Pitting my damn self for being weak.

The BBQ Pit
1

I’m really, really bad at holding grudges or being angry with people. Someone does something crappy to me? I usually just let it go after a day or two. I’ve realized lately that I’m a doormat. I’ve developed a reputation among my friends that they can treat me like shit and I’ll put up with it.

Here’s the thing. I was married two months ago. We invited a lot of people to our wedding, and we had a lot of people we loved come - some were delayed or deterred by the hurricane, which was understandable. We know that a hurricane in FL threatening their homes is a bit more important than a wedding and they were there in spirit. My godfather was unable to attend, but did something so beautiful for us that I still get tears in my eyes thinking about it - my best friend from NYC had a serious cash flow issue due to his company not paying him for two months and wasn’t going to be able to come - kind of a problem, since he was my husband’s best man, too. We didn’t have the money to get him a train ticket, and I ended up crying to my dad on the phone. Twenty minutes later, I get a call from my godfather telling me that he doesn’t like any of the stuff on our registry and he’s sending us money to get my friend to VA. These are the majority of the kind of people we have in our lives, and we consider ourselves very, very lucky.

However, there are two residual situations that I can’t seem to let go of, and I know it’s my own fault, but I can’t help it.

The first - let’s call her “Michelle”. Michelle and I were best friends in high school. Our mothers were very good friends. We were inseparable until we got to college. Then, all of a sudden, I was dropped like a hot potato. I was hurt, quite obviously. For years, she’d throw a bone my way and I’d go running until finally, I said enough. I thought I was over it. Then I get a wedding invitation. I decided not to go, but my mother bought her a small gift from me. No thank you note. You’d think I would have learned my lesson by now, right? Fast-forward to the baby shower. I had a bad vibe about it, and begged my mother to let me out of it, but she asked me to go as a favor to her. Funnily enough, Michelle expressed congratulations over my recent engagement and said she was looking forward to the wedding. Maybe I’m crazy, but that would say to me that she was coming to the wedding.

My bridal shower. She didn’t come, and neither did her mother. Keep in mind, her mother was the one who called the brow-beat mine when my mom wasn’t going to be able to attend her daughter’s shower. But hmm, neither came. Shocking. At this point, I wasn’t holding out much hope for the wedding - and as tacky as it may sound, I just wanted the damn gift after everything she’s put me through. Her parents came, but guess who wasn’t there? SHOCKER! So now I’m done with her. But my mother is still friendly with her, and I can’t help but feel a little betrayed. She keeps forwarding me baby pictures, and I can’t seem to get the balls to tell her to quit it. However, next time she has a baby shower (which she will, even though it’s a second baby - she seems to have no problem accepting gifts without reciprocating).

Second friend - we’ll call her Anna. Anna is a friend of mine from an email group who became a close friend in real life. When I lived in NYC, she lived in Jersey. She came to the city often, we went clubbing or out to lunch when she was at her NYC office. I went to Jersey to visit her all the time. We talked constantly and when she got engaged, I was thrilled. I put up two of our other out-of-town friends for her wedding, went to New Jersey, spent money on a hotel room, clothes, a gift, food, etc. All of which I was happy to do because she was my friend.

Two years ago - she moved to Colorado. We still talked on the phone often and via email. When she found out that I was dating my husband (who was also in our email group and she’d met him before I had), she was our biggest champion. She was always excited to hear about our relationship. When we got engaged, she made plans to come to the wedding.

Six weeks before the wedding, I haven’t heard from her in months (she didn’t answer any of my IMs or emails, and I always got voice mail on her phone). Then I find out she’s pregnant. I’m excited for her. Then she drops the bomb - she’s not coming to the wedding because her doctor has told her not to travel. Now, she’s 8 weeks along, has no medical problems and it’s her first pregnancy. There’s a seed of doubt in my head, but I let it go. Since the wedding? She’s emailed me to tell me about the baby. She didn’t send a gift, send a card, or even say congratulations to us. Now I’m not so willing to let it go. I’m fucking pissed. I didn’t expect the world to stop for our wedding. But I did expect my friends to at least congratulate us or send a card, especially considering all I did for her wedding three years ago. So the last time we spoke in IM, I was cold to her. I know she’s wondering why, but if she digs a little, she might realize why.

So what did I find myself doing last night? Looking on her baby registry for a gift to send to apologize for being so cold.

What the FUCK am I doing? I don’t blame them for my inability to hold a grudge. I blame myself for not realizing when people are treating me like shit and acting accordingly. WHAT THE FUCK do I have to apologize for??? I should apologize because she never even acknowledged our wedding?? (Except a brief ‘How’s married life?’ in IM - yeah, that works :rolleyes: ).

I’ve had it. I let people treat me like shit way too much and that’s it. It has nothing to do with our wedding, but our wedding was the last straw to a lot of incidents where I’m the one making more of an effort to friendship.

But still - why the fuck am I so weak? Why am I willing to forgive anyone and everyone for being a bastard to me? THAT is what I need to work on, not these friendships. I need to learn when to let go of people to keep myself emotionally healthy. And I have no idea how to do that.

Ava

2

I learned to stop being a victim of other people’s thoughtlessness and insensitivity when when it just started hurting too much. Part of what I was doing wrong was finding self-worth in other’s opinion of me, and thinking that the more friends I had the better off I was. I realized that someone who could hurt me so callously was no true friend at all, so I just quit giving a shit what they thought. As a result, I focused more on the meaningful relationships and developed them further. One true friend who you only see once a year is better than any number of jacklegs blowing smoke up your ass on a daily basis.

