Do I carry on as I am ignoring this playground stuff?

It is always sad when friendships break up, but I find myself wondering how your relationship with this couple came to be so intense? Turning up at mealtimes - that wouldn't have happened more than once or twice I fear in my case. As for the copying of everything you did, that sounds just weird, did it not ring alarm bells then?
I am sorry to hear of the diagnosis of your illness and wonder again about the fact that you paid them for help.
Could you not just retreat from them without the explicit words of the phone call, where on the one hand you said you appear to say you didn't want to break off the friendship but on the other wanted to remain friendly but to be less close. That sounds like mixed messages to me.
Your other "friends" must be allowed to decide for themselves if they want to include this couple in their social lives, but there is no need for you to. Why are people now snubbing you? Have you asked or are you imagining that your character has been blackened in some way.
Either way it does sound childish and hardly the behaviour of mature adults. I have never been a "gang of chums" sort of person so find it hard to understand however. It reminds me of an episode of As Time Goes By ! But perhaps others will be able to give you the advice you seek.

I can't help, but I to know what you mean as something similar happened to us. It was with a group of 10 us who were really good friends and socialised a lot. We invited another couple to join us occasionally and they got over friendly with one other couple and then invited others along. We and one other couple started being excluded. Not being a shrinking violet I did bring it up but made to feel I was being paranoid. I was then diagnosed with BC and lost a year with surgery, treatment etc, one other couple divorced and since then the couple who started the "split up" have both died. I see 2 wives now and then but have never felt the same about one of them. She has had to find other friends and we haven't bothered.All now in our 70s and 80s, it all seems so trivial and childish.

Move on if you can SallyD and make other friends away from all this silly stuff.?

This is one where you are going to have to tough it out I think.act like you don't care what other people think of you,they will soon forget what these people have been saying.
My husband always hides behind me when someone takes advantage.i am a nice person really but I don't like people taking the piss.
He made friends a couple of years ago with a couple who kept parrots because we have one.
The made out they rescued them they actually went around buying them while living in a caravan number 1 warning sign.
Then they went around Fete's with these birds selling photos of people holding the birds raising money for hospices only they pocketed the money.
When I confronted them they said they gave some to the hospice.
After a few weeks the wife told me she did not see her grandchildren I asked why and she told me it was because they were worried because she would get in trouble for what they were doing.she found her husband's behaviour funny.
Anyway I did not have a lot to do with them.my husband got on with them.
My father died who I was estranged from and he lived in a house that I owned,so while the family got on with funeral arrangements I took my dd and gs off to Egypt for two weeks.
My husband while I was away was taken out for meals by this couple who were asking him if he trusted me to go off on my own.my husband said I did every year.
Next thing they were saying they thought he was to trusting and when i came back and sold the house that he should remove half the money from our joint account because I would only spend it on my dd and D's and gs.
My husband laughed it off I saw red.end of friendship and I really don't care what other people they tell think
what I am saying is life is to short to live the way other people want you to,and I am saying that as someone who has a severe illness

You sound like such a lovely couple, sadly there are always those out there that will take advantage (usually fuelled by jealousy &inadaquecy) those other friends who now snub you sadly could not have been true friends you are right about playground stuff they truly have not grown up!! Harden your heart hold your head up love & live your life armed with the painful knowledge that some people are just not worth the time of day !!! Good luck & hopefully reading all the other comments be assured that there are decent caring people in the world , I hope you meet some soon x

Forget these horrible people. You don't need 'friends' who seem so willing to believe bad things of you.

I read somewhere that everyone may not like you - but you don't have to care. Move on with your other friends. If "friends" turn against you without asking for your side of the story, then they were not real friends in the first place. Ignore what is happening and you may find those ignoring you now will see this couple for what they really are and come back to you.

Move on, they are not friends. Think the word friends us bandied about too much, you are lucky to have one or two good friends, the others friendly aquaintences. A friend would not treat younlikecthay. Rise above it, you have your husband and family, look forward, not back.

