Oh you poor, poor thing. Is that what you’re looking for?
You did create it by letting him walk all over you. As for handling it “correctly”, people here have given you a couple pages of very good advice, but you ignore all of it. Seems to me like you want to keep being the victim.
You’re 38. It’s time to grow up and take responsibility for your own choices, like what you’re doing to your partner. I’ll bet s/he wishes you spent half the time you obsess over this loser on them.
consider porking this dude. it might help, and god knows it can’t make things too much worse.
Was it Maya angelou who said, “when you knew better you did better” so you haven’t spoken to him since and that’s adequate/enough.
I also when you posted your first post thought about that saying about a BrynMawr graduate: crying for other’s problems. Heck I’ve done it, and have had to snap out of it.
The coworker sounds like a real pain but IA w/previous posters: he’s the one who hadn’t better himself and stayed illiterate and uneducated. There are others who raise handicapped famiilies. I thought about the grandmother raising her grandson who had cerebral palsy due to an attack to the grandson’s mother while she was preggers with him…The baby daddy tried to kill the mother so that he wouldn’t have to pay child support payments. He was an NFL player and is now in jail, and the grandmum had been raising the grandson for almost 13 years now. The grandmother says she can’t be steeped in bitterness because what good would that do for her grandson.
By most people standards, I have a pretty miserable life. Rare kidney disease, unrelenting health issues, son just died at 32 , before that we had been trying to get him to want to help himself while trying to keep fed and share our roof which is pretty small ( to those who say you wouldn’t do it, don’t say what you wouldn’t do till you are faced with it) and trying to care for his ten year old son who didn’t ask for any of the crap.
BUT… this is not anyone else’s problem that we have a difficult life healthwise or financially. I have come to believe life is a result of hard work AND luck favoring you oftentimes, and you can make all the right choices and still get hit with things that are beyond your control
But I seriously would not want anyone else to go home and not enjoy their life because mine is challenging. What good would that do? You happen to have a pretty good life by your own admission… enjoy it, give thanks for it, (because a lot of us are a few steps away from a worse life than we want to admit could happen )… honestly go home and stop talking to your partner for hours about it… instead do something that celebrates and shows you are happy with what you have.
I truly think that those who are stuck in miserable situations for the most part will tell you to enjoy what you have to the fullest - he may be just needing to get it out, or he may be hoping that somehow telling you will make his burden less light or he might be secretly wanting some misery loves company… who knows… but trust me… if you have blessings to count… then by golly count them and don’t let anyone stop you! I certainly can tell you I wish I had…
Many best wishes…
Strangeland64/ Sherry 
[QUOTE=The_Peyote_Coyote]
OleOneEye: As a man old enough to be your father, my advice to you would be to grow a spine.
He may be an illiterate because he honestly thought he could by with a strong back and a good work ethic and he needed to help out his family. Even in the '60’s that was a dubious decision
[/QUOTE]
Bolding mine. Oddly enough, it makes me feel a little better hearing this from someone old enough to know.
The simplest answer is, everyone else in my workplace feeds the pity troll - I feel like a big meanie when I don’t.
I’m glad. Part of the problem is, this is my first restaurant job. I have nothing to compare it to. Every so often I try to do a sanity check with my coworkers, but it can be hard to get them to be candid.
I know in theory that kitchens are full of hard luck cases, but I don’t know how typical Willy Loman is. I’m used to being around people who (mostly) have their shit together.
I actually did this once - my reward has been a year’s worth of butthurt. It’s why we haven’t been speaking to each other. He didn’t take it at all well - he looked at me like I’d cut in line or farted in church. I think I broke one of his unstated rules - young women don’t talk back to old men.
[QUOTE=handsomeharry]
Very seriously, do you use a lot of alcohol or other mood altering chemicals? If so, you might want to tone it down a little.
Best wishes.
[/QUOTE]
None at all - I’m always sober as the proverbial judge.
[QUOTE=colander]
consider porking this dude. it might help, and god knows it can’t make things too much worse.
[/QUOTE]
Nothanks. He probably thinks I’m too stuck-up; he can go right on thinking that.
I’m not sure what I expected to get out of this thread. Sanity check, maybe? I’m not very social so I don’t get much practice quickly spotting and dispatching damaged people.
I’m not against the idea of therapy, but I’m cautious. I saw a therapist a few years ago, but, as my partner would tell you, that therapist actively made things worse. He told me I was selfish vis-a-vis my family, but never gave me an adequate definition of what he meant by that. Maybe it was just a bad personality fit. Near as I can tell, “selfish” is when someone wants something from you and you don’t give it to them. Or at least that’s how I usually hear the term used.
And Willy Loman may or may not be leaving. He put in his two weeks’ notice two Sundays ago - he said he was tired of tapdancing around me and that I always win. I know this because I caught a glance at something left casually in plain sight.
I hope I can get better at spotting people like him early.
While I certainly agree that feeling guilty isn’t doing this guy any good, I don’t know why people are trying to say it’s his own fault for not doing better, etc. He may or may not have been able to do better. He’s illiterate. None of us can put ourselves in his shoes. Probably all of us here were literate before we really had any choice in the matter. He might have had a sucky life from the start and the people saying it’s his own fault, might have done worse under the circumstances.
But yeah, he’s just one dude. If you’re feeling bad about people in unfortunate circumstances, there are countless things you can do to help and obsessing over this guy isn’t one of them.
