To think that when you've got a trail of people in your past who you've fallen out with, chances are your the one with the issue?

[JellyDiamonds]

I am referring to a specific person here. Doesn't speak to various family member due to a falling out, fair enough it happens. But this person has also fallen out with numerous friends over the years, has many acrimonious and broken relationships and has either walked out of or been sacked from every single job they've ever had.

This person has a real woe is me attitude, "it's not fair, everyone I meet turns on me", but the thing is not hard to see why. They are overbearing, bossy, they undermine people, take offence over the most ridiculous things, hold grudges etc. I've also witnessed some rather unpleasant behaviour regarding this person completely freezing someone else out for no other reason than the fact they dared to disagree on something. The other person was genuinely distraught over this and still is. But the protagonist in this story is playing the victim once again....

As someone who can count on one hand the number of people I've genuinely fallen out with in my 30 years on this earth and I'm going right back to childhood, and as someone who also can't be arsed with grudges, I think it's unlikely in this scenario that the other people are the ones to blame.

Apologies for being cryptic but I'm taking about someone specific here.

Jelly, interesting subject. I have been married twice, and am now single. I do have long-lasting friendships but a number of others which I think have ended because I am "difficult". I have trouble asserting myself, get put upon and then become irritable, at which point some friends can't be bothered any more - plenty more fish in the sea after all. People often seem to think I need instruction in life skills, when in fact I have property, a good job, interests and manage admin etc well.

I feel I must constantly tread on eggshells and for a lot of the time I do not feel I can be myself. All that said, I do have a good social life but am mentally preparing for quite a lonely old age.

I think each case is different as we all have different people in our lives. Some peoples families are tough, so you could say they fell out with all their family when in fact it was their family who were impossible to get along with.

I know a very cheery, easy going person who has enormous groups of friends, all different and is loved and liked by many. Even she has a small trail of people she could no longer tolerate.

So I think it depends on each case.

I have also noticed whilst yes, some are generally rude and arrogant some people who seem lovely just ignite hate in others.

I think YABU.

I don't speak to my mum anymore due to the way she has treated me my whole life. It's not nice to be told you're horrible, nasty, a bitch and that sne'd wished you'd never been born. The only reason for this was she wanted a boy and I was a girl! I tried my hardest with her, but she extended this nastiness and the unfair treatment I had had to my kids so I decided enough was enough and went no contact. By doing that, it meant my sister stopped talking to me, as did her children, and my brother and his DD.

I had always been kind and accomadating to PILs and SILs and thought we got on well. However, about 18 months ago, when DH was away for months with his job, FIL emailed him to tell him I had phoned MIL and called her a "fucking bitch"! I had done no such thing, we have itemised phone bills and they all clearly show I didn't contact them the whole time he was away. He, also, told him they paid off a "large credit card bill" for me, again completely untrue. DH has looked at our credit report which show I don't have a credit card and they won't produce evidence of this. I don't talk to PILs anymore and I won't do until they apologise. They have obviously told SILs because they don't talk to us or our DC now.

I do find it hard to make friends, but I am socially isolated through disabilty and as such have lost a lot of friends along the way. I find it incredibly hard to trust people after the way I have been treated by the people who are closest to me.

Sounds like my sister! Totally agree that this shows sociopathic tendencies, I've researched long and hard for answers as to why someone would behave this way. The hardest thing for me to deal with is a) the lies she's telling her children about my Mum and I and b) not being able to defend myself or justify my no contact decision when she posts everything so publicly on Facebook

I used to know one of these idiots.

She actually said once, in reference to some group or other having upset her, perhaps by looking at her funny or something, and when she was making a big song and dance about not speaking to them any more and them being the exact same as x, y and z groups of unrelated people from the past (er HELLO???? ) who had similarly upset her (still with me?!)

"Well, these people have to learn they can't treat me like this."

wtf

None of the people she referred to knew each other. One group was the queen bees from school and she was in her thirties! In her head, she seriously thought that if she cut off people who she fell out with, and kept doing so ie repeating this pattern, then the next group of people could in some way learn from the "mistakes" of the previous group of what were actually total strangers.

I made damn sure I upset her asap so I too could be dropped. It worked. Result!

TheFairy, I don't think this thread is about people in your situation. It's about people who manage to isolate almost every person they meet in life because of their poor treatment of them and huge sense of entitlement but cannot see that they are the common denominator. I've only met 2 people in my life like this, one is my mother and I would guess that both of them have possible personality disorders.

It sounds as though you have had to deal with a cascade of unfortunate circumstances rather than you being a bull in a china shop and causing your own problems, if that makes any sense?

