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OP, your experiences are just bad and weird and you have the right to demand better.
Certainly. She surely can demand better.
Except she says that everyone who comes into her life is that way: They don't care about her, have no interest in her life, refuse to congratulate her on her successes.
Everyone.
The only people who care about her are strangers. People who don't know her at all.
No I can't relate to any of that at all. My friend of 30 years doesn't hang out with anyone but me (and his roommate). My other friends I am referring to don't know each other, so they are all isolated friendships. But these women contact me almost every day on FB, we don't live close enough to hang out except one that I only see at festivals because she lives 2 hours away. But I do feel that they use me to complain to, I mean friends should be able to talk to their friends about their problems but with these women it is all they talk about.
No, only one of them lives close to me and that's still half an hour away. Another lives 2 hours away and another lives across the country. I call them close because one I have known for 30 years and our families even know each other, we owned a house together for a few years, etc. Another friend I have known for over a decade and another friend for 3 years who contacts me every day multiple times, she will have ongoing conversations on FB Messenger for half the day even while she is working, she uses bluetooth and talks into her phone so it comes out typed, and she can do it while doing anything. She can't stop talking. She is the one that is the biggest mental drain on my energy. I must have given her hundreds of hours of a listening ear when she was going through a breakup a year ago which is still the topic of our conversations half the time, or she's complaining how tired she is or how she needs to get her life together, something she's been complaining about since I've known her.
Yes, I agree about all that! I don't want to be a toxic dumpster anymore. As for my brother, yeah next year for my birthday I'll just do whatever I want to do and whoever is around is around I guess.
Sometimes you have to "clean house", just because you have known someone for several years isn't a reason to keep them in your life. People get divorced, and sometimes friendships must end.
I ended one of almost 30 years, and I am sorry I didn't do it sooner. I realized for many years it was a one sided friendship and stuck it out mainly because we lived in different parts of the country.
I live in CA and when we were having the horrific fires last year(and very close to where I live), this "friend" other than saying in an email "hope you're safe", showed no interest or concern and just went on with her 4 paragraph email about every little thing she did....LOL....I was done at that point.
I was a rogue growing up. No one back home knows who I am today. They just remember who I was.
My fault. Not theirs. Still that 40th reunion will be pretty interesting!
Status:
"I don't understand. But I don't care, so it works out."
(set 10 days ago)
35,637 posts, read 17,989,189 times
Reputation: 50679
OP, I've read through this whole thread, including the links you posted that might explain why your closest intimates are not interested in discussing your life. I don't agree with those articles - that would explain one or two people's behavior, but would not explain the behavior of the entirety of your close family and friendships.
I pride myself as being pretty good at ferreting out difficulties in relationships, and I'm coming up empty here.
They clearly want to be around you. It doesn't appear anyone is shunning you, except your brother and his wife who rudely go out to get groceries during your birthday celebration with your mother.
I do sense your mother is frustrated with you for quitting a profitable job and getting a mobile home and barely eeking out a life, while spending down your inheritance which may be gone in a decade or less, leaving you penniless. So I get that concern.
Other than that, girl, you've kind of stumped me.
Is there something ELSE that you're not saying? Like, you got an entire inheritance that didn't seem to belong to you but was a legality? Some other reason to explain why your brother and his wife disdain you so much?
I have noticed over my entire life (i'm 47 now) that my closest friends and family support me the least, and show the least interest in my life. It isn't just one person, it's every single close friend and family member I've ever had. So I figure this must be common and there must be a psychological reason for it. I hate to believe that I just happen to have all selfish people in my life. They're not bad people, they just don't seem to care, can't be happy for me when I am happy, etc. Lately I have been posting some really good career news on Facebook and none of my close friends responded or even liked my posts about it. Nobody ever asks me questions about my life but they waste no time in getting right to their life. This includes people of all ages, males and females. Some examples;
-I've been having the best 2 years of my life going on tons of vacations and having really good career news and when I post these things on Facebook, I get likes from tons of people but not from my closest friends. It just feels like they don't care about my life. I actually have a close friend who rarely likes my posts but if I don't like hers within a few minutes, she'll message me and passive aggressively get me to go look at it and like it. My long-term best friend (of 30 years) never likes my posts of my vacations or my career news even though he sits on FB all day at work, so I know he sees them. I dont know how many times I have sent messages to him about a music festival he should come to with me (my favorite thing in the world) and he will literally not respond, at all. We always go camping together and sometimes I will send him a website or a link to a campground we should check out but he either doesn't read them or just doesn't respond about them, and then when its time to go camping he'll show me all the ones he picked instead. This is why I have started to go camping by myself. And I always post how much fun I am having, and he never likes a single one of my posts about it.
