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Is it possible to live life ignoring old friends or family who have really messed you up & didn't make the effort when you reached out to them? I thought it similar to bad ex's from long-term relationships, where there was a bond at one time but then two people just have to go their separate ways and get on with it - but my problem is I still love and remember every ex, bad or not, but can live without them. It's only recently that I realised it might not be working for me with friends & family, that for the best part of a decade I have basically lived every day thinking about people who were once close that have hurt me (or I've hurt them, in which case I wish they would have tried to talk about it) & they've went on to mock or ignore any sort of re-connect. I am dreaming about people, I actually just woke up dreaming about running through traffic with someone I considered one of my closest friends in the last few years & that's what made me make this thread. As I think about it I think running across the road to avoid this person recently is probably what my subconscious has worked with, but in my dream we were together playing a game. I am caught between thinking I'm right to just purge/forget people for the sake of my mental health and really feeling like I need them, that I'm not a good person for letting them drift away & that is also making me feel really sad whenever I am alone with my thoughts. I can be a prick, I know I can - but when I apologise for it (or offer to meet up to explain it) and don't get a response I feel completely crap. I myself am feeling forgotten, disposable. These people I am dreaming about and thinking about don't even remember me, they never liked me & they would never put themselves out for me - so what's the point in them? Just circular thoughts that just go over and over again. The obvious suggestion is I should contact these people, but the idea of being ignored or rejected scares the poo poo out of me - in some case it makes me feel like THE POINT of falling out will be skimmed over in the presumption I was in the wrong & we'll go back to being happy families (in one case the point was I didn't feel like the person gave a poo poo about me or my feelings and was being really haphazard with the way they treated me, only to be told to shut up & not contacted for 9 months now) which would drive me mad, I think. Looking at this OP it sounds believable that people I consider close friends are actually just acquaintances that I have had, but these are people I would see every day or every week for fun-times, alone or in a group, for years. Am I mental? What the gently caress kind of close family can not talk for 9 months? Ugh. Posting this, despite thinking twice about it. I'm scared that I'm mad.
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| # ? Feb 27, 2013 11:54 |
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| # ? May 24, 2013 07:13 |
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Do you care because of society's perception of people who burn bridges or something? If you had a valid reason at the time, that doesn't change whatever the number of people. I've cut off quite a lot of people over the years to be honest, but they were friendships I made during a bad time in my life, when I wasn't looking out for my best interests. I'm surrounded by fewer people now, but I can honestly say they are all healthy and positive influences. I have Fuckall Family as well. We're all dysfunctional. It's whatev. Pills, weights, therapy, sever.
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| # ? Feb 27, 2013 12:17 |
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You are not mad. You are obviously distressed about your friends and family losing contact or refusing your company, which is perfectly understandable. From my personal experience, you do seem depressed, especially since you are obsessing over the hows and whys and what ifs of the situation. Some of the way you are feeling may not be rational or true, but I can't make that determination. My main advice to you is to do everything you can to go see a therapist and discuss these issues with them. If your family member's response towards your concerns was to tell you to shut up and then not talk to you for nine months, then they obviously do not wish to have contact with you, for whatever reason. Lose their contact information, because otherwise the hope that the phone will ring (or an email will come, etc) someday and it will be them wanting to reconcile will be floating around in the back of your mind. Ten years is a long time to maintain any peer group, and it is almost inevitable that some members will drift away or leave the sphere abruptly. People change, and they move on. The friends you have, or used to have, liked you as a person, otherwise they wouldn't have spent so much time with you. However, they may no longer have the time or desire to maintain you as a relationship, which while painful, seems to be a normal part of life. Rejection and loss of companionship hurts, many times very badly. A good response to rejection is to learn from the experience and use your new found knowledge on future relationships. This advice is coming from a Bi-Polar man who is on medication and attending regular therapy while attempting to reestablish his life. There are a few friends with whom I have stayed in contact with over the last decade or more who continue to be good friends, but there are many more who have drifted away or severed contact entirely. That's not a complete disaster, or a bad reflection on me as a person or a friend, it just happens. In fact, I am meeting new people and making new friends, so I get to start the long process over again! Also, I might not be entirely coherent, as I am currently experiencing insomnia, so I apologize if this post was a little rambling.
