Dealing with judgemental people, big life changes and being disliked

[Untamed21]

So to try and keep this short and sweet, in the last 9 months I have gone through a break up of my four year relationship, called off my wedding and moved in with a girl I am not compatiable with at all in a very small town. We had all sorts of issues, the biggest ones being my cats and hers not getting on, and my bringing up my cats differently to hers, so her taking over without actually asking me what I wanted for my pets. Unfortunately this girl is extremely popular with what I used to consider my friends circle and what my new boyfriend still considers his as they all work together/used to work together.

 

There were all sorts of other problems including my version of clean vs. her version of clean, her boyfriend essentially living with us, my constantly apologising for everything and not wanting to step on her toes, my anxiety growing really bad and my becoming reclusive because of it and her annoyance coming out in a passive aggressive way to the point that I entirely stopped using the kitchen and common living spaces. Unfortunately as she is quite popular, I've started to lose friends in my friends circle. One of them wouldn't even tell me what I have done wrong when I have tried time and again to make amends and ask her what I can do to fix things or just to talk to me and tell me what the problem is. She has unfriended, refriended and then unfriended me again on Facebook and I just don't understand why or what has motivated her to do this since the last meeting I had with her was a happy one before Christmas and we planned to see each other again soon.

 

I am not entirely sure if this is because there are rumours being spread about me (one rumour which shocked me was that I was a negligent cat owner and didn't feed them or look after them, whereas this couldn't be further from the truth now that I have moved away into a new place and all my housemates have commented on how friendly and well looked after my cats are and how much happier my cats have been since the move) and it doesn't help that I was made redundant from the job I loved and I recently discovered a colleague from the same workplace who I considered a friend there had blocked me from Facebook.

 

His reasoning when I asked him whether I had offended him and if I could apologise and make amends for any wrong doing being: "Unfortunately, it's slightly more complicated than that and to be honest I don't really want to go into it in great detail, but in summary I am happy to be Facebook friends with people I work with to remain civil, but ultimately I don't have much in the way of common interests and we no longer work together. You may notice that over the next few days some other people who I have previously unfollowed also just get removed too."

 

I can't help but think this is all connected and because I suffer wth intense anxiety, I keep coming back to all the people i have lost through all this and wondering how do I cope with being disliked/misunderstood/hated by people I once considered friends? Has anyone else ever had to deal with a group of people they were once close to turning on them with no closure on why? I know I will survive this, but right now everything feels like it's breaking my heart and I'm losing people I care about with no good reason as to why.

Edited March 12, 2017 by Untamed21

[Mr Scorpio]

Yikes. I can't say I've ever had to deal with anything like this. I'm sorry to hear that you are dealing with it. The first thing that came to my mind was that true friends wouldn't abandon you in such a manner. That does nothing to change your current pain. It is worth noting though. The second thing that came to my mind? Might as well start throwing your weight around. Or at least using the common-spaces again. What more do you have to lose?

[Untamed21]

You're certainly right about that. True friends don't treat anyone like this. And I genuinely believe that in time they will realise the truth from a lie and things will change for the better. Ever the optimist, I still believe everyone is inherently good and people just need time to truly understand someone. Because I am an immigrant, I guess I'm wierd and different so people are naturally unsure on how to deal with me as a person. Time heals all wounds and things will change. At least I hope they will. I'm trying to take my mind off it by working with those in need to gain some perspective on what's important in life and learn something new.

[carhill]

OP, in general life is a tough slog and you'll kill yourself supplicating at the altar of others so ignore the cretins in the world, take out the threats without concern for their life and love and believe in yourself above all. Others just aren't that important. How can you tell? Examine how important you are to them, just in the content of your post. There's billions of us and 15 thousand more are being born every hour.

 

Leave the small town incestuous rumor mill and get a breath of fresh air. After awhile, you'll wonder why you wasted so much of your valuable life on that stuff. Your choices are your power for as long as you are alive. Make them count.

[Untamed21]

OP, in general life is a tough slog and you'll kill yourself supplicating at the altar of others so ignore the cretins in the world, take out the threats without concern for their life and love and believe in yourself above all. Others just aren't that important. How can you tell? Examine how important you are to them, just in the content of your post. There's billions of us and 15 thousand more are being born every hour.

 

Leave the small town incestuous rumor mill and get a breath of fresh air. After awhile, you'll wonder why you wasted so much of your valuable life on that stuff. Your choices are your power for as long as you are alive. Make them count.

 

My mother gave me the same advice. In fact, even said rise above all the petty rubbish that is going on within the group and stand tall despite it. Those who are my friends will know my worth. It's just hard knowing that people I have invested time in getting to know have shown their true colours this way. Working with those that need help in my community may reaffirm my self belief that I'm a good person and stop me from overthinking about this so much. ?

[preraph]

I was part of a big extended social group when I was a lot younger, and everyone knew what everyone else was doing and who and it was very interwined. You couldn't date someone without them having a connection to one of your friends of old bfs. It was fun, for the most part, but everything you did had a ripple effect.

 

Once I went a little haywire having not heard from a separated guy I was in love with for two weeks (call him Jay) and went on a wild rampage and got poison ivy with the former drummer (Bad Boy) of a local band I lived right across the street from and had an attachment to their guitarist and had once been in love with him without it working out (Matt with ED). I had, in fact, been tacitly warned about Bad Boy shortly before when the rest of the band came to my apartment like the Band Police to take him away because they didn't want him messing with me.

