Pressing Charges. Need Opinions

>Be on again off again friends with (we'll call him Steve) since grade 8, sometimes going a year or two without seeing each other
>As we grew into adulthood, I continued progressing, and he stunted around 17, and that isn't me being a pretentious fedora tipper
>as 25 years olds, when we hungout, which was roughly once every 3 weeks, he would tell me about conflicts he got into when he was out in public, the conflicts always about him intimidating or scaring someone off with his size, and I almost always felt like his stories were fabricated bullshit because they never seemed to add up, but never told him that and gave him the benefit of the doubt.
>he's a highschool dropout, doesn't have his full license,, works a dead end job as a yardman and has no plans for anything else, chain smokes, and lives with his mom.
>As an adult, I decided to keep him in my life because I felt sorry for him, and I wanted to hang onto that adolescent friendship. He offered absolutely nothing to me in terms of friendship, but I was a real good friend to him.
>He messaged me lots, and asked me to hangout every single saturday, and throughout the week. I would wake up for work at 6am to 3 missed calls and 7 missed text messages from the night before from him, asking what I'm doing, why I'm not answering my phone, and him just generally being irritated with me. He made it clear in his texts that he was irritated with me that I wasn't answering him.
>One day, I had enough, and sent him a modest statement, telling him to stop calling and texting me so much
>He literally replied to this saying "wow, so you're saying not to call or text you anymore? fine" and this kicked off a trivial and ridiculous argument over text. He proceeded to list off things I do that he didn't like, and I took the bait and defended myself. It was exhausting.

Attached: 80-simple-assault.jpg (1500x575, 21K)

>I tried numerous times to stop arguing with him and resolve the issue, but he refused
>A couple days later I asked him if we could meet up and resolve this issue civilly face to face. He agreed, but still seemed pissed
>We met later that night at 11pm. I pulled my new vehicle into the mall parking lot, behind his, he was standing outside his car, in his tank top, arms crossed, with a cig in his mouth
>I rolled down my window and said to him "hop in lets go for a little drive man"
>He got mad at this, and started to pace around, aggressively shouting "get out of your fucking truck and come talk to my face"
>I said to him "hey, keep it down, if someone hears you swearing and shouting they might call the police"
>After I said this, he punched my truck, dented it a little, and then sucker punched me through the window, hitting my cheek and forehead
>He's 6'4 and 265lbs, not super athletic, and more beefy than muscular, but he's always bloated about hitting the heavy bag at the gym
>I'm 6'0 and 170lbs, he didn't knock me out, despite sucker punching me and out weighing me by 100lbs, all he did was piss me off, and I told him I would most likely be pressing charges. I unleashed on him verbally, and then his attitude changed completely and he looked scared.
>I then went straight home, and my girlfriend told me that my cheek was super swollen and I had a lump on my forehead, we took pictures, and about an hour later, I started having a head ache, which lasted for the rest of the night, and in the morning my face my sore and I had a head ache throughout the day.
>He sent me text messages later that night, at 4am, telling me I will ruin his life if I press charges
>I told him that I didn't ruin anyones life, and that his actions are just having consequences

Thoughts?

Relax you're not thinking straight, you're still angry because that swollen cheek probably hurt like hell.

He seems like a lonely guy, I think if you're cutting communication will seem like punishment enough to him. Just go radio silence for a week so both of you could calm down.

Don't forget to take pictures of your bruises and the damages inside your truck in case you want to take action.

>Thoughts?
Pretty charges. You can't just go around solving your problems with violence and think there's no consequences. If he wants to act like he's tough shit who hits people he's mad at then he can accept the consequences for it. Maybe this experience will give him some insight into just how serious the implications of his behavior can be.

