#elsnark

FailureMaster maintained a friendship with two abusers of mine that he knew. These were my ex and a mutual friend. FailureMaster was given hard evidence of the abuse on multiple occasions, especially since I wanted to be sure I wasn't going crazy about the mutual friend. He just kinda shrugged it off and also outright told me, "well, they don't treat me that way". Bro. While I know you don't necessarily need to cut contact with someone because of how they treat someone else, there should be some type of self-preservation that kicks in and goes, "wait, if they treat this other person like that then there's a chance they could turn on me", especially after the former mutual friend was kicked out of another group that FailureMaster was a part of. He didn't tell me the details about why, but I'm sure I can guess the motivation behind that person's poor behavior since the main people in that other group were women. Even after the guy got booted by me and a separate group, FailureMaster still maintained contact. Multiple women tell you someone's bad and you just shrug it off because, you're "not treated that way". Okay, buddy. I'm no expert, but turning a blind eye to obvious verbal/emotional abuse against women sure points to misogyny. That's clearly just conjecture, though. There's no hard evidence he's a misogynist, but it's just really sketchy when you decide to maintain contact with two people who abuse women, one potentially having multiple accounts. And also if someone abuses another person, I think it's common sense not to stay in contact with the abuser? While you could choose to not "take a side" (actual thing I recall him saying), it is taking a side. It's still a decision that shows support for the abuser.

FailureMaster would get really... weird if someone understood something he felt he should have better knowledge of. I remember very clearly when Divine Blade for Grand Master was introduced. He wrote it off as a shit tier skill pretty quickly. I was confused about why, explained how to get maximum damage, and he just went off the rails (not exactly in an angry way, but you could feel the frustration) because he'd been a GrM main for years and I only dabbled for fun and me time. This was very consistent behavior for him. If someone had a better understanding of one of his interests than he did, he'd get so mad but disguise it under a pity party, and we'd have to soothe him.

Through the years due to very consistent behavior from him, I felt like I was walking on eggshells. There were so many unspoken rules to follow: don't try to be more knowledgeable, don't go near topics he's sensitive about, don't refuse to talk about something he wants to discuss, don't do this, don't do that. So every time he asked to talk to me about something I didn't even want to discuss, especially if it was a personal issue I'd been having, I'd allow it since he would regularly throw himself a pity party if I didn't. Again, I've had shit friendships throughout my life, this was overall healthier in comparison in my mind. But like... this type of thing doesn't allow you to have hard boundaries. When I did try to establish boundaries, he'd get upset. The last time I got really angry about it and enforced my boundaries, I tried to talk it through once I had cooled down since I wanted to reach common ground. He ultimately ended the friendship because it was too hard and he had nothing else to say. I wish I still had the receipts, but that was more or less his reason from what I can recall.

Through my partner, I learned that FailureMaster discussed things with others that I had spoken about to him in confidence. I don't believe my partner is lying, especially as I remember seeing a text between two people from the friend group they were all a part of that confirmed it. You don't go behind someone's back and air out their dirty laundry. How many times has he betrayed my confidence over the years we were friends? I spoke to him about a lot of personal issues, how many people know all these details about me and my life? I know none of these people he's spoken to about me. It doesn't make it any better or worse, but it's just so fucked up.

Speaking of my partner, FailureMaster had some really weird jealousy and regret when we got together. He's the one who introduced us. Granted, it wasn't a matchmaking thing, we just ended up getting along fairly well. We didn't even make our relationship a focal point, at least I don't believe we did, I can't recall any instance where we clearly treated the other differently than regular friends during activities we'd all do together. I remember FailureMaster going on a whole rant about how he shouldn't have mixed two different friend groups. We had some of the same interests so, to me, it did end up simplifying things to do certain stuff together. He also said something about being afraid me or my partner would push him aside. Like... what? People in relationships can't have friends or something? We didn't just stop talking to him or lessen contact with him either and we still spoke with him separately. Like, sir, you're an adult, please don't act like a child being pushed aside when a single parent finds a new partner that they cater to. This was not that type of situation.

Whenever he could, he would find a way to play the victim. I think it was a bit of a mindset he was stuck in stemming from childhood and strengthened by his family constantly enabling his worst tendencies. But, again, he's an adult. It's his responsibility to deal with that and figure out how to have a healthier mindset. He told me he started going to counseling a few years before our friendship blew up, but doesn't really seem like it did much if he actually went.

While I still feel mad when I think of this as a lot of it is such a breach of trust, I do miss our friendship. We were friends for six years and I had hoped we could maintain that friendship for longer. Like I miss the person I thought he was and the friendship I thought we had. I miss the person who I could nerd out about things I really enjoyed with and they'd do the same. I miss the person I could share my fanfic ideas with. I miss the person I could just talk to about anything and everything. There's been so many things I've wanted to talk to him about over the years, but I can't and I shouldn't even if I had the opportunity.