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| # ? Feb 27, 2013 12:39 |
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bunnybean posted:Do you care because of society's perception of people who burn bridges or something? If you had a valid reason at the time, that doesn't change whatever the number of people. I care because I thought these people were my friends & family and even though I say I have "purged" them, in effect all I did was accept they didn't want to try with me any more & move on (I thought, my subconscious says otherwise). When I was in my teens I did the opposite - which was the most harrowing experience of my life, my lowest ebb, I desperately tried to save a relationship and found myself literally begging only to be rejected again. That was one of those classic trade-in friend situations where I was substituted for some cooler kids & it's always going to hurt thinking about it. I had run out of ideas at that point, I obviously had problems & still have some but I think part of me believes I might have went too far in the other direction and not made enough effort, a few sent ignored texts and missed calls is the furthest I was able to take resolving the situation without feeling sick. I learned from that experience alright and am aware I have a lot of relationship issues & try my best to explain those when they crop up, but that takes the kind of patience and understanding I feel I deserve, but rarely seem to get. Pvt.Scott posted:You are not mad. You are obviously distressed about your friends and family losing contact or refusing your company, which is perfectly understandable. From my personal experience, you do seem depressed, especially since you are obsessing over the hows and whys and what ifs of the situation. Some of the way you are feeling may not be rational or true, but I can't make that determination. My main advice to you is to do everything you can to go see a therapist and discuss these issues with them. I feel relatively okay with the burned bridges in my day-to-day life, I realise that there were problems & it was probably the only solution but as I said, I'm dreaming about people & even though I don't realise it they seem to occupy my thoughts constantly. I have had some of the same steady friends for 10+ years & am making new friends all the time, I have quite an active social life & feel like I make a really good effort to talk to people and learn stuff - I make an effort. Maybe it's just the thought that this, as you say, is just the same stuff beginning all over again - & that even the lifelong friends will either drift away or suddenly hate me - that makes me sad.
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| # ? Feb 27, 2013 13:22 |
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When a person you associate with contributes more negative emotion than positive, then you should feel no remorse about removing them from your contact repertoire.  Make new friends.
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| # ? Feb 27, 2013 14:59 |
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Consider that you don't have to burn any bridges. If someone is treating you somewhat badly but not like absolute poo poo, like abusive or anything, and your relationship with them is socially profitable, you don't have to completely cut them out. Just start treating them as second-class in your life. You can be polite or even friendly, but don't go out of your way to help them. To me, friend means something very important and specific. I could call any of the people I consider closest to me regardless of what time it is or what is going on and say "I'm in a spot I need your help" and 9/10 times they will be there as quickly as possible. That kind of relationship doesn't just happen. It is earned over the course of years through a bond of mutual trust, respect, and interest. If you don't have people like this, yeah it's safe to say you don't have any real friends and ought to consider branching out in an attempt to make some. No man is an island, after all, and I hear existential loneliness can be absolutely crippling. Don't get frustrated though, making true friends can be hard and involves hanging out with people that you'll ultimately find aren't worth your time.
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| # ? Feb 27, 2013 15:58 |
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You should get therapy for your anxiety. It really does seem that none of these people have done anything to hurt you, beyond doing exactly what you have which is not stay in touch. In fact the only person you have described as ever being at fault is yourself, where you complain that people have at time not forgiven you for hurting them. I really don't know what the problem is other than your scared to contact people you know.
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| # ? Feb 27, 2013 16:15 |
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Castle Bidimar posted:You should get therapy for your anxiety. I have purposefully not mentioned the drama on other people's part because it's not a question about that - it's about a dream helping me realise there's something going on with my feelings regarding burned bridges, essentially. My thoughts are a bit all over the place on it though, I realise that.
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| # ? Feb 27, 2013 16:46 |
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Everybody is transient. Some people will have a tendency to hang around longer than others, but that won't prevent them from disappearing at some point. I'm a loner and I prefer to remain distant. People didn't respect that at first, so I had pretty much had to cut them off for my own sanity. I don't regret it at all. Some may understand, some won't. It doesn't really matter. Friends should be a compliment to your life, not a necessity.
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| # ? Feb 27, 2013 17:05 |
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People drift apart, it's no big deal when it happens. I don't think this is completely independent of the drama, though--I guess it seems like some lack of closure or something to the drama seems like it might be why you're so anxious about it.
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| # ? Feb 27, 2013 17:48 |
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| # ? May 24, 2013 07:13 |
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Dude, don't make life decisions based on dreams. Like full-stop.
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| # ? Feb 27, 2013 18:19 |
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