-Whenever I recommend a restaurant, music, a movie, etc. they ignore it. They barely respond, they change the subject, they don't look at a link I'll send them, etc. Sometimes they completely ignore my long messages and just never respond at all. How can people not see when they are being rude by ignoring messages?
-My brother (who is in his 40's too) never even asks me about my life, never buys me anything for my birthday even though I buy him things. I am always around on his birthday but sometimes he is not around on mine so we have to celebrate a different day. Then instead of opening presents with me, my mom and his kids, he sits in the car while his wife is grocery shopping. We are the only siblings each other has and I am always going out of my way to talk to him but I never get the same respect. We have never gotten into an argument or anything like that, he just doesn't care.
-My mom is never supportive of things I do, I bought a camper a few years ago fullfilling a long standing dream of owning an RV, and she clearly was not happy about it and barely even wanted to look at it. But I get TONS of support from people I barely know about how awesome it is. My mom also said she is embarrassed about me because I quit my job that I hated to pursue my passion which is travel writing and photography. She wouldn't even tell her family because she was so embarrassed.
-One friend that I have had for over a decade dominates every conversation so it's about her. She might ask me how I'm doing but when I respond with "I'm doing awesome, I just got home from a camping trip and I wrote a bunch of blog posts for my new blog I'm gonna start!" and she'll respond with, "Well I have been better, my leg hurts and .... etc." Like did she even read my response?
-The last 2 boyfriends I have had showed no interest in anything I liked, which was a huge reason why I broke up with them. One of them even called it a "sacrifice" to go to a music festival with me even though he asked me to go to a different music festival with him (that I couldn't go to because I was going camping with my friends that same week). When we both got home, he spent HOURS talking about his festival and barely asked me how my camping trip was.
Is there some law of the universe that says the closer you are to people, the less they will respect you and show interest in your life? I don't want to stop talking to my close friends and family members, I just want some respect and reciprocity for treating me how I treat them. By the way, I have brought this up to one of my friends and she just ignored half the stuff I said and brought up other arguments. So I don't want to bring it up with anyone else and get into an argument or have my complaints be ignored. I just want to know if this is normal and if anyone else can relate? Maybe most people just don't know how to show support or respect for people they are close to?
I find the same thing people who are never happy for you, not interested in anything your interested in, they will even try to shut you down or try to lower your enthusiasm in anything your genuinely interested or engaged in at the moment. They only seem interested if you're having problems in your life
I am not sure what the answer is, you need to be your own motivator, lower your expectations of others, stop expecting support from others, except them to try to demotivate you.
That lady in your example was someone who was unwanted. I am not unwanted, the person who ignores my messages is my best friend of 30 years! We hang out on a weekly basis and take trips together, in fact we are going on another trip this weekend. By him ignoring my messages, it only tells me that he doesn't want to hear about my suggestions, which is how he is with everything else in our friendship too. When we visit each others houses, he will only watch his movies, not mine, he will actually bring a bag of his own movies over when he comes to my house. The thing is we love the same movies! He is the same way with music, when we get in my car, he always turns the volume down so he can talk, but in his car his music is so loud that I can't talk. He is like this with other friends too, not just me.
I don't agree that she was unwanted. What was unwanted were her long texts and her constant invitations. She assumed the wrong idea about me, but also, her idea of friendship was different from mine.
But I do agree that your situation is different. Have you ever asked why they ignore you?
It might be because your online persona is different from what your family and friends know.
This is from your other thread:
"I don't have a job right now, I am currently living off an inheritance while I take some courses so I can work online (office and computer skills). I am sure my budget would be pretty low, I would most likely take the cheapest I could get. Right now I live in a mobile home that is paid off and my lot rent is $300, but I don't plan on moving until my mother passes away so not anytime soon."
Interesting. So I wonder what this fabulous career news could be.
OP, it is hard for me to believe you are a 47 year old grown woman. You sound like a teenager.
Look, I don't get pats on the back from everyone close to me either. In fact, I recently had a big accomplishment and my friend sent an email to about 25 people asking them to give me a "shout out" of congrats. (I didn't know she did this until after.) Out of 25 people, I received 3 messages and those were NOT from people I was closest to.
It happens. However, my closest friends are totally there for me when things go south. That's what I focus on. I don't really need high fives in life.
Personally, I think it's a bit self centered to boast about vacations and career successes. Many people don't have the money or time off to take tons of vacations every year. One of my dearest long time friends quit using Facebook because it made her depressed to see places she couldn't afford to go to. She's a hardworking wife/mom/grandma.
I don't know your family or work situation or how you support yourself, but maybe your fabulous life is making your family and close friends uncomfortable in some way.
I agree! We have a gal in our group that can't wait to boast about her expensive travels, etc., it gets old real fast.
And as far as FB, most of the boasting is just that; it's easy to make up all kinds of nonsense.
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