Bob asks: I have this pattern where people I hold as important to me do not find me all that important. The best man at my wedding would never have dreamed of me as worthy of being more than a guest at his wedding. My friends who I would have liked to have asked to house a visiting woman from a long-distance relationship, would barely ask me to do anything.
I don’t know how this plays into the dating-after-being-widowed that I am doing, but it can’t be helping, right? That’s mostly an exercise to see if the Venn diagrams of ‘women I like’ and ‘women who like me’ will ever overlap.
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You have an underlying belief that you are not important, not ‘good enough’, and this leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Your interpersonal relationships are feeding this narrative because one of two things is happening:
You are subconsciously elevating people that you on some level recognise are not holding you in similar regard. Aligning yourself with people who you believe don’t value you, is a protective mechanism to defend against intimacy. This is similar to when someone’s romantic interest heightens when they know that their affections aren’t or won’t be reciprocated. They get to be ‘right’ and to avoid putting themselves out there, reinforcing their perception that they are indeed not worthy and lovable. You’re essentially setting you up to fail.
Or, your friends do consider you to be important but you are projecting your feelings about you on to them. Again, this also protects you from intimacy within these relationships. What does believing that your friends don’t consider you to be important allow you to do or not do? What do you get to keep telling yourself?
Really it’s a toss-up between having not-so-good friends, or genuine friends who maybe you don’t value quite as much as you think.
Valuing someone isn’t just about the esteem that we perceive ourselves to hold them in but what we do with these people–the matching of actions, intentions, feelings. This means that we express our innermost feelings and thoughts to those we value. We ask for help, we might ask for the odd favour, or we might honour them with certain big ticket tasks, like being a best man, godparent, the person we call first when something terrible happens, or the one we break down on when it all gets too much. They are often quite simply the people we are most ourselves with.
What you have to ask yourself is whether your friend was the best man for the job? I am all too familiar with the politics of weddings and I’m a big believer that it’s best to ask people, not with a view of whether they will ask you in the future but whether they are the person we want at our side in that moment. And actually, to be a guest at someone’s wedding is valuable, believe me. Most people don’t invite guests willy-nilly.
You also might have ten people in your circle of trust in terms of friendship but your best man might have twenty or thirty and there may be little overlap so you might not know the length and breadth of the other connections relative to your own with him. He may have friendships that run back to childhood or a sibling that could easily mean that yes, he values you but they might be first in line as best man.
Then there’s this long-distance woman. To be fair, Bob, odds are that it was most appropriate for her to stay with you or in a hotel. I imagine she would have thought it was weird to stay at your friend’s and it might have been awkward for them too. I get that you wanted to ask but does that mean that they have to want to ask something similar?
Is a friendship’s mettle purely about whether we’re asked to do something?
Also, there isn’t anything stopping you from asking. Friendship isn’t about building up credit to ask, as if you have to do for them before they can for you. I don’t know that we ask our friends for that many things anyway. It’s not like olden times when, for instance, we all lived on the same square like in Eastenders, lived in each other’s pockets and kept asking for cups of sugar and to go to the pub.
I say all of this to you because I think you might be being too hard on yourself and your friendships, looking at things from a lens of unimportance and being ‘not good enough’ and that filter significantly impacts the way in which you conduct yourself. It can cause loneliness, the emotional state that occurs when you’re adrift from people you could be close with, because you have stopped sharing your innermost feelings and thoughts. If you keep second-guessing whether you ‘should’ say or do something, ultimately little happens.
You mention being widowed: that’s a big loss which in itself can cause a great deal of disconnection in friendships, surprisingly. You might worry about being a burden on people, fearing that they might spend time with you out of pity not because they want to, or some people do avoid you, not because they don’t like you but because they don’t know how to deal with your loss.
Us humans can be funny creatures, crossing the road when we see the bereaved because we don’t know what to say or because in some instances, yes, we don’t want that person to ‘rain on our parade’. We want them to tell us that they’re “fine”, not to hear any truth. Some people can be incredibly insensitive, worrying more about having even numbers at the dinner table than your feelings or even feeling that you ‘should’ be ‘over it’ by now because it’s been X amount of years or even because you’re a man.
