I recently found myself in a situation where I lost a few of my close friends because of money. It all started when I was looking to open my business, but I didn’t have the funds to do so.

Found a few friends to do the business together, but did not want to come out with money

I eventually found a few friends who were interested in investing in my business. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to open my business, but I quickly realized that I had to come up with a price for them to invest.

I didn’t want to set a price too high and scare them away, but I also didn’t want to set it too low and not get anything out of it.

I decided to bluff them to come out with more money

So, I decided to set a price with the intention of making it look fair from their point of view but the main point was that I did not want to come out with so much money myself.

I told them that their share percentage would determine on how much money they invested and said that I had put in $60,000 for 60% share of the business and asked for $10,000 from the four of them for 10% of shares each.

I was the main shareholder but in actual fact, I came up with nothing and even profited $8,000 from them as the costs to start up the place was only about $32,000.

I had marked up the price to them and had came up with nothing to get 60% of the shares.

They each agreed to pass me the money which I had asked for first, but had asked me for a detailed proposal on the costings of the business so that they could see if their money invested tallied with share percentage.

Time passed and as I had been delaying passing them the detailed proposal, they started to investigate and found out that the start up costs of the business were not so high.

They confronted me about it and I had no choice but to admit what I did to them.

They asked me back for the money but I had already used the money to fund my lifestyle and hence could not return them a cent.

The friendship went downhill from there but to me it is afterall still business and it is always a case of willing buyer willing seller.

Have I been gaslight by my hubby or what?

3 years ago right before coviq19 hit, my husband was at a low point of his career, so I encouraged him to go overseas for a breather n think through his next career move. And so he did, together with one of his good guy friend AND my father in law, they went to Taiwan to revisit some old business contacts. (I didn’t join as I had to stay around and take care of our kids).

Everything went well for the trip, he told me they visited several factories and the trip was very exhausting.

A few weeks after he got back, I happened to use his ipad, innocently wanting to use it to Google something. It was then I was awakened by rude shock. I saw some trails on his Google bar indicating that someone searched for “where to find girls in kaohsiung”. I then convinced myself that it was nothing and even deleted the search and swept things under the carpet, not a single question asked.

So fast forward 3 years later which is now, countries start to reopen and without even asking me, he booked a trip to Kaohsiung together with 7 old time guy friends including the one whom went with him 3 years ago. As all of us knew each other including the wives, I thought I shouldn’t be over sensitive and be a spoil sport since all the wives approved this trip without any suspicion. However the memory of me discovering the Google search started to resurface.

So the night before this trip, I decided to confront my husband on this matter. His body language and facial expression didn’t convince me that he was telling the truth.

I told him if he were to do anything funny in kaoshiung, please try not to leave trails. Then I went on to reopen the can of 3 years old worms.

He didn’t deny but got agitated and asked me if I actually saw it on MY Google. I said no and i saw it on HIS. He went on to say I didn’t trust him and said it was just Google suggestions and he even swore that he told his 7 khakis that he prayed that all of them will come home safe so that there won’t be 7 widows bla bla bla and that not all men are just thinking abt sex and this trip was meant to be a guys bonding trip and nothing else. He also added that even if someone did the search, he wouldn’t know if its his friend who did it.

Guys can you please enlighten me? How does Google work? It’s obviously under Google search history but he said its a Google suggestion? Is he telling the truth or am I overthinking?