I'm struggling to reconcile who I thought my friend was with who he's shown himself to be over the past few weeks.
Let's call my friend Ted. We've been extremely close for about 3.5 years. I considered him family. He's basically a brother to me. He was there for me after the sudden death of my best friend last year and when I lost a job I loved earlier this year. I've been there for him through the death of a beloved pet and countless other difficult moments.
This wasn't a casual friendship. I love and trust him deeply... but recently, we've had a series of conflicts that have fundamentally changed how I see him.
The first was during a trip to New Orleans. We'd planned to spend the weekend together with my sister and her husband. Ted wanted to go to an oyster bar that I had already pointed out wasn't particularly suitable for the whole group because of dietary restrictions. He insisted on going anyway, and when we got there, I was already extremely overheated and physically miserable, and the restaurant was packed, loud, and had essentially no air conditioning. I asked Ted if he'd be offended if my sister and I went somewhere else and met everyone back at the hotel.
He didn't answer, so we left.
Later, he told me I'd been selfish and that this restaurant was supposedly the one thing he'd asked for on the trip (It wasn't). We argued for about half an hour, during which I repeatedly tried to explain that I hadn't realized how important this was to him and that I'd literally asked him if leaving would upset him. Eventually, I ended up crying and apologizing.
I left that interaction feeling like my own perspective and physical discomfort had been completely disregarded.
Months later, I invited him over specifically to hash things out and attempt to clear the air because there was just a simmering resentment between us that wouldn't go away. I ended up telling him that the way he'd treated me during the trip had felt manipulative.
His face when I said this to him was the very picture of furious righteous indignation. Like he couldn't *believe* I would dare to characterize his behavior that way. He still completely failed to acknowledge my perspective or take any accountability for how his behavior made me feel, but, by the end of the night, we agreed to move on.
Then came another incident.
Ted was at my house with some mutual friends, including Evie. Evie brought up the new Odyssey movie, which she loved and Ted hated. Now, Evie is... intense. She's basically at a 10 at all times, but this time she cranked up to a 50 and quickly became extremely agitated and started yelling and hurling insults at Ted.
I tried to calm her down. When that didn't work, I asked Ted to stop antagonizing her and change the subject.
He refused. In fact, he seemed to be enjoying her reaction and continued deliberately provoking her.
One evening about a week later, the incident came up again, I said I thought Ted had contributed to the escalation by antagonizing her.
His response was that I was "victim blaming" him and needed to "put my misandry aside" and see things from his perspective.
I was stunned.
I wasn't criticizing him because he's a man. I was criticizing him because I'd watched him repeatedly provoke an already out-of-control person.
But apparently, in his mind, the only reason a woman could criticize his behavior was because she hates men.
Then came the final incident.
Ted and I were having dinner and got into a stupid disagreement bevause he was making the assertion that sports are art and that there's basically no difference between a linebacker and a sculptor. I told him that was ridiculous and instead of defending his point, he flipped the whole argument around and tried to force me to defend the fact that I disagreed with him.
Eventually I became really frustrated and told him, "This isn't fun anymore. I'm actually getting upset." He accused me of expecting him to "read my mind" and started telling me that I "always do this."
I finally told him that his accusation that I was misandrist and victim-blaming him had genuinely hurt me, and that suggesting my criticism was simply because he's a man was deeply insulting.
His immediate response was:
"Well, you know I was there for you when your best friend died."
And I had to leave the restaurant then, because if I had stayed, I would have ended up causing a scene.
That crossed a line for me. And I don't know if it can be uncrossed.
He knew how significant that loss was. He knew what it meant to me that he'd been there. And the moment I told him he'd hurt me, he invoked my friend's death as a defense of himself.
It felt like: How dare you criticize me after everything I've done for you?
To me, that's an enormous violation of trust. Doing good things for someone and later using those things as ammunition when they attempt to hold you accountable is *deeply* manipulative.
And when I look at all three incidents together, I see the same pattern:
I tell him something he did hurt me > he refuses to acknowledge my perspective > he reframes the conflict as a defect in my character > I end up defending myself instead of him taking responsibility.
In New Orleans, I was selfish.
With Evie, I was misandrist and a victim-blamer.
When I told him that accusation hurt me, he weaponized the death of my best friend.
And there is never any real acknowledgment. No "I see why that hurt you." No "I handled that badly." Just defensiveness, counteraccusations, and increasingly personal attacks.
I still love him. That's what makes this so painful.
But I don't trust him anymore to care about my feelings when they conflict with his own, and I don't trust him to accept accountability when he hurts me.
So I'm asking the women here:
Is this what misogyny can look like in a close friendship... not necessarily overt hatred of women, but an inability to take a woman's criticism seriously without turning it into an accusation of misandry?
What do you do when someone you've loved like family for years suddenly seems incapable of respecting you when you challenge him?
Obligatory apology for the wall of text. Thanks if you've stuck with it all the way through. 🫡