How do you deal with not liking the friend of a friend?

I would sit there and try to ignore them the best I could and wonder to myself how I like people so much that can actually like that jerk too. *It’s strange sometimes how that works when usually like minded people hang tough.

But then, after a little while, I might start to look at them and realize for myself that I actually don’t like them, because in some annoying way they are reflecting something I too don’t like about myself.

I do that a lot with people I don’t like and it’s usually always right. THen of course you are left to either continue to take it out on the other guy, or begin to look at yourself more closely. Usually dislike is unwelcomed reflection.

The world is a big place and if this person annoys you so much then just go somewhere else.

@Dog I should have mentioned – I’m more interested in how various people handle this. Share your story with me! :) So then where do you go – are we talking another room, or leaving and going home?

I would stay as long as polite then bow out and walk home. :) LIfe is too short to deal with that kind of mental stuff.

You’re smart, I know you can handle it. Minimize talking, but not so much as to seem suspicious. If the reason for dislike is trivial, do those things.

If you suspect they molested your dog, but don’t quite have the proof, just avoid conflict until you know for sure.

@Blackberry If you suspect they molested your dog Ok, so is that just totally random, or do you have a story you’d like to share with the rest of the class? Please, let there be a story…

I am getting nervous about this “dog molesting”.

WTF?

Haha! No, there’s no story, but I do like random humor.

Shotgun

I make polite conversational noises at them, and get away as soon as I possibly can. By ‘get away’, I mean move to another area of the party, like the kitchen. That’s where all the cool people hang out, anyway. ;)

If it was something more intimate, like a sit down dinner and they’re seated in my vicinity, I’d mean ‘fake an illness and go home’.

In the bigger picture, I’d start questioning my friendship, probably. “How can my friends honestly like that asshat?” I’d want to know the story behind that, and if it wasn’t a good one, I’d probably lose some respect for my friends. Judgmental, I know, but it’s true.

I know a few people like that. I generally just feign interest in whatever they are talking about if they’re just boring, but if they’re a rude sort of person I’ll just make an excuse to move. “Excuse me, I’ll just nip off to the toilet” usually suffices, and then when I come back I’ll just stand in a different place and talk to different people.

I always stop short of being rude or snarky to these kinds of people, because I figure they are important to my friends.

I’m polite, but distant. I stick around, but I don’t engage the person, and I don’t pretend to like them. I’m civil. That’s it.
Until they piss me off, then there is any number of directions it could go in… from me giving them a piece of my mind, to giving them a piece of my fist. It all depends on the situation and the person… and how much I dislike them.

@augustlan No, I totally get that. I think (maybe) some of it has to do with how selective people are in their friends; some people would rather have lots of friends and a few (or even most) be jerks, and others would rather have fewer friends and have stricter standards for being friends with someone.

One of our dear friends has a new partner (now wife) that we (and apparently his other close friends) really cannot stand. For quite a while we just avoided being around them. We missed him but she is really, really awful. In the end though, we decided we like this guy a lot and that is more important than our dislike for this other person. It is his choice.

However, it does depend on why and how you don’t like the person. I had a really close friend when I was younger and she started hanging out with these two guys. I really did not like them. They gave me a bad feeling. I told her about it but she wanted to be friends with them. I chose not to go with her when she was seeing them. In the end, one of them tried to rape her. Thankfully, he didn’t succeed but it taught me to listen to my instincts.

What’s to deal with? My best friend has so many friends that I can’t stand. She nows how I feel. If I do somehow bump into them, a “Hello” is more than enough. I don’t give a fuck about them knowing I hate them. I’m not gonna be fake, not even for a second.
If I hate you, you’ll know.

If it were just somebody at a party I would ignore and avoid him. I can deal just fine with a little annoyance over a short-term period.

But my most relevant experience to this question when my best friend dated an utter asshat for our entire senior year of high school, and that meant seeing him every day, unless I wanted to avoid my best friend too (which I didn’t), so ignoring and avoiding wasn’t going to cut it. I don’t think I’d recommend handling it the way I did unless it’s a very close friend, but my friend was well aware of my dislike for her boyfriend, and she, fortunately, was usually quite aware of his flaws too and often understood why I was annoyed when I was, so I got to express my dislike fairly openly. Sometimes I had to leave the lunch room and go eat somewhere else to cool off while he was being an asshole. I just had to walk a fine line to make sure I wasn’t stepping on their relationship. My attitude about him to my friend was one of, “I don’t see his merits, but I don’t know him as well as you do. If being with him makes you happy, then I support it, but I can’t pretend to like him, either,” and she was understanding. It was quite the balancing act sometimes but the fact that my best friend and I have pretty much unconditional love for each other made it less stressful; I was never worried about losing her. Again, this would be a much harder situation if the friend weren’t so close; I don’t know for sure what I would do.

Incidentally, when my friend finally broke up with him, he went berserk and threatened to kill her. She told me she doesn’t think she could ever date someone I don’t approve of again. :D