My coworker’s life is unspeakably hard - he’s supporting an entire handicapped family on a low-paying job. He can’t get a better job because he never learned to read, write or do 'rithmetic. His entire life is his job, his commute, and caring for his handicapped family. He’ll never again be able to do anything just for fun.
My life is easy. I have no children, and my partner is able-bodied and makes a comfortable living. My time outside work is my own.
Before I started working with this man, I used to do fun things on my days off - I’d go to movies, I’d go grocery shopping after midnight just to remind myself that the world still exists that late, I’d drive out to the countryside and go exploring. Now I don’t do any of those things - I spend all my time thinking about my coworker and feeling guilty that I have it easier than him.
It’s not fair. I didn’t earn my easy life. I was born to a middle class family that used alcohol in extreme moderation, expected me to finish school, and never pushed me to have children. He didn’t have any of these advantages - he was doomed.
My partner patiently listens to me talk about this coworker for hours every day. He tells me that I owe this man nothing more than basic courtesy. I want to believe him but I can’t - it feels like a cop-out. If my coworker doesn’t get to do fun things on his days off work, then why should I? He selflessly provides and cares for the special needs of his handicapped family, and I selfishly choose not to have any children.
Has anyone else felt this way? It was 105 degrees in Ephrata yesterday, and I wanted to go there, dammit, but my conscience stopped me. I miss fun.
How does depriving yourself of fun help your coworker?
When I feel guilty, I try to do something to assuage it. Thinking and feeling just aren’t that productive in the long run. Does you coworker like cookies? Make a pan and bring some in. He can take them back to his family if he can’t eat them. Either way, you’ve lightened his day. Find out when his birthday is and remember to take him out for lunch. If you see him waiting at the bus stop, give him a ride. Ask him if he would like a used iPod, DVD player, or old tablet you don’t want anymore.
Just be a friend.
You’re thinking about the worse of his life, but he experiences good times too. Just imagine what he would say if you told him how sorry you feel for him. Most likely he would laugh and tell you that it’s not THAT bad.
I don’t want to be his friend. I don’t want to spend time with him or give him gifts. He’s manipulative and passive-aggressive. He’s a whiny, self-pitying man-bitch. I just don’t feel like I have the right to pursue happiness when other people don’t have the means.
And I think he’d feel gratified that someone feels sorry for him - he certainly spends enough time letting us know he feels sorry for himself.
So you obsessively think about someone who has a really tough time and feel guilty because you have it fairly easy but you don’t want to help him or be his friend because you don’t like him at all? You seem to despise him but he has now taken up residence in your head making you feel guilty for enjoying your life.
You really need to stop thinking about your co-worker, because you’re not helping him at all and you’re only hurting yourself. It’s completely pointless. Besides, there are people in the world who have it infinitely worse than your co-worker. If his life miraculously turned around tomorrow you’d still have millions of people in the world to feel bad for. Once you start down that path, you’ll always have a reason to stay on it and it does absolutely nothing for you or anybody else. And, hate to say it, but you’re probably boring the shit out of your partner if you’re telling him about this guy for “hours every day.”
If you really can’t stop thinking about how shitty the guy has it, do something pro-active. Offer to cover a shift for him at work or something, or give him some of your overtime if he needs it. Donate some of your old stuff to him. But for God’s sake don’t just sit around moping through the only life you’ll ever have just because someone else has it tough. It’s useless, counterproductive and, frankly, comes across as a little self-indulgent. I don’t intend to cause offence, I’m just calling it how I see it. There’s tons of stuff you can do to help this guy out. I’m sure that if you asked him what you could do for him, he wouldn’t ask you to be miserable on his behalf.
Then just keep telling yourself that he’s full of lies and exaggerations and that he doesn’t deserve any pity. He deserves his life and you deserve yours. Just keep saying it until you believe it.
Depriving yourself doesn’t benefit anyone. It just makes you as unhappy as everyone else…so that no one can function well. And when you are happy, you are more productive, with benefits spreading out to the world. Including your coworker.
It’s not normal to let someone into your headspace like this. You may want to talk to someone.
In that case, fuck him. You’ve got better things to do, and there are people in the world far more deserving of your sympathy. In the time it’s taken you to read through the posts in this thread, a pre-teen child in Africa will have died of AIDS. If you want to cry over someone, cry over him and leave your co-worker to his self-pity.
Bottom line: You do, in fact, have the right to pursue happiness or anything else your heart desires, regardless of how rough other people may have it. All you’re doing right now is screwing yourself over to the benefit of absolutely nobody. If you really can’t shake off these feelings, then get off your ass and use your good fortune to help some people out. Donate to charity. Organise a bake sale. Go on a sponsored walk or shave your head for pediatric cancer. But for Christ’s sake don’t just sit around being miserable because that’s both useless and boring.
