A good place to start is with some definitions

Friendship (noun) a voluntary, close, and typically long-lasting relationship between people (friends) exclusive of sexual or family relations, based on mutual trust, respect, affection, and shared experiences.

Good Faith (noun) done in an honest, open, sincere and fair way and lawfulness of purpose : absence of deception, malicious act, or taking unfair advantage.

User (noun) a person who manipulates someone, often a pretending to be a friend, for personal gain or amusement.

Hostile (adjective) antagonistic, unfriendly, openly resisting.

Purpose

I value honesty and integrity. I believe in treating people with respect and dignity. I think people shouldn't lie, they shouldn't take advantage or others, especially those who think of them as friends.

I am writing this out of a strong sense of ethics and a belief that people should be held accountable for their actions. The only way I have to hold him accountable for his lies and how badly he treated me is to tell others.

It would be a good thing if reading this prevented someone else from getting used by him as I was. Or if reading this got him to change how he treats and thinks of others, although there is little reason to believe that will happen.

This is not about feelings. Of course being used by him hurt my feelings and I wish he felt differently, but he has a right to feel however he feels. I am not complaining about his feelings, I am complaining about his dishonesty, his using me and his hostile actions.

Synopsis

In the sections that follow each of these is explained, supported, and sometimes documented.

1. I thought we were friends.

2. We were not friends.

3. He was using me to get me to loan him money interest free.

4. When he didn't want to borrower any more money he stopped pretending to be a friend.

5. (A) He lied in order to delay paying me back and (B) withheld his address to make it hard for me to pursue legal action when he stopped paying me back.

6. He signed a contract to pay the loan back then defaulted on that contract.

7. He only paid back the loan after I spent months worrying he would not; and many hours working on contract and documenting everything to ensure he would.

I had been honest, kind and generous to him and in return I got lies, hostility and an attempt to get away without paying me all he owed me.

I thought we were friends

For over six years we would hang out nearly once a week, sometimes twice. When he was hit by a car I went to the hospital. During covid, he couldn't get a hair cut, so I learned to do a simple buzz cut and cut his hair. For years after I would often cut, bleach and dye his hair.

He doesn't drive, so I would often give him rides to jobs or to parties or pick him up at the airport when he returned from trips or whatever. When he was sick or felt too tired, I'd give rides to and from work.

I would take him to expensive and fancy restaurants for his birthday and other special occasions.

For some reason I thought all that meant we had a friendship, that we were even close friends. I enjoyed his company and I cared for and about him.

Sometimes we would go on trips together, Portland, Vancouver and the Grand Canyon.

He was not my friend

He invited me to go to Portugal and Spain with him. I went but when we got there he refused to have any pictures taken of us together and didn't want any pictures of his food to include my dishes or drinks. So, asked if his friends knew he was traveling with me?

Instead of saying, yes they did and that he told everyone the same thing (the truth), he gave some equivocation that some did know and some did not. I didn't know why he was hiding that fact that I was with him from some of his friends, I thought maybe he was ashamed of me. That felt bad.

He lied by implying that he had simply not told some friends I was traveling with him. He had explicitly told his BF (and maybe others) that I was not traveling with him. I didn't learn about that lie until months later, after his lie about moving.

Such lies are incompatible with friendship which is based on mutual trust, respect and affection. Therefore, at least from his point of view, we were not friends. I still thought we were friends and I trusted and respected him while he was lying to and disrespecting me.

He was using me

When he got his first apartment I got him a bed so he wouldn't have to sleep on the floor. His first apartment was a dark cave. It was making him depressed so he found another. I helped him clean, helped him move, helped him buy furniture and I put most of it together for him.

He didn't have enough money for both rent and deposit, so he asked me to write checks for both and he would pay my back the next month. Then he asked me to buy stuff on Amazon for him and he would pay me back.

This soon became a revolving account like a credit card. Listed here are the transactions from 2020 to when he lied to me about moving with all the identifying information removed.

This was not an insignificant benefit for him nor an insignificant sacrifice from me.

• It saved him about $9,000 (based on a simple interest at on cheap credit card charging only 15%).
• It cost me $15,000 to $20,000, Had I put that money toward my retirement instead of loaning it him I would be that much richer than I am today.

What did I get in return? Lies, disrespect and a hostile attempt not to pay me back. If I see him in public he is not going to think "there is that person who saved me thousands of dollars, I should say hi to him and thank him", he is going to turn and walk the other way as if I were the bad guy. Since this is not about feelings, I will leave up to you to imagine how that is going to make me feel.

If you have read this far, thank you for listening to my side of the story!

He stopped pretending to be my friend

Just before the last time I saw him, he asked me to bring a check for his rent. I brought the check, I knew it might be the last check, I didn't know it was our last meeting.

Months later I pointed out the fact that last time I saw was the last time he wanted money form me made it seem like he was using me. He implicitly admitted that was the case when he replied "I'm not a saint ..."

After he got that last check he engaged in the passive-aggressive technique of baiting me with lame excuses everytime I asked if he would like to meet for happy hour or dinner or anything at all. Those "little white lie” went on for week after week until they strained my credulity to the breaking point, so I asked if he was avoiding me. I got no answer.

After more attempts to communicate with him and find out what was going on he said he didn't have time for just "everyone" so he was cutting me out of his life.

