A good place to start is with some definitions
or jump to the TLDR.
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.
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. I was wrong.
Purpose
In 2018, when we first met, we discussed "burning bridges". He said he used to do that when he was a teenage, but now he was an adult he didn't do that anymore.
I am writing this because I was insulted by disrespect and dishonesty I got in return for granting a favor to someone I had always treated with respect and had been honest with.
I believe people should be held accountable for their actions. The actions I want to hold him accountable for are described in this missive. The only way I have of holding him accountable is to let others know how badly he acted.
I am not complaining about how he feels.
Synopsis (TLDR)
In the sections that follow each of these is explained, supported, and sometimes documented.
1. I thought we were friends, but we were not friends. I thought we were close friends, so I lent him money. He knew we were not friends, but he wanted the interest free loan. he was using me.
2. When he didn't want to borrower any more money he stopped pretending to be a friend.
3. He owned me nearly $20,000. He asked to delay payments because he was moving. I said yes, he then refused to give me his new address and threatened not to pay me back.
4. I took legal action got him to sign a contact. When in the contract he attested that everything he had told me related to the loan and his repayments was true even though he had misled and lied. That is he committed fraud. Read the contract
5. 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 thought we were friends, so he tried to rob 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 acted like he didn't want me 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, I asked if his friends knew I was traveling with him?
Instead of saying, yes they did and that he told everyone the same thing (the truth), he equivocated, had told some but not others. I didn't know why he was hiding that fact that I was with him from his other friends. Why would he keep that from anyone?
He lied by implying that he had simply not told some friends I was traveling with him, when in fact, he had explicitly lied to his BF (and maybe others) telling them I was not traveling with him. I didn't learn about that lie until months later, after his lie about moving. I don't know why he told that lie, I could speculate, but I won't.
Such lies are incompatible with mutual trust, respect and affection and therefore with friendship. Clearly, from his point of view, we were not friends. From my point of view we were, I trusted and respected him.
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.
- The only things I asked in return was for him to pay me back, and to commit to a repayment plan.
- I expected honesty and good faith.
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, but he did and he didn't tell me.
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 replied "I'm not a saint ...", tacitly admitting he had been using me.
After he got that last check everytime I asked if he would like to meet for happy hour or dinner or anything at all he was always sick or unavailable. That went on for week after week until it was obvious he was avoiding, so I asked if he was avoiding me. I got no answer.
Days later I tried and again and after just a few text messages and despite six years of (pretend) friendship, I was told he didn't have time for me and stop contacting him. I pointed out he owned me thousands of dollars, he said I could only contact him about. Why? I got various answers to that question over the following months. But this isn't about how he feels, this is about how he acts.
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 agreed because I was acting in good faith.
… Yes, you can defer until Sept. 19
I didn't hear anything from him so on Sept. 6th 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 got no reply.
Three days later I tried again.
I am concerned because you didn't respond to my last email. Please let me know that you are well? ...
I got this reply.
“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.”
He withheld his address to make it hard for me to pursue legal action when he stopped paying me back.
I had lent him thousands dollars, allowed him to delay paying me back because he was moving. In return, he was being hostile by threatening not to pay me back and refusing to give the address I would need to take legal action when he stopped paying. He didn't tell when that would be. However, he knew that when he did 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.
Months later I learned he had moved, he misled me in to thinking he had so he could skip $1,800 in payments. The address he was refusing to give me was the very address I had writing rent checks for all those years. (I am a fool, I know).
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 he had a purpose that needed him to keeping it from me.
Nothing I had done justified that sort of 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, he will now claim he always intended to pay me back, but then why would he withhold his address? Why lie about moving?
He signed a contract
It seemed being his friend was going to cost me thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars.
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 thousands 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.
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 took the first legal step, I send a demand letter.
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.
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.
It was awful experience and all because I loaned a "freind" money.
The one thing he truly and 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 it, he committed fraud. He delayed making payments based on the misrepresentation (lie) that he moved. But, in the contract he attested that had never misled or lied about anything to do with payments or the loan.
By signing below, each Party certifies and warrants that all statements and information provided concerning the Loan and prior advances are true, accurate, and complete in all material respects, and that no material fact has been knowingly withheld. Each Party acknowledges that Lender has relied on these certifications in entering this Agreement. A breach of this Certification is a Misrepresentation under Article 7 and an Event of Default under Article 8.
Yet he signed it knowing that all the information me had provided me was not true, he committed fraud.
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.
"Because the name is the thing ... and the truename is the true thing."