It’s also very possible that your friends don’t ask you to do certain things because they don’t want to burden you in light of your widowhood.
Have you ever considered that maybe, just maybe, being widowed has impacted your self-image, particularly around how you feel in a social context?
The truth is, widowed or not, who you like and who likes you, are not always going to overlap.
Part of that is life, but some of this will be exacerbated if you have a tendency to like people because they don’t like you. You have to be careful of disinterest being your ‘hook’, that thing that causes you to feel invested in the idea of being involved with someone. Disinterest can, for some people, be what makes a person valuable. They might seem more in alignment with your image of you. If a woman were chasing you down, you might not feel as interested. It wouldn’t chime with the pattern of you always being under the pedestal. And, yes, it definitely won’t help in your dating life.
Where do you go from here, Bob? Get honest with you about these friendships and what’s really going on and try to identify the baggage behind this—how does this pattern relate to an earlier experience that you took as a lesson about your lack of importance? Be honest with you about how that experience along with widowhood, influences your thoughts, feelings and behaviour within your interpersonal relationships and think of 2-3 small things that you can ask friends to do, not as a test, but to allow you to be more vulnerable in these friendships by allowing you to rely on them a bit.
It is clear that you want to feel important and that means that you are going to have to value you but also value these friendships beyond sentiment and allow you to be truly intimate within them.
Write down a list of all of the women you have liked versus the ones you haven’t, noting the reasons, details about the woman, how you feel around them or when you think about them. Odds are, there’s a pattern. Are they all long distance? Do you have a type? What is it that makes the women you like interesting? What makes the others unattractive to you? That will help you to recognise where you’re tripping yourself up and potentially reinforcing a negative belief that protects you from vulnerability.
It’s very possible, Bob, that only being interested in those who don’t reciprocate protects you from allowing you to get close enough to someone that they might leave or you might lose them. You lost the woman you loved and married and that must have been devastating but, if you allow you, you will live to love again.
Have you had similar concerns about being valued in your relationships? Do you tend to feel interested in people who aren’t interested in you? What advice can you offer Bob?
Thank you to everyone who has submitted questions for this feature. No further submissions are being accepted. If you are a podcast listener, there is the option to submit questions for that feature at podcastATbaggagereclaim.com.
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Warm Christmas wishes and hugs to Natalie and BR friends, haven’t posted on here for a while.
Bob, I can relate very well – my own experience is that sometimes there has to be some inequality in friendships, e.g. most of mine have partners and tight-knit family and I don’t, so I’m bound to be a lower priority to them than they are to me. But as I’ve learned more from BR, these friendships have strengthened on both sides and crucially, expectations are very in tune with the reality. I don’t see scales of importance but instead that our friendship is something special in its own right which works for both. It was fine in context that a friend offered to attend my graduation, while I’d never expect her to invite me to hers, which is similar to your wedding scenario. I would do the same for someone in that position.
This theme speaks so much to my past, spending most of my adulthood trying to win men who could not give me what I wanted and who sometimes exploited this urge, an urge to right the wrongs of the past, which was based in particular family members who were also detached for their own reasons. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy, with the constant refrain that I’m not important and a lot of anger – they don’t care about me, so I don’t matter – not realising that I was putting all my energy into people (men, friends, acquaintances, colleagues etc.) who were unwilling or unable to prioritise me? How could they fill the hole left by closer family, and why should they?
This year has been a great success in breaking the mould. Some important moments:
1. Getting out of a textbook unavailable relationship with someone who was like kryptonite thrown in my path, but I soon issued an ultimatum that got me free and out of the ambiguity, when before I would have humiliated myself and been putty in his hands.
2. Not pursuing a man who I felt a ‘strong connection with’, after seeing that he was too close to his ex and he’d been on and off with someone of superficial interest. Before I would have risen to the challenge and chased him, but instead I told myself, he’s not fully available and if that’s his taste in women, he isn’t to my taste. He lost the attraction.