When he wanted something from me, like money or a ride to work, he pretended like I was someone important to him, but now he was done using me, he stopped pretending and called me crazy for thinking the situation was otherwise.

Despite six years of friendship, a loan approaching twenty thousand dollars, all the kindness I had shown him and without sign of regret or remorse and without any attempt to save the supposed friendship he insisted I never contact him again and walk the other direction if I saw him in public. I will admit such a cold, absolute, and unexplained rejection hurt. What I had done wrong? He wouldn't say, other than too many invitations to happy hour and all the stress I was causing him. Stress caused by his lies that he was blaming on me. I am sure the stress of all his lies was a lot for him to handle.

He lied in order to delay paying me back

He still owed me money, so we developed a repayment plan. At $900 a payment it was going to take him years to pay me back. Then he immediately asked if he could skip 2 payments because he was moving.

I'm moving beginning of sept, and the cost of moving is worse than i expected, so i wonder if i could defer until sept 19 to pay again? …

I still thought we were friends so I agreed.

… Yes, you can defer until Sept. 19

I didn't hear anything from him so in Sept. I wrote:

I hope all is well and you had a smooth move. As one of your creditors, I should have more contact information than an email address. Please send me your current mailing address.

I waited three days but got no reply. So I tried again. This is the email he sent in return.

“You don't need to find another way to contact me. You have my phone, my email, my DOB, and my work address, so you can find me using those when I failed to pay you. Thank you.”

I knew he had planned on moving, but he didn't move, yet he let me going on believing he had moved and he didn't make those two payments.

He withheld his address to make it hard for me to pursue legal action when he stopped paying me back.

I had been nice to him, I cared about him, I was generous and I had been honest with him. He knew very well that when he failed to pay the only legal recourse I could take would start with a summons "at the house of his or her usual abode" (see RCW 4.28.080 (15)), the very thing he was refusing to give me.

The nearly $20,000 I had lent him was my need to have his address. He had no need to keep it from me, but I am sure there was a purpose to his keeping it from me.

Nothing I had done justified that sort of hostile reply. There are two reasons I can think of for it: (1) He wanted me to react angrily, so he could use that reaction against me (2) He was going to fail to pay me. I'll leave it to the reader to judge which is worse, doing it for financial gain or emotional manipulation?

“Thank you”? He wasn't being appreciative, it would have been more honest if he had signed it “F you”.

Of course now he will claim he always intended to pay me back, but his actions and his lack of honesty indicate otherwise.

He signed a contract

Up until kept blaming his actions on the situation he was in. Maybe it was his BF not wanting him to be friends with me or something else causing him to behave in such hostile and unexpected ways. But now I had to admin to myself, it wasn't the situation, it was him, his selfish, dishonest and uncaring nature.

I sought legal advice and learned that without a contract, there was little hope of success using the courts get him to pay me back. If I went to small claims court I would lose $8,000 when I filed the suit because the most you can sue for in small claims is $10,000. If I went to a higher court it would cost me thoughts in attorney fees that I could not recoup because I did't have a contract that would allow that. And in either case I would need his home address to start and he wasn't going to give me that.

It seemed being his friend was not only going to cost me the indignity of used by him, but potentially thousands of dollars as well.

I did my research, learned the laws regarding personal loans. I documented every transaction I could and gave up collecting on those I couldn't. Then I sent me a letter with all the details and asked him to choose a repayment plan from three I had created for him.

I had to threaten taking him to court, but eventually he chose a plan. I spent weeks writing up a contract because I couldn't afford an attorney to do it for me. I did have to hire an attorney to review and fix all my mistakes. Then he wanted some changes to it, so we went back and forth until we had a contract we would sign.

Writing a contract to get back money I had lent to him thinking he was a friend was a soul crushing experience. I was constantly reminded that I had cared for and about him and in return he was hostile and mean for reasons I still do not fully understand.

When the contract was ready for him to sign, he changed his mind and wanted a different plan. So I had to do it all over again and get someone else to look it over and make sure it was legally sound.

The one thing he sincerely apologized for was making me rewrite that contact.

The final fraud

Just before signing the contract he let me know he hadn't moved. But it was too late to change the contract and when he signed he committed fraud because he attested that everything he said or implied about the loan was true, including the implication that he moved when he delayed those two payments.

THANK YOU FOR READING THIS !!!!

Afterwords

He paid me everything I could document he owned me.

In the end my friendship with him cost me hundreds of dollars in legal fees, months of worry and my trust in people.

He is smart and he is slick. If you think he is your friend and telling you the truth then please keep in mind for 6 years I thought the same thing.

If you want documentation of what is above true, please write to me and I will provide all that I can. Ask him for my email address, he has my permission to provide to you.

Writing the fable began as a way to deal with the betrayal I felt after being treated so badly by someone I thought was a close and good friend, and who I had cared for and cared about. Then it became an interesting project independent of its origin. When I was much younger I read Ursual K. LeGuin's "The Language of the Night" and now I am rereading it. I never considered being a writer and still don't consider myself one (the grammar and spelling mistakes here prove am I not), but writing this short fable was fun (as long as I didn't think of the actual betrayal). Writing long form fiction doesn't appeal to me, but now I have a character I could follow on other very short mischievous and malodorous adventures.