I don’t expect it to make sense. He’s old enough to have raised me, but he expects me to be his voice to management. I used to listen to him complain constantly about how management takes advantage of him, and I gently suggested that he talk to them about his concerns.
We had a falling-out when he put me in the middle of a grievance he had with another coworker. I told him quite firmly that if he felt he was being treated unfairly, then he should complain to management. We haven’t spoken much since, and he’s threatened to quit twice.
But then maybe I owed something to him and that’s why he put me in the middle.
Equal rights? Yes. Equal outcomes? Absolutely not. Like I said above, you’re basically committing yourself to never enjoying anything ever again, because even if this co-worker wins the lottery tomorrow there’ll still be a billion poor bastards with awful lives for you to mope over. In all seriousness, if you really don’t feel like you have the right to enjoy anything then maybe you should speak to a professional because it’s clearly damaging and certainly not normal.
You are not selfish for not having children. If more of us didn’t have children the population might go down and a hundred different problems would be solved.
I do think you need to talk to someone so you can get rid of this obsession before it ruins your partner’s life as well as yours. That would be selfish.
Intellectually, I understand, I really do. If this were happening to anyone else, I would probably tell them the same thing.
Working with this bastard has been eye-opening. I had lived a sheltered life - I had never known anyone in truly desperate straits. Before I found out how bad his life was - how relentless his misery was - I casually talked to him about the things I did outside work, what restaurants I would go to after my shift.
I was so naive then! I didn’t realize how cruel I was being, casually talking about such things - I didn’t know that I was talking about restaurant meals to a guy who struggles to eat on food stamps.
But I haven’t chosen not to have children for unselfish reasons - I haven’t denied myself children because of global warming or world hunger. I don’t have children because I don’t want to subordinate my wants to someone else’s needs. I like my alone time. I like being able to finish a book - or even a sentence, as the lady says in the Mirena ad.
I sometimes feel like my coworker is my punishment for a lifetime of selfishness. I’ve arranged my life so that I can meet my needs - and my wants. This is karma.
Have you considered that maybe his situation is his own karma for being such an annoying person?
I’m not saying it is or that all people with problems “deserve” them in some fashion. I’m saying that makes as much sense as your theory.
You’re having an existential crisis. You want to believe we live in a just world. You want to believe in fairness and karma, and you don’t see it. Meanwhile, you’re inflicting misery on yourself and your partner in some kind of twisted version of penance for what you do have. I cannot more strongly urge you to seek out some kind of therapy, perhaps cognitive behavioral therapy to learn to stop these counterproductive thought processes, before you do any more harm to your relationship.
15 years ago I dated a guy for about a month. It didn’t work out but we became friends afterwards. And by friends I guess I mean casual acquaintances who ended up friending each other on Facebook. My BF and I just got back from travelling abroad and posted some pictures. My friend posted on his own wall how he hated to see his “exes getting everything they wanted while (he) had nothing but a broke down car. One of them just got a promotion at work and the other is jetsetting around the world”. It was a pity party and apparently I got the invitation as he left it public. So I liked the status. Must’ve pissed him off as I was defriended right afterwards.
Some people are just Eeyores. I’ve been poor before. Like selling plasma so I can buy a bag of potatoes so I had something to eat for the week kinda poor. It sucked but wallowing in it helped no one.
[QUOTE=OleOneEye]
My partner patiently listens to me talk about this coworker **for hours every day. **
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Seriously? You have an extremely patient partner and with that I’ll second Sleeps With Butterflies’ recommendation of therapy. If you are literally talking about this for hours every day, that’s not healthy at all.
There’s a reason you feel this way. It’s called empathy, and it is a valuable trait of humanity. That is not to say that you should feel guilty for having a better life than another person. After all, there are people who have better lives than you. Would you require that they feel ashamed because they won the lottery or live in a country where gay rights are the norm (I’m making the assumption that you live in the US and that, by your mention of a partner, you’re gay)? Probably not. You’d encourage them to enjoy their advantages, not wallow in mortification.
If you are feeling this guilty over someone else’s problem and you think karma is the cause, go and pay your karmic rent in another way. Donate to a related cause or volunteer with an adult literacy or respite program. You’ll meet plenty of other people who are in straits as dire as your coworker’s but who are looking for help in a healthy way.
It looks to me like the OP is way beyond empathy into codependence.
OleOneEye, losing the ability to take pleasure in things you once enjoyed is a major red flag for clinical depression. You might benefit from visiting your doctor and getting yourself screened.
This will destroy your relationships with your SO and your friends over time, and your own quality of life. If you cannot change it, you need to seek professional help. As others have said, it is not a healthy expression of empathy.