3. A few instances where people haven’t been interested in me and I’ve gone, ‘meh, so what?’ instead of trying to win them over. But I’ve found that since I’ve dropped the people pleasing, people do seem a lot more interested – I think it gives off a different energy.
4. My last dating experience was short-lived but he broke the pattern, and was far more decent, smart, attractive, the whole lot, than the illusions of men I’d chased after in the past. We ended it respectfully and I was left optimistic that I’m looking in the right places and have changed my instincts!
5. This was all done by filling the void myself – following my interests, enjoying and appreciating people without expectations of them, being healthy and having coping mechanisms like writing, running. If anyone had told me I could stop desiring unavailable men, I’d have been sceptical. It’s exciting to see so much change.
That is awesome! I am the beginning stages of that change too, recognizing unavailable men and not wasting my time and inviting unnecessary pain in my life, focusing on myself and loving me. Good for you! Keep it going!
Really appreciate the encouragement! It’s true what Natalie has said about life throwing the same lessons at you until you learn, knowing that means you can be grateful for those pesky tests. Have a fabulous 2017, full of possibilities out of all that time you’re saving!
Wow happyb, your comment really inspired me and made me feel pretty encouraged about my own journey. I’ve employed alot of the same things that you’ve been doing too, and have never felt more positive and less anxious about life. Points number 3 and 5 particularly hit home for me.
This post speaks so much to my past as well, and something I’m still trying to come to terms with: give-and-take in relationships/friendships as well as finding/appreciating people who really value me. I used to hold back alot in my interactions with people and then blamed them for not caring about me. But I now realise it’s difficult for them to know what I’m really going through if I didn’t even want to verbalise it in the first place. It’s scary being vulnerable but at least you get to know pretty quickly who will stick around and who wouldn’t! I also learnt to let go of people who weren’t interested in me/my life and were never there/did not want to be there for me in difficult times. It hurts at first, and it messed with my self-esteem at first but I do think acknowledging that and letting go of such relations and spending time on those who cherish you makes me feel much better.
Hope you had a Merry Christmas and here’s wishing you a very Happy 2017 full of love and positivity 😀
‘Blamed them for not caring about me’ – yes exactly, a lot of anger and sadness comes out of that. It’s also painful to realise you’re clinging on to people who don’t really value you. It still brings a twinge of pain to think of people years ago who I overshared with and thought had all the answers. It does make the enduring friendships stronger if they can evolve out of that, even if they’re very few (only two from that period, in my case).
Merry Christmas to you too! May 2017 be filled with friendship and love.
Rob, it’s not in your head. It sounds like your “friends” are being brats and don’t feel like stepping up into the agreement you made when becoming friends. They’re slacking off, not you. Don’t put yourself down when you’re better than they are. Find the people that value you and stick with them. Screw the rest.
This came at a perfect time for me. I finally realized that all the men in my family and friends and ex-husband etc have been badly damaged.
I don’t know what a ‘good’ relationship looks like. So I have dumped them all. I’ve been educating myself and am now carefully screening all of them. I keep repeating, love, care, respect, and trust. This has led to my finally feeling all my emotions. It’s been hard.
I’m skipping a lot here but I think I have a friend who genuinely cares. So what do I do but project some of my feelings unto him. I do this because I’m scared of admiting I like this person and he may actually like me. Your post helped me to understand and hopefully helped me to not disrespect our budding friendship. I offered a kind of appology so I hope that will do. Blessings to all.
Mistea, when you ditch the ones who do you no good, see them for what they are and start to rebuild meaningful relationships, it’s all rewarding but can be isolating to begin with. On this friend, whatever he feels about you and wherever it’s going.. when you’re potentially overinvesting, stop and ask yourself, what is missing in my life? What can I do to feel more fulfilled? How can I move on from this ruminating and emotional dependence one person? I don’t mean that to sound at all harsh, it’s what I’ve learned to do because I have a tendency to get carried away and until there is an unambiguous mutual commitment, no one should take up so much thought and energy.