Sorry about the mis spelt words, I pads do that you could end up in court with the words that change.

Thanks for your replies, I needed someone to tell me how silly it all was, I was too close and involved to see it logically, The other day I smiled at someone I've known for 23years, someone I spent lots of leisure time giggling with before the arrival of this pair, someone who had a similar diagnosis to me at almost the same time so that we were both on chemo together, but as I went to speak to her she pulled her chair away and turned her back, bizarre! I will now accept that for the absurd behaviour it is. Looking back I think we've had a lucky escape from being cloned, or being the basis of a Nicci French novel. Thank heavens for genuine friends. I don't think I want any of the former ones back though.

It sounds as if these people are really stirring things up with your ex-mates! It might be handy to know what they're saying about you. Perhaps a mutual friend can help? Sow the seeds that they're telling fibs about you? Given time some of they'll overdo it, their true characters will surface and they'll probably move on, but it will take time.

Oh Dumpling I don't think we'll ever find someone whose brave enough to tell us what's been said without running the risk of being snubbed themselves, and nobody wants to be like us. I think this couple are hugely offended by the removal of their free life style and hell hath no fury etc! Quietly my DH and I call them 'scoff it and scarper'
So, onwards and upwards now.

I remember reading some years ago of a woman who always wore her hat in the house and explained that if someone called who she was happy to see "she'd just come home" and if she did not wish to see them "she was just going out"......

People just don't realise how gossip and rumors can affect someone's life. They won't come and ask you to your face, just gossip and spread rumors behind your back which more often than not are false or embellished ... my old mum would have told me to hold your head high and ignore them, make some new friends XX

Let time sort this out. They will do the same to someone else, that is how they operate and people had warned you about them.

Just get on with enjoying your own life, you have had a health scare make the most of things. Life really is too short to worry about this stuff.

Sounds to me that these so called friends were just parasites to put it bluntly and you are much better off having nothing more to do with them I long ago learnt that to be happy you have to discard all the negative things in your life. If these 'friends' want to spread rumors and malicious gossip there's nothing you can do about that and they really don't deserve to be called friends. so hold your head high and enjoy your life.

Just carry on your life as though these people do not exist. Don't worry about what they are saying. Any TRUE friends will not believe the lies anyway, if they are cosying up with these people they will live to regret it once they see through them. Make a life for yourselves with new friends.

This couple are most likely eyeing up another unsuspecting pair to scrounge off. Steer well clear and enjoy the life you now have. Seems to me you're way better off without their friendship.... or of those who cannot (yet) see through them.

Find a new pub to go to and make new friends! The old ones sound well past their sell by date! Ignore them, don't give them the satisfaction that you care about them or what they think of you one way or the other! Just move on, from them!!!!

They say you can't choose your family but you can choose your friends, they don't seem to be a kind of friend you need, you did the right thing end of.

Are you still friends with the people who originally warned you about them?
Sounds like they tried to be good true friends at the time.

DH and I have removed ourselves from our original group of friends because of such stuff. Now we have moved, we are involved with various organisations but have been very careful not to "fraternise" too much. We are happy with nice acquaintances, happy with our own company and very wary indeed of false friends. life is too short to have one's life upended by such people. the old proverb of "sticks and stones..." is just untrue - think of how verbal bullying can be so corrosive.
Hell hath no fury, etc.

I have been through similar where my (now deceased) mil made me out to be a terrible person to hers and my husband's family friends. At first I was upset and angry, but over time I learned not to care. I came to realise I would never understand her mentality and would never get an answer to any questions. What did happen though, on her death many people had begun to see her lies and personality for what they were - but I no longer wanted them as 'friends'becuse they weren't friends in the first place. Carry on with your life ahead and enjoy it!

I can only say, if your so-called friends, are that fickle, you are better of without them. I've always believed, that if I have one really true friend, by the time I die. I will be a very rich man.