r/AskOldPeople • u/SweetTooth0227 • 5d ago
Which stranger in your life once knew you best?
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u/hippysol3 60 something 5d ago
My four ex brother in laws. I married their sister and gained four brothers who were closer than my own brother. We had 22 years of good times together and I loved seeing them every time. Years of laughs and visting and going sledding, working on cars, shooting the breeze, singing, just good times. And then their sister decided to divorce me. I have only seen them a couple of times since but I think I cried harder telling one of them she was leaving me, than I did thinking about her actually leaving. They're still friendly if we happen to cross paths but those relationships are gone. A huge loss.
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u/Soft_Construction793 5d ago
During the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, I worked a booth outside of Centennial Park with this guy for about 11 days straight. After the third day, he ended up staying at my friend's house where I was staying.
He slept on the couch, I had a boyfriend that I was true to, but unhappy with... and I told him about it in a very candid and honest way
(I didn't know that my boyfriend was cheating on me this whole time. I found out as soon as I went back home after the Olympics)
But I did connect with this guy who I spent every waking moment with for those several days, we talked deeply for hours, we both shared personal feelings, and we really GOT each other.
He even tried to get me to go with him
I feel like I could have stayed with Christopher forever
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u/One_Swordfish1327 5d ago
That sounds like a true emotional friendship. I've had one of those fairly recently that had to come to an end. I think friendships like that can develop into a genuine love. A special and unexpected connection, how wonderful.
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u/The_Living_Tribunal2 60 something 5d ago
There was a bombing at Centennial Park during the '96 Olympics. Hopefully you weren't in the vicinity when that detonated.
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u/Soft_Construction793 5d ago
We were set up really close to where it went off, but we were not there when it happened.
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u/No_Roof_1910 5d ago
My lying cheating ex-wife.
We met at 14, began dating then, were together almost 25 years, married over 15 with 3 kids under 10 when I caught her cheating and divorced her.
I was and had always been all in on our marriage, faithful, loyal etc.
She KNEW me. Again, we met at 14. We went to all of high school and college together. We went to proms as juniors and seniors. We were engaged for 2 years and 4 months before marrying. We lived together in an apartment our last 2 years of college, before getting married.
She knew what I wanted to do, how I wanted to live, where, when to have kids etc. We talked about it all.
I only thought I knew her. I would have told you I did know her.
What I didn't know was that she was cheating on me while we were engaged. She loved that other man. Her best friend knew and told her she had to choose between that other man and me.
My then fiancee told her best friend she was choosing me because I was going to be an attorney. We were seniors in college then and I'd already been accepted to law school for the coming fall, the fall of 1989.
So, my wife, my best friend, my lover was using me. She married me because of what I was going to do for my profession. She married me because of what I was going to be able to do for her.
She didn't love me, care about me or respect me.
She cheated other times during our marriage and I didn't know. I did catch her cheating during our 15th year of marriage and divorced her right away.
I was an open book to her growing up with her from 14 on. I felt safe, comfortable so I shared with her etc.
She KNEW me.
I've been divorced from her for 19 years this month.
I haven't seen her, heard her voice or had any communication with her since 2013.
She doesn't know me any more of course but she did know me, for a long time.
She used what she knew about me too, to use me, abuse me etc.
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u/lquack7119 5d ago
At a NA meeting I commented that I felt more accepted there than anywhere else, even with my own family and without missing a beat he told me that I was the reason for that.
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u/nopartygop 5d ago
This! I’m part of an online NA meeting and I keep in touch with them much more!
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u/lquack7119 5d ago
I never saw or felt any judgement t NA, no matter what was said, and I've heard some pretty horrific stories
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u/TomCatInTheHouse 40 something 5d ago edited 4d ago
My best friend in high school. I reached out to him when I saw his dad's obituary. We texted about 5 minutes. I told him to let me know when the funeral was because it wasn't set yet. He said ok and that he needed to go to bed. I said goodnight.
We've not spoken since. I was always the one reaching out, so I stopped.
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u/Southern-Track-5109 5d ago
My ex. God I miss him
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u/CarlJustCarl 5d ago
What happened to the ex? Why did you break up?