 

I admit I was out of my mind. But I had a lot of pent-up frustration and I hate waiting, having gone straight from Matt with ED(who never stopped coming over) to Jay going through a separation that would become divorce and thinking we were in love and then sitting behind him and another date at a concert. So I went a little nuts and succumbed to Bad Boy and when we both broke out in poison ivy a few days later, the news spread like wildfire and even ended up in an novel by an English professor in California.

 

The next day before breaking out with poison ivy, Matt with ED had come early to my apartment and been turned away by my roommate (I was very hungover) and so he was waiting at work for me, laughing. He already knew. Later in the day, Bad Boy called from a loud party and said someone wanted to talk to me and then hung up.

 

Jay wasn't right in the middle of that crowd yet, so it was a few months before he found out, but when I broke out, he thought we'd gotten poison ivy together. What a mess.

 

When Bad Boy called to say he had poison ivy, I haughtily told him "I don't have it, and that's what you get for letting strange girls take advantage of you, and if the worst you got is poison ivy, you're lucky," and hung up.

 

Now, fortunately debauchery was more or less applauded in my crowd, so I survived this lapse of judgment.

 

But a few months later when my oldest friend, now recent roommate, slept with Jay during another two-week "question mark" of a break, which wrecked me, and then she subsequently took my black book and started using me as an excuse to contact all my past present and future men friends and interests, all but one had the good sense to freeze her out and come tell me about it, and she left town not long after. One even told her off.

 

So there's silliness and then there's serious betrayal. With my crowd serious betrayal meant a large part of the tribe going silent on you and being kicked out of the herd. With that local band crowd, the way you knew if you were still some band guy's girlfriend is if the rest of the band was being friendly to you or not. If not, you were on your way out.

 

There's nothing like having a big tangled vine like that, but you have to know the rules, because they can make you or they can ruin you. My crowd merged right into my workplace too. You don't always know exactly who is connected and how much or who has a loyalty to the other that might be greater than the loyalty to you. People will pull away like that guy you know did so they don't get kickback from someone they care more about than you or because they simply don't want to get involved.

 

But he could also be unrelated to the rest of your mess and just decided he doesn't want that many people on his Facebook. It probably is that simple. He doesn't feel your friends but just a coworker. All you can do is be nothing more than polite and professional with him.

[Untamed21]

Preraph, in case of your friend, I completely understand her being frozen out. Sleeping with someone you cared about and using you as a means to hook up with people is a major betrayal. But in my case I genuinely feel like the issues are small and petty and being exaggerated well out of proportion. I haven't slept with anyone's boyfriend, actively hurt anyone, even almost went into debt to ensure my former housemate was given a way out of our lease. but all the good things I have done are either not being discussed or hidden deliberately and my lesser qualities exaggerated to a point that simply aren't true. For instance, my cats are my cats. No one asked her to do anything for them, she just did. And cleaning. Which seems like something really small again. Something both these girls have said to me when they first met me was "you're thin and pretty and your nice. I can't even hate you now." I feel like they were waiting for a reason to hate me as the new girl in town and now they have one. It sucks because it seems super cliquish and small. ?

[preraph]

Usually when someone gets it in for the person after a breakup, it's the one who's dumped that's mad, or the one that was cheated on. It makes no sense for someone to try to mess up your reputation unless they are mad at being dumped or cheated on. So I guess she's mad because you broke up with her? You know not everyone is mature about it. Yes, it does sound immature.

 

Your best course of action is to just disengage and lay low and not even talk about anything about it to anyone and let her shriek about it until she's hoarse and make a spectacle out of herself while you be the silent mature one who isn't gossiping and maybe someone will notice if they're paying enough attention.

[truthtripper]

I was in a situation like this with both my friends and housemates. They were all girls. Perhaps it would have been better if there were a few boys to dampen the [rudeness]. At the time I was suffering from anxiety and panic attacks and trying to sort myself out emotionally. I had begun seeing a therapist re the abuse I experienced in my childhood. I was feeling extremely vulnerable.

 

From my experiences with people, I've noticed that many will tend to bully/exclude you if you are different in some way or if you are feeling fragile for whatever reason. I think it stems from an protective animalistic, primitive instinct. You see, difference/weakness threatens the species, so, like animals, people will also attack those who appear to be so. At the moment, I have a chronic illness. As my symptoms were getting worse, the people around me were beginning to disappear. Even my family members keep away. I haven't been mean to anyone or done anything bad to deserve this. Keep in mind, even though we have consciousness, our behaviour is still very much driven by our protective ancestral instincts.

 

The best we can do is believe in ourselves and ignore those who ill treat us.

Edited March 13, 2017 by a LoveShack.org Moderator
Language

[Untamed21]

Thank you all for your help. I have decided to simply lay low and rise above any kind of gossip about me. There is no point in my engaging it in any way or form and I'm trying really hard to be the bigger person and not retaliate. I still wish I had a time machine so I could go back and fix it knowing what I do now but what's done is done I think. No use crying about it now. I appreciate you all taking the time to help me. ?