Hi guys. I’m 35. I will be honest, I’m a good looking and tall guy and was kind of popular growing up. I’m also kind of smart and went to a good college. I feel like I got a good hand in life genetically. I’m also a nice guy to people. My weakness is that I’ve had some demons and anxiety and have some financial stress and drink too much. But I have a good job. I went to high school in a small town and have an old friend/acquaintance who is kind of like an angry dweeby nerdy guy. He is very smart and makes a lot of money but he has a hard time getting women and might be a bit Aspergers or something. Don’t ask me why we stayed friends. I guess I see the good in him and appreciate that’s he’s intellectual. We had a business idea together and I did most the work. I ended up dropping out of the business idea because he was being too disrespectful. He told disrespectful stories about me to my gf and has said other disrespectful things. For years he’s been working on himself but he has this fantasy of being like Suge Knight and doing 48 laws of power stuff and getting rich. It’s part of his demons. I personally don’t think he’s ever going to make it big like he wants. He makes everyone feel disrespected, even when people are good to him. Recently he sent me a text screenshot of some loser burnout guy from 20 years ok mentioning me to him in a low key condescending way, asking how I’ve been but using an old disrespectful nickname this loser guy had for me back in the day. He knows I don’t want to associate with people from high school from 20 years ago but I feel he’s doing weird power dynamic manipulator stuff because he’s angry. It really got under my skin. He did get a gf recently and I hoped it would make him happier/cooler but he’s still thinking weird power stuff. He is a parent. I’m not. He’s implied that he wishes he could experience what I have socially. Do I confront him or let the friendship slowly fade off?
Confront him. I’m similar to you in a couple manners and my thinking is people who had I tougher in school with girls and friendship can develop pretty warped attitudes and strategies for getting what they want, where as guys who had some friends and were tall and handsome, developed niceties and behaviors that kind society generally engagement in. Without any opinions or more detail on this thinking I’ll just say be aware of what I said, pretty obvious you have more life under your belt, but I’ve seen a diversity of lives and I found this working theory is mostly left in tact. Now I say confront him about it for a multitude of reasons, primarily you’re a man and that how we resolve a conflict, secondly you have some business shit going on?? Seems like you actually can tolerate who he is and besides his usefulness to you in a professional sense might be a companion you talk to when you can, we all need guy friends, and thirdly this is an opportunity for everyone to strengthen weakness and check strengths. I’d go full blown on him, I wouldn’t even let him feel physically safe when you approach him about the disrespect, get close, be firm, and only ramp up you should leave more fired up than when you walked in regardless of the result, this will work on your conflict avoidance while testing how well you can feign civility. As for what I hope he learns is that your relationship is valuable to you, but he cannot disrespect you. Honestly if you really put him down he should be very response to suggestions for coming months, depending on your guys development maybe more will come from it…oh if you do the opposite of what I say I’ll think of you a a pussy unless you man up and tell him what you really think about his creat ass. That’ll also resolve this if what I’m saying is more involved than this guy is worth