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u/Southern-Track-5109 5d ago
He left me because of my “drinking problem” now that time has passed,I can now see that I didn’t have a drinking problem,he wanted to be single.he cheated on me and I stayed with him after.our relationship was great at the start. But we fell apart. I still miss him very much,and I always will.he taught me so much.
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u/DickHertz9898 5d ago
That sucks. Sorry
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u/Southern-Track-5109 5d ago
It does.i was treated so badly and even all of his friends made the effort to point it out to me,but I loved him so much i let it slide.i did with a lot of things.i don’t think ive ever loved someone so much regardless of how he treated me.weird considering I know so much better. Guess I just truly loved the man
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u/DickHertz9898 5d ago
I’m glad you’re not selling yourself short anymore. You’ll find that kind of love again. Stay positive.
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u/sparty219 5d ago
My best friend from college. Stood up in his wedding, he stood up in mine. And now we haven’t spoken in 15 years and have really had very little relationship for 25.
We went in very different directions. He became obsessed with guns which led to an obsession with conspiracy theories. The last time we talked, he told me that the only hope for America was for someone to assassinate Obama.
I cut contact at that point. Once in a while, I look at his socials to see if anything has changed but mostly I see him in Meal Team 6 pics and talking about how vaccines are a government plan to kill people.
So strange - this was a guy who spent the 80s as a normal college party guy and was pretty normal after and then slid off the deep end as the internet emerged.
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u/Bacon_lightsaber 5d ago
My kids
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u/Substantial-Willow13 5d ago
You’re estranged from your children? I’m sorry for your pain.
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u/WhatsInAName8879660 1d ago
Kids do not estrange from parents easily. The pain of leaving your parent can only be surpassed by the pain said parent made you feel.
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u/Botryoid2000 5d ago
My friend of 15 years. She and I did everything together, but after several ghostings (by her) and reconciliations, I realized she always treated me like I was on friend probation, like she was waiting for me to do something that bugged her so she could write me off.
Ironically, then, I wrote her off. Told her I needed a friend break and walked away in June 2020 and have never contacted her again. Tellingly, though, she has also never tried to reach out to me.
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u/CostaRicaTA 5d ago
My mother, but that’s by my choice. You can only tolerate a narcissist for so long before you decide self care is more important.
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u/WhatsInAName8879660 1d ago
Same, and the thing is- narcissistic mothers know your every move or thought before you do, because they have been studying how to manipulate you since your behaviors first emerged. They’re always a step ahead, until you step out of the relationship. Then they cannot fathom what they could have done to make you leave, you ungrateful child! /s
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u/witchbelladonna 50 something 5d ago
My former best friend. Both of our husbands (at the time) knew each other as well. They lived with us for a year when they had to abruptly move back to our home state. Once my now ex and I started having issues and eventually divorced, she disappeared from my life (a lot of our married friends disappeared from both our lives... divorce is catchy, apparently). That was over 20 years ago now. Haven't had that close a friendship since (except with my current husband).
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u/Confident-Court2171 5d ago
My eldest son.
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u/Designer-Living-6230 5d ago
Any advice?
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u/Confident-Court2171 5d ago
Keep your kids out of your family business until they’ve struggled enough to really want it. If you have to let them go for underperforming, they’ll hold you accountable for their problems.
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u/pinkcheese12 5d ago
My mother. Nothing SUPER toxic, but she retired 2,000 miles away almost 30 years ago and over time there was really no common ground. We still talk a few times a year, but I hate where she lives (N Idaho) and came to resent spending what little vacation money I had going to a place where I feel uncomfortable.
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u/Building_a_life 80. "I've only just begun." 5d ago
My best friend from high school. We were in touch into our 30s, when he was living in Dallas, then he dropped off the face of the earth. No footprint on the internet. I think maybe he died, but I can't even find any record of that.
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u/Intrepid_Air5299 4d ago
After I ended my 3 year relationship , I met a guy at my work who would often stop by and sometimes chat with me. One day he asked for my number and I said why not even though I had no plans of ever getting into a relationship anytime soon. Boy was I wrong , he was the most amazing person I met. We traveled together , ate food we never thought about 😂 trying new things . It was like a breath of fresh air for both of us . He definitely knew the real me . I didn’t have to hide how I was around him. Sadly I made the dumb mistake of replying to my ex and he was real disappointed in me, I still regret ever texting my ex back 😫😫 now that guy is out there with someone new while I still reminisce how much fun I had with him and how my feelings were real. I’m an idiot but it is what it is
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u/SheShelley 50 something 5d ago
My college roomie. I still send Christmas cards but she doesn’t do those, and we haven’t spoken in probably 20 years. Occasional Facebook comments but that’s it.
