Have you ever bumped into a school bully later in life?

[IcyWinterWonderland]

Has anyone bumped into a school bully later in life? like years after leaving school? How did they react when they saw you? Did they look guilty? I recently saw one of my many school bullies and as I walked past her I said "You are a vile nasty bully". She replied "I don't think so" and scuttled off quickly.

My younger sister is my bully. I tried to avoid her and do the grey rock thing but she would ambush me at every opportunity - it’s now down to criticising my DC (not to their face because I would never allow them to be in her company. I bumped into her whilst walking with a friend and the friend said to me “wow I have never seen you in such triggered state - your breathing was all over the place”.

We have had a recent bereavement where I am now not obligated to be in her presence

• it’s so freeing - but I am cross that I was unable to just say “Stop” to her at any point before. She is totally distracted that I am “busy” and unable to accept any of her invitations - getting through this first Christmas period without encountering her was a huge achievement although I do expect her to turn up on my doorstep at some point.

@Faevern

Seems to be a lot of people claiming they are now superior or more successful than their bullies in looks, smartness, job, career, relationships et al. I wonder if it’s wishful thinking, if the thought of them failing or being unhappy feels like revenge. Many bullies go on to be successful people in their adult life.

Well, that was what I was expecting — for the bullies, who were so powerful, so glamorous, so unassailable, so listened to, and who had our entire year in the palm of their hands — to carry that success into their post-school lives. Why wouldn’t they? Wouldn’t their track record in popularity, their confidence, their ability to get to and stay at the top of the hierarchy, and their instinct for weakness, serve them well in later life?

I don’t have SM or attend reunions, and I have lived most of my adult life outside my home country, so all I’m going on is occasionally recognising a couple of the Queen bees of the popular group on the street when I visit my parents. They appear to be living in the same estate, and they don’t look well, happy or as if they’re doing more than scraping by.

As I said above, I have no strong feelings about this, as they weren’t my bullies, just the popular girls who were mean to anyone beneath them on the pyramid,though I’m sure they tormented some. But I suppose I remain a bit surprised that they weren’t able to translate their social capital into success later on — why didn’t their confidence help them? Why, having dominated in a big school for years, didn’t that transfer to, say, career success?

@Roosk because it isn’t social capital at all it’s emotional dysfunction likely discharging trauma / bullying from a neglectful / abusive / chaotic home into others in an unchecked school system - when they leave school they have limited ability to emotionally discharge this dysfunctional energy so it either turns inwards (MH issues / addictions) or is played outwards in relationships or workplace and that falls apart if the checks and balances are in place - but of course some organisations will turn a blind eye if the bully employee is especially productive.

@Gargellen

One of my bullys became my parents postwoman. I didn't know this until I visited them one day and I was in the garden with a dog I had recently rescued. The front garden where the postwoman went was fenced off but the dog ran up the fence, topped it and bit her square on the arse and jumped back over. I dropped and watched her through a crack in a slat as she didn't seem to know what bit her. Neither the dog or I or my parents got the blame. She didn't see me and my parents didn't have a dog.

I kept the dog as after that display I knew I was never going to find a dog which such good intuition about people!

this sounds like a carry on movie. I hope you've been able to train 'your dog' so it doesn't go round biting people.

Slightly off topic - why do some posts have option to 'quote' and some don't?

Yes. She was perfectly pleasant
I don't dwell on the past anyway

My2favboys

The dog lived to be almost 14 and never bit anyone after that. He bit me with a 2k vet bill once though.

[quote ESGdance]@Roosk because it isn’t social capital at all it’s emotional dysfunction likely discharging trauma / bullying from a neglectful / abusive / chaotic home into others in an unchecked school system - when they leave school they have limited ability to emotionally discharge this dysfunctional energy so it either turns inwards (MH issues / addictions) or is played outwards in relationships or workplace and that falls apart if the checks and balances are in place - but of course some organisations will turn a blind eye if the bully employee is especially productive.[/quote]
Except I don’t think these were traumatised people from dysfunctional backgrounds, any more than most of us were. it was a school in a poor area in the middle of a big recession with massive unemployment, and most of us would have qualified for FSM had such existed — and there were certainly girls from families who were visibly not coping, and/or minor criminal backgrounds, fathers in prison etc — and high rates of pregnancy, truancy and drinking — but the girls I’m thinking of were actually better off than most ( which probably contributed to their glamour — one had a father who had a successful local shop, one was the only person I’d ever met during my schooldays who went on a package holiday to Spain) and didn’t seem to be acting out of trauma, just aware of who could be casually mistreated because they didn’t matter.

Maybe bullies is the wrong term for them, as it suggests a conscious, targeted campaign of cruelty — I doubt these girls saw anyone they mistreated as individuals, just a sort of amorphous mass of ‘nobodies’. I do think they had social capital, and as from what I remember they got average marks at school, so I don’t see why the combination of confidence, an ability to make people listen and obey, and reasonable intelligence, didn’t translate into other successes.