*on one person
I wish I could give advice but I don’t really have any because I’m kind of in the same situation. I’m still learning how to differentate genuine care from me just wanting to prove my underlying belief that I’m not good enough. I think keep trying will help, I guess.
Good luck, Bob
Great post. I have learned over the course of time that we have to simply let people be people and not take the actions of others personally. They come to us with their own baggage/experiences, fears and expectations that can be unknown to us, but that drive their behaviors. We also can be most pleasantly surprised. I was widowed several years ago and started to develop more sincere friendships with women. My circle grew gradually, such that when I was facing a serious health challenge, my circle of friends surrounded me with love and support that was invaluable and has aided my recovery. I feel so blessed that notwithstanding many difficult circumstances, I am living a good life of love and support. My dating life has been sketchy and filled with unavailable men (a personality trait that I did not know existed as I was married for 30 years to a wonderful, available man), but I trust that as I continue to enjoy just “being me”, the right person will come along.
Beverly, so true, part of building self esteem is to learn where you end and others begin, and to understand what is and isn’t your doing. I’ve also built up wonderful friendships with women in recent years, which is quite new to me after finding myself competing with them in my lost decade with a narcissist in my life. You sound resilient and lovely, great that you didn’t let your dating experiences drag you down and instead built up loving friendships.
Ouchie!
I’m so sorry. . .I think some things may have been missed. There’s a 3rd possibility, Nat etc. that goes back to the original point: That Bob is actually not important to these friends.
It’s harsh, I’m so sorry, but if Bob sensed he was unimportant, he shouldn’t ignore those feelings b/c he may be right. Nat was very kind not to say that directly but I think it’s a little irresponsible to ignore what Bob said himself about his relationships. I think the question is more like how do I deal with the shock that I am unimportant to my “friends” as well as the death of my spouse not the question Nat answered, which is am I unimportant or not and why.
If there was a lack of emotional intimacy in the friendships in the first place, yes, people will disappear and not step up in times of great need — the well is too deep when there wasn’t one dug, so to speak.
If he never opened up or very little and now needs to open up upon the death of his wife? People won’t go for that, can’t — it’s zero to 100.
Playing a role (best man) doesn’t NECESSARILY require emotional intimacy. It sounds like to me the Best Man figure is a reminder of the dead wife, and that guy did not step up, as expected, given he played that role in the past. The ROLE did not weigh up to the depth of the RELATIONSHIP, it was just a space-filler in the other person’s life.
It sounds to me like the friends he had are not appropriate for where he is now. That means new friends, IMHO — maybe like a men’s support group, something like that — where the quick intimacy is forced due to similar circumstances and see if something real develops from there — kind of kill two birds with a stone sort of vibe.
Sorry for your losses — sometimes in life, one loss leads to a ripple effect of other losses, at which point you might have to start over. That’s kind of what others have said more briefly and I feel like I agree there.
I went through a similar kind of “shedding” of unavailable relationships like a reptile’s skin — I don’t think relationships are as reliable as they were generations ago before a lot of distractions influenced peoples emotions. People think sending a text is enough, a proxy for physically showing up. It’s not.
I think you make a very good point.
I find the idea that you have to ask friends to show a little concern very disheartening. Where is the insight and awareness……….or is it just a one way street?
The sad fact is people are wrapped up in their own lives and if you are the type of person who does not want to feel like a burden…………..you will be left in the shadows.
I have noticed over the years, that in order to get support you have to be quite self centered. Its a bit of a conundrum, because the ones that need the most support are the ones that are the least self centered.
This is a wake up call, to sharpen up my elbows and start being way more demanding.