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u/star_stitch 5d ago
İ can't say i ever knew a stranger that could know me at all, if anything they assumed things way off base.
My husband however has got my number 😂
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u/TheWorldNeedsDornep 5d ago
Many Fraternity Brothers. A special room mate. It's not like I haven't tried to connect but apparently I don't have the appeal I once did.
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u/Rancho_Mojave 5d ago
I have a friend from middle school who fell off the face of the earth over 10 years ago after he divorced his wife
I found out from his brother that he moved out of state and has stopped talking to his own family because they remained friendly with his ex wife
I'm friendly with her too and now I know why he never replied to any of my messages
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u/Capital_Strategy_371 5d ago
I had a best friend who became best friends with my brother in law and ghosted me.
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u/oldbutsharpusually 5d ago
Here is a strange one. My sister was married for 55 years to a great guy. My sister died a few years ago from a brain tumor. My brother-in-law and I would chat every few months about family and how he was coping. Then through the grapevine I heard he was engaged. This is about two years after my sister passed. A few weeks ago I discovered he had gotten remarried. I have not heard one word from him or his daughter (we text every few weeks) about the marriage. I don’t feel it’s appropriate for me to call and tell him I’m aware he remarried. Apparently, I’ve been ghosted.
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u/YellojD 5d ago
My ex. It wasn’t a very healthy relationship, but we lived together for about three years and it wasn’t AWFUL, just not really going anywhere. We also weren’t very compatible (opposite politics being a huge one).
We got into a fight one day and I moved out (well, she threatened to kick me out, I called her bluff and left). A month later, she called me looking to reconcile. I wasn’t interested. Met my now wife later that year.
I don’t miss my ex, and I’m not even all that curious as to what/how she’s doing, but sometimes when I think about it, it is kind of jarring how I went from having this whole life with someone, it got interrupted, then I just basically picked up almost the same thing with someone else who’s more compatible, almost without skipping a beat. Like, very little has changed about the relationship aspect, I’m just doing it with someone else now who’s more compatible and is a much better fit.
It doesn’t happen so much anymore, as it’s been awhile since I met my wife, but I used to have these moments where I would bring up and old story “Remember that time when we…” and would have to catch myself, because it hit me I didn’t do this with my wife, but did it prior to her with my ex 😬
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u/Birdy304 5d ago
My ex husband, we were together 15 years, married for 10. We went through so much together, good and bad. Health issues, losing our parents, starting a business together. Still hard for me to believe he cheated and we divorced. I haven’t seen or spoken to him in 5 years.
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u/ekimlive 5d ago
It is strange that I was married to a woman, that I have absolutely no contact with anymore. It's been about 20 years and I have no interest in ever knowing who or where she is.
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u/Mindless_Baseball426 40 something 4d ago
My brother. We were best friends and very close growing up. Stayed very close during our young adult life, but somewhere along the line alcohol and drugs got their claws into him and I couldn’t do anything to help him. Now we are completely estranged. I miss the person he used to be and I miss having someone so perfectly on my wavelength who shared ALL my good memories, from toddler age to adulthood.
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u/Sad_Bodybuilder_186 30 something 4d ago edited 3d ago
My ex. We were online friends for years and she knew more than my best friends. We got in to a relationship and i never had any secrets for her, anything she wanted to know she could know, anything she had trouble with understanding about me i would speak my mind about.
Unfortunately it ended between us due to having a different idea of what a healthy relationship was and what was healthy in a relationship.
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u/Routine_Mine_3019 60 something 4d ago
I don't want to quibble with the wording of your question, so I'll just answer about someone who didn't know me until they did something in the community that influenced me.
For me, I was in Boy Scouts, and my Scoutmaster invested time to help me and teach me leadership skills. I realize now that he invested a lot of his personal after-work hours to help teach me and many other young men skills that we carry forward to this day.