There are plenty of therapists out there, so if one isn’t a good match for you then you can find another one. If you don’t understand something a therapist says to you then you should also ask them to explain what they mean, although it’s a bit surprising that you’d be confused about the meaning of “selfish”. It’s a common English word that you can look up in the dictionary. It doesn’t just mean not giving other people what they want, it means being self-absorbed and fixated on what you want without regard for others.
Is this really going to solve your problem, or are you just going to start obsessing over someone else? While this guy sounds very unpleasant to deal with, you have not reacted in a healthy or normal manner and his leaving isn’t going to change whatever it is about you that caused you to react this way. That’s why people have been recommending therapy.
[QUOTE=Lamia]
If you don’t understand something a therapist says to you then you should also ask them to explain what they mean, although it’s a bit surprising that you’d be confused about the meaning of “selfish”. It’s a common English word that you can look up in the dictionary. It doesn’t just mean not giving other people what they want, it means being self-absorbed and fixated on what you want without regard for others.
[/QUOTE]
The problem is Willy Loman could argue that I was fixated on what I wanted without regard for him. It always looks that way to the person who doesn’t get what they want from others.
When I asked my therapist, he said that being selfish is about using coercion or manipulation to get what you want. But I wasn’t using coercion or manipulation with my family - and he still called me selfish.
He said that if I wanted relationships with people, I needed to care about all their feelings. Trouble is, people can have feelings about absolutely everything. My mother has feelings about me choosing diet soda over water. My grandfather had feelings about me choosing not to practice the family’s religion. Willy Loman had feelings about me choosing to get work done at the end of the day instead of trying to close down early.
In order not to be selfish, I’m held hostage to other people’s feelings.
I don’t know. Perhaps I will be able to spot the next one sooner.
Actually, no, that’s not quite right. I did in fact spot him early, during our first interaction. On our first day in the kitchen, management had kept us later than expected. He hid behind me - “OleOneEye needs to be somewhere.” I responded, “Don’t make this about me.” I felt bad for speaking firmly to an old man so I gave an explanation to soften it. But my intuition was dead-on.
I saw but didn’t want to see. That scares me. My intuition about people is usually right, but I feel like a jerk when I listen to it.
Me me Me I I me I me I me me me me I I I.
That’s only a problem because you’re letting it be a problem. This guy is a creep who you don’t even like, you shouldn’t be wasting your time imagining what he might be able to say against you.
You should be more concerned that your partner, who you presumably care about, is having to put up with hearing you go on and on about the hard life of Willy Loman all the time. Do you think that’s fun for him? I don’t know why your former therapist thought you were being selfish with your family, but I can say that taking someone else’s problems, making them all about you, and expecting endless hours of support and sympathy because you feel bad about something that actually has nothing to do with you seems pretty selfish to me. So maybe you could try not doing that anymore. If you can’t stop then that’s a pretty clear sign you need professional help, because obsessing over something like this isn’t healthy or normal.
A good therapist should be able to help you figure out how to do better next time you meet someone like this.
This is a false dichotomy. You need to establish boundaries and limits as to how much other people’s feelings affect you - there are healthy ways that others impact you and unhealthy ways, but you can’t tell the difference right now. Stop bullshitting us and yourself and find another therapist.
I think your therapist was on the right track when he accused you of being selfish. Self-ish. Your problems with Willy have nothing to do with Willy, they’re all about you.
You see a down on his luck unlovable loser like Willy, and your instinct is to create a drama with yourself as the center, and him as the victimizer, victimizing poor defenseless you with his hard luck sob stories. And then you ruin your partner’s day with your whining about how Willy makes you feel bad about yourself.
See, selfish doesn’t mean you do things for yourself to make yourself feel good. It means everything is about you. Selfish people don’t have to rob or victimize other people or take the biggest slice of cake. A selfish person could take the smallest slice of cake, and then make a big show about it, how they got the small piece and how that makes them feel.
As for being selfish for not wanting kids, GOOD. Selfish people who don’t want kids shouldn’t have kids! When someone accuses you of being selfish for choosing not to have kids, agree with them, and tell them that’s the reason you can’t have kids–you’re too selfish and would make a horrible mother, and thank them for confirming that you made the right decision.
Are you sure your co-worker isn’t a big fat liar?
I’ve got a fairly good recipe for establishing assertive versus aggressive regarding boundaries; aggressive is stepping on other people’s toes. Being a doormat is letting other people step on your toes. Being assertive is not letting other people step on your toes, and also not stepping on other people’s toes. Does that help at all?
I concur—and, as someone who was there, it sounds real familiar.
It’s not always about “did I make sure the electrical outlets are unplugged,” or “are my hands sterile enough.” It can be about abstract concepts, or social issues, or hitch a ride on “liberal/catholic/white guilt.”
It’s insidious. And the more energy you put into it, the more Socratic reasoning you try to apply to it, the tighter the knot gets.
Maybe that’s not the issue. But you know what? Deciding that for sure is above my pay grade as a line of text on a message board. So is fixing it. Counseling, therapy, pills, maybe all of it or none of it would help. That’s what a professional is for.
But unless all you want to do is vent, I can only advise seeing one. Otherwise, just from what I can see written here, you’re not helping yourself, your partner, “Wily,” The World, the starving brainwashed drug-addict HIV+ African child soldier, or anyone else.