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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/NewRedditWasAMistake on 2023-06-27 03:23:06+00:00.
I used to have a friend in high school. Let's call him John. John was one of those people who tried really hard to not take anything seriously. He would always try to make overly edgy jokes and say terrible things just to get a reaction out of people. Over time I just got tired of his inability to take things seriously and his constant need to try and be edgy and a few years after high school ended, I just slowly stopped talking to John. Before I stopped talking to him for the most part, he was in a relationship with this girl that he never really seemed that fond of. He always talked about how he "settled" for her, even though she was his first girlfriend and he had been a bit of an incel the entire time that I knew him. I'm pretty sure he never said anything rude to her directly, but over voice chat programs like discord and skype he would also say some really horrible things about her. Eventually, she ended up getting pregnant, with twins. I thought this would be the moment that caused him to actually mature but instead this just caused him to get even worse. He would constantly "joke" about accidentally tripping his pregnant girlfriend while she was on top of the stairs or "joke" about how he wished one of the twins would die so he could save some money by only having to raise one child. Eventually I just got sick of it and stopped talking to him for good.
Just two weeks ago, a few years after not being in contact with him, I ran into his girlfriend at a fast food joint. She came up and talked to me and we caught up a bit. She let it slide that things haven't going that well between the two of them and that John has been really cold and distant, to which I had a knee-jerk reaction of "Yeah, I'm not surprised." She seemed intrigued and wanted to know more and this is where I said fuck it, and told her that he would always say terrible things about her and her unborn children when I still knew him. She pressed even harder and wanted to know the kinds of things he said, so even though I knew I shouldn't I gave her a few examples of things he said in private. She was mortified. She left the restaurant red in the face. A few days ago, an old mutual friend of ours asked me out of the blue if I had said anything to John's girlfriend because she mentioned that a friend of his told him all the terrible things he's been saying the past few years about her and her children. They're supposedly about to split up, and I know I'm partly to blame.
So, should I have kept all that information to myself? I didn't go into detail about some of the more disturbing things he said but I can't help but feel that if I was on the receiving end, I'd like to know what my partner is saying about me behind closed doors. But on the other hand, I feel sorry for the kids who will now have to deal with parents that might be splitting up.