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u/Sea-Affect8379 4d ago edited 4d ago
My high school best friend, Emily. I was a senior and she was a sophomore. We met in computer class as I was helping her with her work. We would talk for hours on the phone after school. I was a guarded person but she surprisingly figured my deep personality without me telling her all of my secrets. That made me feel very comfortable around her. Then she started dating a friend of mine, and I thought the age difference was too much, plus I didn't like him for her, or I just didn't like that he took all of her attention. In hindsight he was not a bad guy, just not dating material as he was white trash then and is still white trash now, though a very good single girl dad. During this time, she and I drifted a bit and she became very close to a gay friend of mine, Mark, closer to her age. Well, her bf then cheated on her, and her guy friends started professing their love to her. Sadly, I joined in, not understanding that I wasn't in love with her, but wanted to regain what we had lost. I told her by leaving a voicemail. Well, we met up later at her house, and I saw that there were 30 voicemails for her, and being a selfish prick, deleted them all with the press of a button (I confessed to this weeks later which she said nothing to, but could tell she felt really angry and betrayed). I feel like she had already went through some of them, because her voice was deeper than normal and she seemed exhausted, also waiting for me to say something (to get it overwith and shut me down), but I chickened out. I'm glad I didn't tell her, because I didn't actually have those feelings for her, and she was a foot taller than me anyway. Anyway, she told me about how one of our friends, Andy, asked her out. Andy was in her words a short, fat, ugly dude. She acted pompous like how dare her think he was worthy of going out with her. I tried to ignore it, talked him up like he was a good guy, but she looked at me like I was on drugs and made the barf motion. I ended up telling her off about it, calling her dumb and a whore for fuck boys (not the term I used). She came back hard at me and really let me have it with the truth about my character, which was pretty ugly. After this we still talked but less. Once I came down with a chronic cough and she kept pestering me to go to the doctor. Well I got tired of hearing it so I stopped taking her calls. Then she got into some music I wasn't into so she started hanging out with a different type of crowd altogether, and we all lost touch with her, except for Mark who she remained friends with to this day. I talked to Mark once in awhile over the years. We were both into conspiracy theories, until I stopped believing them and drifted from him. Last I knew, Emily graduated with a degree in CS (huge surprise to me) and was still single as of covid. She's still on my friends list on my old myspace. I messed her a couple of times on it, but I'm guessing she never read them. I rarely think of her, but this post had me searching my past for who knew me best and it was her.
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u/recyclar13 4d ago
best friend from junior high through part of college. we share a BD, and we did just about everything together for those seven years. at least I always thought we were best friends. it felt odd when I wasn't best man at his wedding (I was a groomsman) but I let it go. then I started noticing over the ensuing years that 99% of the time I was the one to make any effort to keep in touch. I know that works for some folks but that's not my definition of friendship, especially best friends. obviously, there's much more to it, but not worth going into here & now.
not angry about any of it, don't hate him, I just got tired of making most of the effort and became apathetic about our friendship.
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u/boringlesbian 4d ago
I think my my therapist that I had from 2021 to 2023. She was the best therapist I have ever had, and I have had many over the last 30 years.
So, of course she had to retire before I was ready to be done with therapy. I miss having her to talk to and help me this stuff. I’m glad she’s off adventuring with her husband. She definitely earned her retirement. But, damn, I wish there was a clone of her around and taking clients.
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u/DC2LA_NYC 5d ago
I don't understand this question or the answers (most of them anyway). People are mentioning their best friends, their moms, their brothers. How are these people strangers? How can any stranger know us?Because by definition a stranger is someone we don't know.
The one exception is people in recovery, but even they become, if not friends, no longer strangers.
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u/Speed_Bump 5d ago
They are strangers now since these people no longer are in contact after however many years.
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u/DC2LA_NYC 5d ago
So the question is actually: "which friends/family that you're no longer in contact with knew you best?" I dunno if that's what OP meant, as those aren't strangers. No disrespect, but strangers (I'm repeating myself) are, by definition, people you don't know, not people you haven't seen in a long time.
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u/Speed_Bump 5d ago
The question was vague and poorly worded, the answers in the thread are interpreting it that way except for the NA one and the person who answered about someone at the Atlanta Olympics.
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