Bob,
I had two thoughts as I was reading your problem and the resulting answers. First, I thought of a lovely man I dated about two years after a narcissistic relationship ended. Tom (the lovely person) was so kind and giving that he greatly healed my heart for which I will always be grateful. However, I noticed a pattern with him that virtually guaranteed that he would be invisible and taken advantage of: he never asked directly for what he wanted but kind of guilted or implied. I am very direct and a strange thing would happen: he would end up being my victim. He would give and give and give to everyone in his life yet few returned what he gave. He wore clothes that cloaked him in a look of a street person when he could have been a handsome man. He mumbled, kept his head down, and just radiated invisible non-importance. After awhile, I felt really impatient with his victim role. I would call him to talk and he would mumble and barely speak. I would compliment him and he would turn it away. All his relationships were based on him being used by others. I don’t know that he felt valued or worthy unless he was over giving. Sadly, it did not take too long before I got tired of walking on tip-toes around his easily hurt ego. His parents died when he was young and I think he felt eternally orphaned, lived out of his car, house sits for a living etc. My though about you is this: are you projecting an invisible, I am not important vibe?
Secondly, I thought about me and how — in my original family — I am not valued. Well, I am by some but not others. Which is odd to me because I am the oldest and I raised my 6 brothers and sisters at the expense of my own childhood. I left home at 16 and got far far away and I suspect there are feelings of abandonment or something. I have created a wonderful circle of trust so I am treated well in my close circle but I have noticed that, at work, I am getting the same treatment of disrespect from some of the narcissists here. After Tom — who is a year behind me in life — I began to look at how I project “I don’t matter but you do” vibes. I realize now that I set up a resentment by putting people on pedestals and then expecting them to read my mind and needs just like Tom did to me. Tom was a very valuable lesson in both invisibility and resentment, how cloying and yucky it is to be guilted. I called it “kneeling at me feet.” He would kneel at my feet then get mad as if I’d put him one down to me. I got tired of making him stand up again and again to be my equal. And I began to realize I do that to my family, too. I have given them the power to reject me and then played the victim and resented them for it.
Out of it I have a new behavior: “Don’t chase. Don’t plead. Speak my need.” And I am having different results. Good luck, I think asking the question is an act of courage that will get you to the right answer.
I second the recommendation for a men’s group or even a bereavement group. Bob was married, and had (I’m assuming, if it was a functional marriage) a sense of importance that is intrinsic to a shared functional household. You don’t even think ‘am I important’, you just are. Bob’s sense of importance would have been heavily influenced by a shared household / partnership – and without that taken for granted partnership, of course questions will come where you interpret social connections for their heavy implications for your self worth.
Its possible that Bob never really turned to these friends for emotional needs and now sees that they are not really there for the turning. What I mean is – on losing a spouse, it feels like one is now all needs. There is the bereavement which makes you feel adrift and lost, the loss of shared routine, domesticity, non-planned intimacy, shared friends, and also the loss of all the emotional support that a spouse provides that friends cannot (or are not in the habit of) providing and nor can dates.
Bob needs new friends and a new circle, or to see his old friends in new ways because now he’s making new demands on these old friends. Some of them will definitely step up, and some won’t. It might also be time to reach out to family since with family we are nearly always important. I also agree that you cant wait for others to reach out to you – you have to do it yourself especially if you need them because of having a tough time in life – surely there are some friends that you can write to and say ‘I’m feeling a bit adrift, would you like to do a movie night’ etc. And if people don’t respond, then thats fine too. Its not a once and for all judgment on your worth in this world.
I think sometimes I need a comment like this to bring something that’s been niggling at me into focus so that I can put my finger on it. Thank you, Corinna. You’ve given me some clarity about this feature.
@Corinna, this was super insightful and I personally think the third possibility of Bob being (and already feeling in his gut) that he was unimportant to his friends could be the thing that he was trying to address. I struggled with this alot in my younger years and he took it all right out of my thoughts.
I do think there’s alot of one-sidedness to relations like that and very often one person feels very under-valued. There could be an issue of emotional intimacy, and not wanting to share details about your life yet expecting people to read your mind and be there for you. That was an issue I had to deal with and I learnt to open up to others. The real litmus test comes when you have difficulties and some people just don’t want to/won’t lend a helping hand or won’t return a huge favour. Done too many times and I feel that one needs to start finding other friends and not place too much value on people who don’t value us as much.