@stripeyflowers

Slightly off topic - why do some posts have option to 'quote' and some don't?

You can’t quote a post if it’s already quoting another post, I think.

Ah! Thank you.

I do think it's fantasy thinking to imagine life delivers bullies their just deserts and victims will be rewarded. It's just not that clear cut.

The bully can someone else's victim and vice versa.

If your bully lives in a dustbin and you live in a mansion it has nothing do with them kicking you in the shins and stealing your crisps when you were 9.

@Faevern
Damn right. What I didn't say when revealing how much I enjoyed 'showing off' to my DD's bully is that DD still suffers the repercussions of the bullying. It's been a supreme effort for her to succeed in the teeth of anxiety and an ED triggered by that bullying. But I wouldn't give the bully the satisfaction of knowing the bad stuff.

I was viciously bullied by a girl from the age of 12 to 16. She physically assaulted me on more than one occasion, she spread rumours about me, loudly mocked my weight/glasses/clothes, she got other girls to hit me, rip a chunk of my hair out and, on one memorable occasion, set fire to my hair in the lunch queue. I lived under constant threat of being beaten up and I was so afraid, I wouldn’t leave my house in case I saw her. I stopped getting the school bus because she physically assaulted me on it once. It triggered a lifelong eating disorder, my hair was falling out and I started self-harming. It was relentless and only stopped because she got pregnant and left school when we were 16.

2 years ago (at which point I was 29), my younger brother phoned me to say his wedding had been booked for 2021 and to warn me that his BIL is in a long term relationship with my bully. I looked her up on facebook then and she was posting statuses that said things like ‘say whatever you want about me but if you even look at my kids wrong, I’ll kick fuck out of you’. So, very much still rough and aggressive. My SIL told me that Bully had admitted to being ‘not very nice’ to me at school but, honestly, I’m not sure anyone apart from my parents knows how deep the trauma runs. Even my brother is 6 years younger than me so he was only 10 when it all ended. SIL’s mum apparently suggested that I should be over it by now but unfortunately it is so deep rooted, it basically formed part of my personality growing up.

The week before the wedding I was having panic attacks. My brother assured me that Bully was under strict orders not to come anywhere near me and the table plan had us on opposite sides of the room. On the day, weirdly I didn’t feel anything when I actually saw her. She looked exactly the same, she hadn’t aged a day from the picture in my mind. She did keep staring at me, which I thought was me being paranoid but my auntie mentioned it to me too, so she noticed it. In the end, it was anticlimactic. I’m very happy with my life and hers looks like my idea of hell so I’m choosing to focus on the good. It gave me some closure.

I don’t fit the mould of being a successful young looking ex bulllies victim, I look rough as hell thanks to peri menopause and 16 years with the stress of caring for my parents with dementia, one after the next. Most of my contemporaries at schools still look amazing and share plenty of selfies, I would hate to bump into my bullies. I do know that one girl who orchestrated a bullying campaign against me and my friends in senior school now works with vulnerable adults. I hope she has changed and become empathetic now. I wonder if she has just gravitated to another area where she can be dominate others in plain sight. We grew up on the same estate, our parents were friends and our backgrounds were similar, the only differences were I was in contact with my Dad and her Mum gave her all the latest toys and clothes. As a child I remember she always seemed to be planning the next cruel scheme and was also sexually inappropriate with me and other younger girls and forced us to do things we really didn’t want to do. Makes me very uncomfortable to think about.

@TheRooom

Some proper mean people on here, and I'm not talking about the so-called bullies.

Hmm.....

Please elaborate...

The people who made these people's lives hell, are MEAN, Vile, Nasty individuals....

@Itsnotover

It depends - people who joined in often feel guilt.

Some bullies never change and grow up just as nasty as they were at school.

Just This...

I wasn't exactly bullied by this girl but she was a toxic 'friend' at school and I was happy when we drifted apart.

I ran into her a few years ago..
She still looked pretty with long blonde hair like me, and although I had a good career at the time & she was working a part time job.., she had what I wanted which was a husband & children.

I just hoped she's changed her ways for her husband's sake!

@TheRooom

Some proper mean people on here, and I'm not talking about the so-called bullies.

Please explain. Do you mean the views of people who spent years in fear and being ostracised aren't relevant?

I didn't meet her but I saw her. I passed her on an escalator with her husband. I was travelling the opposite way. Her and her husband were arguing and as she got close to the bottom she got the heal of her boot stuck in one of the gaps forcing her to take it off and try and pull it out. When they got off their argument erupted even more and I was just left thinking that it couldn't have happened to a nicer person!!!