He hit you because you may have been a bit disingenuous about the whole situation. I knew one guy that sounds a lot like you that would prattle on about being tired of work all day, regular 8 hour shifts and maybe a bit of heavy pushing but no lifting, so that he could gain sympathy and spend the evening being upset about something, possibly to allow himself to sulk for whatever reason, and in the end he ended up being a little too pernitious about most relationships but the ones that would let him sulk (eventually the ones he came to develop a drug habit out of) and it just stunk everyone around them's relationshipsbecause we all had to stoop to their level about the drug use and about how much it was acceptable to the point that eventually I couldnt take it anymore and just had to relieve myself of the situation with him and anyone that agreed with him. Eventually our casual group of friends dissolved and it became all of us separately and those two and their new drug and alcohol cliques(bars on ecstasy laced with coke). The whole thing hasnt really sprung up any news and most of us regret that we knew them but that anyone else needed to make a mistake seemed to be what they were shooting for so that sulking about would become second to someone not them two wanting to bring back the old days by talking and not by grasping at the straw that the good times should be whats killing us and not the bad things (namely them).

Yeah but to publicly institute the ideal that he had no sense of the situation is just kind of like saying i can take a hit, which is a pretty seriously instituted belief among people in society, namely men, that he need to be so inalienably right as to press charges later and not on the spot to have the guy possibly ruin his life further by doing some established wrong between then and there is a bit malconstructed.
He may even miss out bc the situation being clamant the belief of the courts or the police if the guy never claims a thing. I mean besides bruises what evidence would he have and how would he prove to the cops that it was that guy and not some other random person? Its pernitious at best but he also doesnt sound like a shit story made him the better. He sounds happy his choices made him the top knotch rather than the point that he is gonna lose a friend he no longer cares or cared about and that if that guys life is ruined he may institute himself to the belief that he needs to go out with a bang against this dude for making little of their time together and cutting his future to minsce because he paraphrases himself to us but doesnt admittedly approve of someone else doing too for him when they want to say "i care you care can you care" when that person needs a friend.
Every day might have sucked but friends are usually that thing you go to out of work, if not home, when you have no SO.

>Yeah but to publicly institute the ideal that he had no sense of the situation is just kind of like saying i can take a hit, which is a pretty seriously instituted belief among people in society, namely men, that he need to be so inalienably right as to press charges later and not on the spot to have the guy possibly ruin his life further by doing some established wrong between then and there is a bit malconstructed.
This was a terrible run-on sentence that didn't make much sense. Hitting people because you're mad at them is the behavior of a child and its dangerous, that's why it is illegal. If he didn't want to get in trouble with the law then he shouldn't have broken it. If he didn't want to have his life ruined then he shouldn't of made such a stupid, violent decision. OP is not at all responsible for saving this dude from himself. He's an adult who made a decision and now he gets to live with the consequences of that decision. Period. End of story.

You are not true friends if you have never had a fist fight with each other. Just go for a beer and make fun of it. Nothing really happened.

Don't ever keep people in your life because you feel sorry for them.

Start it by inducing a sense of guilt and that means I believe it less? Wrong.
I'm saying that whether that guy annoyed him and then was assumingly enough upset about the relationship taking on tread, a very adult thing to admit to, was not sonething that the other adult thay was smaller and took the hit well should be so upset about as to ruin the other life. He was punched, no man can dent a car with a punch, and was also scared off well enough that he didnt. Consider doing it on theday of, the whole calling the cops. Children are not dangerous and it is not illegal to be a child. If that guy was such a danger to him he would not have kept that friend around. The story is bigger than this and Im helping OP allude to himself that the truth of the situation isnt so dire that he need to be put away and his life ruined over a punch. Especially one that OP claimed he took well. If he needs justice, push him out of your life for good and watch him cry a bit and be happy you got the big guy to cry. Make him someones bitch because you took a lot of angst out on him for being complacent in life while you wanted more than you got out of it is a bit unfair assuming you dont actually enjoy working and it makes sense to you to mistreat others cause theyre uncomfortable. If he wants to make trouble, he'll make trouble but besides the point that there are laws and we are required, oh wait were not fucking required, to call the cops every time some little thing goes the way of the wind means that we habe no real sense of a grievance here because unless he found it in himself to assuredly make sure that person was never around him, there was no danger to his person until he did or said something to really push someone he treated to trust over the edge. These are people not toys acting out dramatic scenes on tv.