I wanted to share something because this entry reminded me of it.
I once had a date with a young widower. I thought he was quite handsome and smart, from the conversations we had before we met. We were introduced to eachother by a dating website. The minute I actually met him in person he looked disappointed. Like he felt let down. But we went ahead with the date anyways.
We were visiting an art museum. The hour I was with him he could not tell me enough about his wife who passed away the year before. First I thought it was a passing remark, but it continued for the hour we had the date. Paintings reminded him of their wedding and he felt like he had to tell me how they met and how pretty she was. This has created almost a panic in me; I was trying to come up with excuses to bail. The fact he was talking about her probably has not much to do with me, but more with him processing his grief.
At the time I did not understand that. I was younger and inexperienced in dating.
If it was me now I would just probably say something and excuse myself. But it was kind of a painful learning lesson. I ended up letting him know how I felt, as politely as possible when he asked me out on a second date. Of course he never responded to my message. Like many people who simply ghost online.
Not saying this is what Bob would do or feel like, but as an example being on the other side of an equation of a person who has lost someone.
I also need to add, I can relate to Bob as well.
A year and a half ago I ended a relationship with someone who unbeknownst to me was leading a double life. The experience was excruciating and at the end I felt destroyed. The depth of lies I uncovered was breath taking. My own denial and blindess to shady behavior and red flags was like never in my life. I hit an all time low. There were times I wanted to end my life. I felt so ashamed for valuing myself so little, not ask questions and investigate what felt wrong. I grieved lost time and the illusion of this person. The whole time he looked me dead in the eye and lied every time I was with him.
After this experience my whole life fell apart. Shattered and things fell away one by one. My eyes opened and I started seeing my relationships with family and friends for what there were. Most of them felt unbalanced. It felt like I was giving way more then receiving. 90% of my social circle had to go. I am still going through the “darkness of soul”. What I am realizing is that I came to this point because I don’t really know my own value. It’s sad. I am learning now that it’s essential if I want to be valued. It’s a very challenging process. And it often feels lonely with majority of people out of my life. I am lot more cautious getting to know people. I go slow and examine how meeting new people make me feel and how balanced these interactions feel.
There are days I still feel despair. But there are days I feel stronger than before because there is this sense I can be my own advocate.
I agree with some of the posts here. If it feels like some of these people don’t value you, do not ignore that feeling. Seek out people who make you feel good.
Easier to say then done 😉
Bob,
For decades I turned away (and even lashed out at) good people who wished me well and pursued people who really didn’t care, or worse, were very abusive.
Finally, at 32, I stared to trust people who value me.
I don’t know what advice to give except that logic and thinking practically about your relationships is necessary.
I realized I didn’t have to try at friendships with people who didn’t like me. That frees you up to pursue actual relationships with people who care. I can’t remember where all I’ve heard it, I know I’ve read it here but: You’re not for everyone.
It’s quite liberating when you realize there will be people who won’t like you. I promise there will be people who do.
Hallo, first up wishing everyone a baggage-free, baggage reclaimed new year!
So. . .I wanted to add a perspective a little different from many people but that touches on what people have said. I think Bob needs a script, sort of like those 12-steppers “Hello, my name is Bob and I’m a widower.” Add, “I need XYZ” as a tagline and he’d be set. This will help weed out current people in his circle as useful or useless to him at this time in his life, as well as field and screen new people.
A script takes all the volatile emotions out of it, adds a bit of objectivity b/c everyone is told the same thing and reduces the pressure off himself as feeling unworthy, a burden, etc.
Me personally, as a musician, I meet, greet, and discard a *very* wide range of, um, personalities. I had to learn rather quickly not to get swept up in others b/c creative types? OH MAN! Lots of energy, both positive and negative, to say the least! And, as a woman, dealing with men, a lot of weird stuff happens.
I wrote about it a little bit a few posts back. To elaborate a little bit for this topic — I ended up dealing with people, most of them new to me, with a script. Here’s my terms, here’s what I expect, here’s the circumstances by which we can move forward. It’s clear, and, by the way, on my website for you to read. And I don’t waiver, adjust, get sweet talked, swept away and absolutely don’t deal with any bullshit.