Find out who really cares for you. Give them your love. Don’t let anyone tell you how to think, or what you should be feeling or doing. If someone makes you feel guilty about something, sit back and think about whether they are justified in doing so. Do you react to negative criticism with an immediate “I’m sorry”? If so, stop it. Trust yourself. You are a good person, at least as far as I can tell from reading your posts.

People who lie, or cheat, or manipulate, or use you for their purposes are beneath your attention.

Good Luck.

TRT

3

When you hold a grudge, it is you who is bearing all the weight. Remember that it is the forgiver whom forgiveness heals. God go with you, Avabeth.

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You know, you can forgive someone whom you’ve since dropped as a friend, without going back to being their friend.

5

Lib said it, avabeth.

Forgiveness is not something that you do for another, but something that you do within yourself, for yourself – so that you are not carrying the burden of a grudge. Most people have to look deeply within themselves to find the place where such forgiveness becomes possible.

It sounds like you’re blessed with a forgiving nature – one that finds it difficult to hold a grudge. That does not, mean, however, that you should get “WELCOME” tattooed on your back and lie down on the doorstoop for people to wipe their feet on.

When people are being callous and unthoughtful towards you, it’s often best to place some emotional “distance” between you and them, until and unless they wake up and realize what it is that they’ve done – and don’t hold your breath waiting for that, because often they just plain will never realize how they have hurt you – it’s not in their makeup to do so.

W/R/T “Michelle” that is exactly what you need to do. She is an egotistic bitch who has played you in the past like a well-tuned violin, and the less you occupy yourself with her and her self-aggrandizing games, the better off you will be spiritually.

W/R/T/ “Anna” it’s not so clearcut. A move, a difficult pregnancy, the cutting off of regular contact by virtue of being far apart – she may have simply “lost track of you” emotionally: you’re no longer a part of her life. With her, if the personalities (her and yours) are appropriate to make it the proper course, I’d simply be upfront with her about what’s bothering you. And you would have to admit that, much as it hurts, it is a little petty – from what I know of you, you value people and their friendships much more than material gain from them. A ploy of asking her forgiveness for being hurt about her slight, and cold to her in consequence, might wake her up to what she did to your feelings – and heal the breach.

6

FWIW, I don’t want to hold grudges. That’s just not the kind of person I am. I was using it as an example because I just can’t seem to hold them very long.

Thanks, I needed to hear that. And I do know who really cares about me - my husband, my best girlfriend, my former roommate, etc. And you’re right - I need to spend my time concentrating on them, the ones who do love me.

I do respond to criticism by immediately backing away and wondering what’s wrong with me. I need to stop doing that. I don’t think I’m a bad person - I could use some work, obviously, but that’s true with everyone. I have a couple of friendships that I need to work on, but those friendships are two-way streets - I’m upset when I know I’ve hurt someone and I want to do something to fix it, and they feel the same way. Those friendships are certainly healthy for me. These two are definitely not.

Lib, you’re absolutely right. I know I need to forgive them, but there’s that part of me that keeps thinking “But I didn’t do this. Why do I need to make the effort?”. But it’s something I need to work towards doing - and I’m finding it more difficult than I expected.

Matt, you’re right, too. And see my response to Lib - I’m trying to be the bigger person, but it’s hard. And I’m afraid that in my finding it in myself to forgive them, they’re going to pull the same old tricks and I’m going to go running yet again. I don’t have much faith in myself to resist it.

Polycarp, as usual, what you say cuts straight to what I’m feeling.

I guess the part I’m having problems with when it comes to Anna is that she’s asking me to be emotionally invested in her life and in her emotions, yet can’t or won’t do the same for me. I’ve made excuses for her for quite awhile now - this was truly the event that pushed me over the edge. One of the things that really bothers me is that if enough attention isn’t paid to various things in her life (ie her move, her house, her baby, her wedding) then she cuts off those she feels has slighted her - including me (because in my fawning over her various events, I neglected to tell her how much I liked her new house). I also felt like she was using the pregnancy as an excuse not to attend. If it was a money situation, if she doesn’t have the time or wants to save vacation for maternity leave, or anything like that, I would have completely understood. But the excuse of the early pregnancy was presented to me in such a way that it felt like even she didn’t believe it, so I came away feeling like I was undervalued in the friendship. And the lack of acknowledgment to my marriage just felt like another nail in the coffin.

And you’re right - I would rather have had my friends at the wedding than have gotten ANY gifts. THEY are the people I love, I couldn’t have cared less about the gifts and would have traded them all for my friends’ presence. while I know that feeling is mutual with most of my friends, I’m starting to learn the hard way that I overestimate some of my friendships and they don’t feel the same way. I’m trying to come to terms with that.

I’m going to try with her one more time - and this time, I’ll tell her how much she hurt me. I hate the idea of missing her baby’s birth because this drove us apart, but I know I’ll just be wondering how long it will take until I’m undervalued and overlooked again. Maybe if I speak up for myself, we can finally solve this issue.

But forgiveness is something that I need to work on. I’m more than aware of that now. Thanks to each of you for your responses. I’ve taken them very much to heart.

Ava