@amusedbush

I was viciously bullied by a girl from the age of 12 to 16. She physically assaulted me on more than one occasion, she spread rumours about me, loudly mocked my weight/glasses/clothes, she got other girls to hit me, rip a chunk of my hair out and, on one memorable occasion, set fire to my hair in the lunch queue. I lived under constant threat of being beaten up and I was so afraid, I wouldn’t leave my house in case I saw her. I stopped getting the school bus because she physically assaulted me on it once. It triggered a lifelong eating disorder, my hair was falling out and I started self-harming. It was relentless and only stopped because she got pregnant and left school when we were 16.

2 years ago (at which point I was 29), my younger brother phoned me to say his wedding had been booked for 2021 and to warn me that his BIL is in a long term relationship with my bully. I looked her up on facebook then and she was posting statuses that said things like ‘say whatever you want about me but if you even look at my kids wrong, I’ll kick fuck out of you’. So, very much still rough and aggressive. My SIL told me that Bully had admitted to being ‘not very nice’ to me at school but, honestly, I’m not sure anyone apart from my parents knows how deep the trauma runs. Even my brother is 6 years younger than me so he was only 10 when it all ended. SIL’s mum apparently suggested that I should be over it by now but unfortunately it is so deep rooted, it basically formed part of my personality growing up.

The week before the wedding I was having panic attacks. My brother assured me that Bully was under strict orders not to come anywhere near me and the table plan had us on opposite sides of the room. On the day, weirdly I didn’t feel anything when I actually saw her. She looked exactly the same, she hadn’t aged a day from the picture in my mind. She did keep staring at me, which I thought was me being paranoid but my auntie mentioned it to me too, so she noticed it. In the end, it was anticlimactic. I’m very happy with my life and hers looks like my idea of hell so I’m choosing to focus on the good. It gave me some closure.

I think that I remember you posting this situation before and I am glad that you coped and have some closure.

I am also pleased that others were able to call it out and rein her in which is good.

However I feel sorry for your DB marrying into this family where his MIL is an apologist for bullies and victim blames. It will be interesting for you to watch from the sidelines as it seems there will be plenty of fireworks in that family system.

One of the girls who was determined to make my school life a misery, had problems at home. Everyone knew (not the details, rather that there was an issue) so her little cohort protected and encouraged her behaviour - probably so she wouldn’t treat them the same way she treated me. Years later, I was at the local shops with my two children. My daughter said she was cold and as I knelt down to button up her cardigan, my other daughter put her arms around my neck and kissed me. Then the two year old did the same and I nearly toppled over. We all laughed and as I stood up, there was my bully, watching us from a few feet away. I didn’t need to say anything to her as the look on her face said it all. I’d heard through the grapevine that her marriage had failed and that she was (and still is) childless, but at that moment, I did feel very sorry for her. It must have been hard for her to see a person she loathed, seemingly living the sort of life she’d wanted for herself. Doesn’t excuse the way she treated me, though.

I agree that there's no karma waiting until you all finish school to deliver justice to the victims in the form of a glow - up, a good job, a decent husband... The bully is every bit as likely to get all of that.

I haven't been bullied in the traditional sense but I've been given the silent treatment by another adult for a long time now. She's a relative, and despite having a degree and a phd, a lovely period house, a child a private school, a good job, a sister she's close to, parents who worship her, she still feels the need to put me in my place. My ''place'' is trailing behind her by any formal measure! But yet she still has to widen the gap between us by giving me the silent treatment and communicating to me through silence that I'm a non-person to her. It's like the gap between us isn't wide enough for her. She's such a successful person, it's fascinating in some ways. She is lovely to people that she thinks are popular/supported to the point of love bombing them, but I get the silent treatment. I have never done anything to her except maybe feel a bit wary around her.

I wonder what sort of superiority she can be deriving from being so unpleasant to somebody so far beneath her!

Have seen a few out and about. I was working in a shop one of them came through the till she said 'oh hello, I remember you from school I'm X." I said "I know exactly who you are". She asked how I was. I told her that the day I left school and the likes of her was one of the happiest of my life as she had made life hell. She said she was sorry, things had been crap for her at home. I said yeah me too, but didn't make me vile bully. She said if it was any consolation her DD was going through hell at school. I wanted to say good because I even now still hate her. But I said that it wasn't I wouldn't wish that on any child. She said Thank you and left.
The next time I saw her in town she asked me to go to a school reunion. I told her straight, it was bad enough when I was forced to see her every day . There wasn't a hope in hell that I would voluntarily do it. She said she'd like to chat. I smirked, shook my head and walked away.

I was going to say this. Things weren't great for a lot of us. But that didn't make us want to push others to the point where they felt they would be better off dead.

Yes there was the ring leader and her two pathetic side kicks. Years later I was in a nightclub and one side kick was using the sink next to me. She apologised profusely for her behaviour. I told her damn right she should as she had behaved like a vile cow but that I appreciated her apology and hoped that she was living a happier and kinder life. And I also said that I hoped she had never aligned again with the ring leader and only ever hoped for nasty things for her as she was truly horrendous.