, unadulterated projection. The written record in our text history shows that he was the one who initially stated he reckoned it was best for both of us to keep our interactions to online or text messages. Yet, the moment I enforced that exact boundary and threw his own behaviour back in his face, he immediately ran to Facebook to claim it as his own protective measure to look like the vindicated party. He wraps himself in a cloak of internet civility to look like the bigger person, when in reality, he ran to his social media page to construct an entire echo chamber of fiction because he cannot handle a reality where he is held accountable.
Claim 7: A Warning on Public Defamation
- The Reality: Beyond the sheer frustration of his fabrications, it is worth reminding this individual that broadcasting completely manufactured narratives on a public platform carries real-world consequences. Under Scots law, publishing false statements that attack a person’s character, distort the truth of serious situations, and maliciously attempt to damage their reputation can amount to actionable defamation.
- Writing an honest blog post about personal boundaries and choosing friends wisely is entirely legal. Going on social media to invent a malicious, inverted timeline to publicly smear someone is a very different matter.
A Direct Note to the Individual
If you are reading this, and let’s be honest, we both know you will, let me make one final thing entirely clear to you. I have quietened my true thoughts for decades, but the reality is that I have considered you a rather weasely, spineless individual since the day I met you in college back in 1995.
Your pathetic, revisionist Facebook post hasn’t shocked me; it has simply proved my initial instincts completely right. Your absolute lack of respect, your total disregard for basic politeness, and your deep, ingrained untrustworthiness are just the final cherries on top of a completely hollow character. You didn’t dodge a bullet. The trash eventually just decided to take itself out.
The Bottom Line
True accountability means facing the facts of how you treat people, not inventing a victim narrative online when you are called out on your behaviour. This interaction has only reinforced every single point I made in my original post. People like this love the idea of friendship, as long as it costs them nothing and never challenges them. The moment you ask for honesty, reliability, or effort, they flip the script.
The deepest, most consistent flaw in his character is his absolute, systemic failure to take accountability for his own actions. When you are an absolute tool who is completely dependent on booze, your entire existence relies on passing the buck so your fragile ego never has to face the wreckage of your choices. He could never look in the mirror and admit that he let a decades-long friendship rot because he preferred the pub, and he certainly could never admit to the vile, predatory timing of trying to violate my partner’s boundaries at the exact same time he was moaning to me about wanting an “itch scratched”.
Instead of owning his toxicity, he becomes the professional victim in every story he tells. The boundary remains exactly where it was put in our text history. All future communications will remain text-only and logged. I have no time for fake friends, and I am entirely good with that.
#FriendshipBoundaries #ToxicFriendships #KnowYourWorth #AccountabilityMatters #FakeFriends #WhyImOkayAlone #StandingUpForYourself #LifeLessons #RealTalk #HonestFriendship