Would your ex-bully a chance ?

[DeepThinkingGirl]

Hi all,

If someone bullied you for a prolonged period of time while you were in a weak vulnerable place.. and came to ask for forgiveness after 3 and a half years of consistently treating you like trash..

They said they wanna talk about it and want to know what they can do to make it better.. and that they want to apologise properly..

Would you.. open the doors for such conversation ?

And what would you ask for in order to rebuild the trust and remove the hurt.

Please don’t get involved in this OP. Please don’t get the third party to tell them you’re in therapy. Yes, it makes you look weak. I guarantee you will regret it further down the line.

All they need to tell the bully is “DTG doesn’t want to get involved”. End of. The fact that they’ve previously bullied the third party when they’ve not got their own way speaks volumes. They haven’t changed.

I'd also steer clear, she's not doing it because she is genuinely sorry & you are right not to trust her.

Yes she may have mental health issues but that's not your problem.

Do not tell this person anything especially not how much they hurt you. You will indeed look weak.

Just say No.

Please don’t let the spectre of mental health issues cloud your judgement.

It does not give you carte blanche to destroy someone.

I suspect my bully was downright evil and had issues, but he managed to contain that side with everyone else. So not ill enough to be horrid to everyone.

I agree with what @Number3BigCupOfTea said.

I also understand that holding on to bitterness does you no favours but in my case, forgiving him would cause me more pain than the bitterness. I will have to deal with the fall out of his accusations for the entirety of my career (no smoke without fire apparently ) so forgiveness is out as I’m reminded of it nearly every week. Why should your bully get forgiveness to help them move on? You were the one who was damaged.

I seriously wish you well. You know what will work for you. But it all really has to be what works for YOU. They don’t get to dictate that. At all

Third party is compassionate towards her and thinks she has mental health issues. I think so too but I don’t see why I should risk everything I worked hard for when she could seek her therapy elsewhere.

So? You have mental health issues because of what she did to you and you're not ripping other people's lives apart. Her mental health "issues" are irrelevant to the fact she's a bitch if the highest order.

If she has changed, she'll accept you want nothing to do with her end she'll leave you alone (via 3rd party).

But you know she hasn't changed.

Give her no fuel and no satisfaction. Absolutely give her no info about you being in therapy (she'll spin that very badly). Just say you're not ready. Tell 3rd party to say you said nothing else and that they don't want to discuss it anymore because they find it upsetting. As she's a new person, third party knows she'll understand.

Then drop her from your mind abd get on with your new life, totally free of her!

Btw you don't need to forgive her. Just don't give her mental space in your head. I hate the forgiveness crap. Some people just aren't worth the energy it takes to do. Dropping them from your life and mind is more appropriate.

A woman who made my life hell at school contacted me 20 years later trying to meet.
Her actions have affected me deeply to this day. I made up injuries and faked illnesses to avoid going to school to face her, and my heart still pounds like a barn door in a hurricane at the sight of certain hairstyles from the back or a whiff of a body spray she used to wear.
I told her under no uncertain terms where to go, then blocked her.

It would be a no from me

I'd simply ignore her.
If she's truly sorry, she will respect your silence.

You owe her nothing at all, and do not have to accept anything.
True remorse means you work on yourself to change, not that you guilt other people into forgiving you.

I've been through this with my sister.

I forgave and allowed her back in twice before going nc again some years ago and this will be the final time. Which even my mum now accepts

Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me

Lying was a MAJOR factor in my decision, woman can't lie straight in bed! Lies about fucking everything even stupid unimportant shit.

Don't give her ANY Ammunition she could potentially use in the future.

But I would say something non committal and non revealing like "well, if she really was genuine she'd be undoing the damage she did as much as possible, especially by telling people the truth of what happened, after all words are cheap, actions are what matter"

Then she'll show her true colours.

Make yourself as uninteresting as possible to this person. Don't confide anything about your life to the third party, you don't know what they are taking back to her. Keep everything very low key. You are fine. Things are best left in the past. You don't ever think about that time now. etc etc. If you feel up to it you can look up 'flying monkeys' and 'grey rock' or discuss this with your therapist.

@graphista and it's understandable that you'd give a sister a second chance. If it had been worth it, it would have made life better for your family. But this is some randomer from the OP's past.

Does she feel like the victim or you now? Your harshness? Your sensitivity? I am not sure if I'm nc with my mother at the moment but she wants to be able to hurt me and then be the martyr if I point that out. There never seems to be any insight! Does your mum put pressure on you to show up on days when your sister will be there? I am distancing from my brother as well now because although HE doesn't hurt me or accuse me of being sensitive/emotional/awkward/paranoid, he does seem to buy in to Mum's narrative that SHE is the victim of me and I'm wondering how to go forward, do I realistically have to back away from him as well.

