So sick of people not giving a toss.

[ThewrathofBethDutton]

My family really.

No one, not one of them ever ever asks how my kids are, how I am, ever.

I’ve come to the point where I am withdrawing from them all. Low or no contact, which is easy because none of them contact me anyway.

You know, I see them, pop in for a cuppa, text them, talk at length about them, well they talk at me about themselves.
Recently (last year or so) noticed that none of them ever enquire after my life or my kids. They just launch into themselves, their ailments, the neighbours cat, it’s the same old stuff.

Suppose I have felt obliged to keep contact up, I wonder if they will even notice that I’ve not been in touch.

Friends too, nothing from any of them.

Im older now so surer and confident in my decisions so I’ve decided to just crack on with my own stuff.
Feel a bit sad and deflated though I suppose.

Anyone done this? Was it a good decision? How did it pan out?

I’ve felt exactly like this recently. A lot of ‘friends’ I have cut out and I’m starting to think family needs to go the same way. I feel so lonely some days but other days I feel ok with my own company. Deflated is a good explanation for the feeling.

im sorry i cant be much help as im at the same stage as you. Just wanted you to know you are not alone :(

Ahhh, sorry to hear this! I've definitely had similar, from some family members and also from lots of friends. People are incredibly self-absorbed these days and seem to lack a lot of imagination and empathy. No one seems capable of understanding anything unless they've been through it themselves. In recent years, I've lost both my parents and my marriage, and no one really gave a flying f*ck, to be honest. People care only about themselves, and I think partly this is due to social media and the internet, and partly it's due to lack of community. Back when people lived in tight-knit communities, it was much less acceptable to ignore someone. These days, if you ignore someone close to you whom you should not be ignoring, no one notices that bad behaviour.

I've recently let yet another "friend" go, someone who hasn't reached out to me at all since my dad died a few months ago. I'm the one who gets in touch. But now I've stopped reaching out, and of course I haven't heard from her. But - and this is the most important part - I've also stopped thinking about her and how unsupportive she's been.

I've had a lot of practice at this. You have to will yourself not to think about the people who don't treat you well. Once you get the hang of it, you feel much better and happier.

Good luck!

Thanks so much for the replies.

My moaning is an ironic self absorbed monologue!

But honestly, I am genuinely interested in folk, concerned and care about what’s going on with them.

I have no idea why the last few months this lack of any kind of sense of them giving a shit has become so obvious to me. But now it’s in my head it’s screamingly obvious.

Just popped in to see my mother, she didn’t ask me one solitary thing, not one. But I know all about her tablets, neighbours, jigsaw, washing on the line, my sisters daughter and her grandkids…

My dad, nothing, in fact other than saying hello, I didn’t then speak a single word until I said goodbye.
I know all about his kids, his hospital appointments, someone called Andrew and someone else who told him he should join the Masons…

Never ever hear from the ILs, not a visit or a phone call and fil lives about 20 minutes away. Kids birthdays come and go.. nothing, not even a text.

Fuck um! Fuck um all.

I don’t think relationships work all that well on the whole if one focuses on what one gets out of them. It’s easier to try to make them enjoyable and a see them as a chance to feel and give affection toward fellow humans.

I understand what you mean, I am in the same boat.

In my case I think it is probably a bit of my own fault. I am a very private person and find it hard to share my feeling (probably due to them being always dismissed in my childhood/teens)
I think now my friends and family are so used to listening to their problems and offering advice and support that it does not cross their minds that I might need the same.

You could just weigh in like they do instead of waiting to be asked. If you are planning to go low/no contact then presumably you don’t give much of a toss about their lives either.,

There is a woman at work who does polite openers and likes turn taking conversations. She always looks rather put out when the conversation free wheels off into something interesting and no one has asked her about her weekend. If you are like her then yabu. If they genuinely don’t care at all then yanbu.

I’ve just had my fill.

Not particularly arsed about talking about my shit. I know a million things about everyone yet they know zero about me.
And seem to happily content with this one sided thing.

I wonder what reaction I would get from my mother if I suddenly started to talk about my kid and how they are getting on at their new school and how they scored 2 goals at their last footy match. I strongly suspect that the conversation will be very very quickly turned around to talking about her.

OP, I think you should try expressing to your parents how you feel. They might not realise they're doing it. They might think you don't like taking about yourself. They might feel that you're a closed book and that they're respecting your privacy.

Communicate, communicate, communicate!

At least, you should give them the chance to know how you feel and to change their behaviour before you go low-contact. Without a conversation, going low-contact won't solve anything.

I have occasionally brought up someone's bad behaviour before, and their reaction has always been illuminating, one way or the other.

Why don't you try it and see what happens !

I get this

People just talk about themselves, all the time!

Friend I see occasionally just talks about her medical history, it's absolutely draining. As soon as I say something she glazes over and stares into the distance!

Very tiring op agree. I noticed that too or texts when people need something. My friend ask me check kids runners in local branch. As you say talk about themselves. Dont reply to messages either. People really flaky now I think! You cant depend on them.

I get it OP. It's a large part of why I haven't had any contact with my family in over a decade. It sucks the life out of you. The tiniest mention of your life is just a stepping stone to a wall of noise about the neighbour's distant cousin and their life and family.

I have very similar with my family OP. They really are not interested in me or DP. I live in a different country to them so see them about twice a year. We visited in Feb, were there for a few days, and barely got asked a single thing about how we were, how life was, any holidays, the usual catch up chat. It's such BASIC stuff, but there is no interest there. If I do volunteer some information, I get talked over, or ignored, or get a bored stony faced reaction

So I'm done. From now on, I'm matching their energy. My sister has 2 little kids who I love very much, so all communication will be about the kids from now on. Over the years, I've had to lower my expectations again and again and they STILL consistently let me down. So I'm trying to learn to expect nothing, and part of that is contributing way less myself, so that I don't get resentful. It's hard, and I wish that things were different, but there is a lot of peace in learning to accept things the way they are

I have this with my close group of friends (three other women). All I ever hear about is what they're going through or planning on doing. One day, three wines down, I brought this up. They were shocked and said that they thought that everything was ok with me and that I had no troubles.

Pissed me off at the time, but I now realise that I just needed to speak up more and not enable the situation.