I want other people around, it’s healthy to not want to be isolated. I LITERALLY want to play well with others. But not at the expense of my value, oh no.
Now. I’m *new* to doing all of this. And, it ain’t easy. But, I think what is happening is, it gives me a new perspective, and new lease on life, when I can say to someone point blank with very little emotion b/c it’s business: “Look here, I like you and all of that creativity or whatever. But things need to be 50/50, understand? Sign here that you understand, okay? Thanks.” And, to watch/hear ’em scatter when 50/50 isn’t met. I mean, c’mon — I could see balking at a 70/30 deal, but even-steven? That don’t make no sense.
So. . .in a crisis such as Bob’s where at a minimum he needs EQUAL relationships and, perhaps in a time of need a balance of more that favors him, at least temporarily==yeah, I think what people have said about taking stock of emotional availability, etc. is good. But do it with a script — I think Nat’s advice of reaching out to people is good on it’s face, but it will get messy without something prepared that he tells everyone equally to sort through it all. He needs to tell some of those uneven folks that he now needs things to be more balanced, moving forward and some of the more even relationships that he needs a little more while he grieves — on HIS terms, not theirs.
“Hi, my name is Bob. As a widower, I need a few casseroles I can stick into the freezer to eat b/c my late wife made those and now, without her, I am starving and spending too much on restaurant meals.”
“Hi, my name is Bob. As a widower starting to date anew, I’m not ready for a new woman in the bed my late wife and I shared. I need someone to help me get a new one and also put up my lady friend for a night while I’m out shopping.”
Like so.
Why do you always have this need TO GIVE people who mistreat you? Do not be a giver. Period!
Constantly giving someone without much of getting back from them creates an enormous imbalance in a relationship. Guess who is going to be the injured party here? The giver! The giver will be the one who will eventually become depleted, frustrated and devastated…
I have friends from the bar hopping years that l liked very much at the time. I was emotionally locked back then, but l sure was fun to party with. Now when they move back to town or are back for a long visit, l half way expect them to notice the deeper, more open facets of me and embrace them. Ha.
As a recovering asshole, l realize not everyone got the memo that I have matured. So, some old friends are not as welcoming or as close as l’d like, but some from highschool l saw at the big reunion are still in touch and delightful. I’m not the type to ask an old bar hopping friend if we can meet to discuss our feelings. What l do is call or text and ask if they want to get together or ask them to call me back. After two or three tries if l don’t hear from them, l don’t get angry, l get the hint. Friends, family and lovers are not static characters who wait in suspended animation for us to get back around to them. We all change and some people we think will always be most valued in our lives just fade away. It is the way life is. A recent widower might be like Debbie Downer around old pals, so Bob l agree you need to find some new pals who have lost a spouse and need to talk about, too.
“As a recovering asshole” . . .wow, yasss, I groove on everything said from that point on in particular. I personally can substitute many things for “asshole,” e.g. “free baby-sitter/not blood Auntie/mammay figure,” “too-nice girl,” “forever girlfriend” you name it.
I think it’s hard to be multifaceted with MOST people with depth, no the party-type fakish friends are not appropriate to go deeper with. And that’s OK! Except for the fact that when shit happens, which it inevitably does to everyone in life, it can be rather (too) lonely when the party is over (even temporarily) and you have far too many fair weather folks around.
I’m finding this out rather quickly as I get out there (try) with trying to play music *with* not *at* people, most of whom I don’t know from Adam and Eve. I have pretty deep feelings about gathering together in such a fashion, and larger social visions about the value of music in people’s lives. But some people are pay-to-play, some are all about business/potential moneymaking with no emotional aspects to it, some are just weird or rude or straight up crazy etc., some expect me to roll over and not have my own ideas or contribution on and on.
I’m extra sensitive to this kind of range of people fairly recently, particularly among menfolk, but it makes me wonder if people are just LIKE that.