@DeepThinkingGirl

I think this sentence from @Graphista is perfect for the friend/agent

''if she really was genuine she'd be undoing the damage she did as much as possible, especially by telling people the truth of what happened, after all words are cheap, actions are what matter"

Sounds like you are doing a good job of moving on from her. Carry on ignoring the bully.
Your friend - just tell the truth, that this apology is nothing to do with you. If the bully has reformed then they would understand that you no longer wish to be associated with her. In actual fact this is all about what the bully wants from the third party and in effect is bullying the third party now. So no you don't want to open lines of communication and that while you are willing to support your friend to be assertive you will not be drawn into new games...

Thanks everyone it’s great to finally know that my instincts are telling me the right thing or at least the normal thing so I stop adopting her issues

No. They tried to add me on FB, I declined. I don’t want them in my life.

Don’t tell them you’re going to therapy. Just tell them to fuck off! You owe them nothing. Don’t waste any time or energy on them.

I'm not convinced that bullies know remorse or have the ability to change. Bullies are cruel and do not mean a word they say.

I was bullied at work and within 10 months I was a wreck it took years to recover from. I'm still not the same as before. My bully apologised during mediation but she had to because her job was on the line. She didn't mean it nor did she change apart from leaving me alone.

I wouldn't give an adult a second chance to have a pop.

Nope! My old high school bully made my life hell, I started talking to her in adult hood and it took me less than a month to realise she was still a cow! Blocked her straight away!!!

This actually happened to me. I lived with a girl in my student days who bullied me viciously. She was so cruel. I ended up moving home and commuting (a considerable distance) to avoid living with her any longer. For months after I felt sick with anxiety on campus in case I bumped into her.

She ended up texting me out of the blue about 8 months later asking if we could meet so she could apologise. I agreed. She took full responsibility for her behaviour and said she was very sorry.

We didn’t have any relationship going forward and never met up again (but bumped into one another now and then). I would never have trusted her or wanted to be her friend again. But I’m so glad we had that meeting. It gave me a huge sense of peace and closure to have her acknowledge what she had done to me, and for her to take responsibility for her behaviour. And it meant that I no longer feared seeing her on campus any more. It was a very healing thing for me, but there was no prospect of us having a friendship ever again.

@Number3BigCupOfTea

But they’re a relative and so we do encounter each other

Op may be disguising how closely related for obvious reasons

There never seems to be any insight

Oh definitely! My family are very dysfunctional and so there's a few like this. They are completely oblivious as to why, I've had conversations where it's clear they're in deep denial and I don't mean "tv sitcom denial" I mean clinical denial - blanking whole incidents! It's quite something

Mum no longer puts any pressure on, partly as she witnessed the final incident (neither sister nor I knew she was in earshot/line of sight but she saw and heard everything), partly as I was very assertive about it and made it very clear I wanted NOTHING More to do with sister, that this was final straw and frankly given what happened sister was lucky I didn't get police involved. It was that bad.

Sister is still mums gc but I no longer get grief about it all from her.

I'm unable to attend family events at the moment (housebound) but when I was tbh mum still preferred if sister went rather than me. Other relatives are more supportive but it does hurt

And thanks for liking my suggested response too

And ANY bully deserves contempt.

I was bullied at school, at work, by a neighbour... they're bloody everywhere and they need to be told!

Often people around them that aren't being bullied by them KNOW they are bullying others and do fuck all about it - which I'm not sure deserves a huge amount less contempt than the bully does! Especially when those people are in a position to deal with the bully/the bullying and don't!

One of my bullies from school (male) got in touch on Facebook - and tried to chat me up! Errr nope! Blocked!

I like Sarah Millican's response here

m.youtube.com/watch?v=BQz8nn1AXBY

Not sure if she changed the identifying details or not though, can't decide if I hope she did or didn't!

No.I would happily run over the bullies and my secondary school with no guilt.

I would believe that anyone that bullied me for that long and under those circumstances and came to apologise was a self serving narcissist. Why on earth would they think I would want to hear from them ever again? You don’t apologise to receive forgiveness, you apologise because you feel remorse. You don’t ask the person who you treated like shit to have a conversation with you, you apologise without expecting any conversation or reply and stay the fuck away from them unless they come to you with questions.

Often people around them that aren't being bullied by them KNOW they are bullying others and do fuck all about it - which I'm not sure deserves a huge amount less contempt than the bully does! Especially when those people are in a position to deal with the bully/the bullying and don't!

graphista

Absolutely. This has hurt me more in the long run. Bully left with a golden handshake. Colleagues who witnessed it say now it was terrible. Managers who ignored it and lied through their teeth to protect themselves were inept expect me to be happy and chirpy. Same with the rep.

I trust no one at work now bar two people who were away from it all but who saw me retreating to the shadows and lured me back out to the light.

They were fabulous.

I've read that there are some schools now where onlookers to bullies are punished for not intervening.
I'm not 100% sure I agree with it, but the idea behind it is solid- people should speak up if they witness bullying for sure.