We had a family friend like this. She was a teaching assistant at a local primary school and when I was considering going into teaching she found me a voluntary work placement there, very kind of her I thought. Beforehand she warned me that the staff in the infant department where I had been assigned were bitchy, cliquey two faced, bullies etc. They had bullied her out of the infant department and she now had to work in the Juniors to get away from them, she also didn't sit in the staff room because of them.

On my first day I was absolutely terrified because of what she had told me about them, but I needn't have been because they were all lovely and I look back on my time there with genuine fondness. My mums friend later left the school altogether because the staff in the Juniors had also started "bullying" her. She's had countless jobs since then, and has been bullied out of all of them. I know work place bullying exists, and it's awful and I'm not making light of it but her problem seems to be an intolerance to criticism and an ability to take offence over the most ridiculous things. She was very overbearing and I can imagine her trying to take over things and pissing people off because of it, she also has few friends and lots of fall outs with people.

Her husband and children are exactly the same, always victims. Nothing ever their fault. Her children were horribly bullied at school if you listen to her, but it's my understanding that they were mardy little fuckers who could dish it out but not take it back. They are all quite isolated and don't have many friends.

Oh yes, I know one of these. She has fallen out with neighbours, in laws and friends. The mums at her kids' schools "weren't her kind of people". The only people she's close to (as far as I know - she stopped speaking to me about 8 years ago!) are her mother, husband and kids.

She was very envious of other people's possessions, houses etc and would even open conversations with "If we ever fell out with each other ..."

Funnily enough I knew her at school and she was a bully. As another poster has said, I think she sees this ex-communication as a punishment of others whereas in fact it's quite a relief to many.

I think it's very sad really, that total lack of self-knowledge or ability to see your own faults and mistakes.

You could be talking about my Mum who I am NC with.

I once tried to point out that perhaps she was the common denominator, after all everyone else couldn't be wrong.

My sister is the same, trained by the best.

Life is so much easier since I went NC with them both.

Is this my sister you're talking about? We hooked up on FB a while back but after the 937th sporadic message taking offence at something completely inconsequential that I'd said (or omitted to say), she unfriended me and I was perfectly happy not to bother getting back in touch. Some people just make rods for their own backs.

My father was like this. Everything is someone else's fault. He flunked out of school because his teachers were rubbish. He failed his apprenticeship because the foreman hated him. He lost numerous jobs because people picked on him. He started taking drugs because someone else made him. Social services were unfair when they took us away. My grandparents bullied him into letting them keep us. We children picked on him (I was about 9 when he said that one). The fight that landed him in prison wasn't his fault. Every single neighbour he ever had was noisy, rude, anti-social and made "malicious" reports to the police/council about him.

How he and my mother stayed married I'll never know because she was the same, although she tended not to do it with people who she knew wouldn't take it. So she would never instigate a row with his parents (she'd bitch behind their backs), but she knew they fed/clothed/minded us and she'd hav to do it herself if she fell out with them. Woe betide you if you were no use to her though. Their fall outs were epic and went on for weeks and weeks. My brother's earliest memory is playing the "Will you please tell your mother...." "Well, tell your father...." game.

Sounds like my mother too. Odds are when all four of your children go NC with you, it's probably you not them...

Where there's smoke there's fire...

why do you want to be friends with this person?

YANBU. I've known a few people like this and they just can't see it. I find a victim mentality and a persecution complex a really unappealing quality in a person.

I also think there are loads of people on MN like this too. Sometimes when I read about people with so-called toxic families on here, and the poster writes about how half a dozen friends or family members have all inexplicably and unfairly turned against them for a variety of trumped up reasons, or because of someone else's lies and manipulation, I think 'naaah…..it's probably just you.'

If you wake up every morning in a sewer the question to ask is "how did I get here?" Not "why is the world made of shit?"

I love that! I am going to remember that. What a very useful little proverb.

Another defining feature is their kindness and generosity, which is followed by an expectation that you'll return the "favour" (that you probably didn't ask for, want or need) ten-fold, at a time of their choosing and woe-betide you if you are unable to do so!

God, yes. Those friends who are falling over themselves to be very involved in your life, available 24/7, totally devoted and supportive, phone calls every day, nothing's too much trouble etc., practically forcing their 'help' onto you whether you want it or not. They are usually very proud of the fact that they are that sort of person and will bang on about it endlessly. But they really do expect you to cut a vein and spill your own blood for them in return.

Not everyone needs or wants that in a friend, or feels comfortable with that level of involvement and intensity, or has the inclination to reciprocate. So then when they start to back off, feeling claustrophobic and a bit freaked out, they then stand accused of being cruel, fickle users who just pick up friends and drop them on a whim.

Seriously op, the experiences of how many other posters on here says it all.

You're right, it's not everyone else, it's them. thankfully you only have to do something utterly insignificant to be rid of such a person forever.

Don'tdrink sums it up: victim mentality and persecution complex. I always knew my friend was an awkward arsehole, and suspected she brought it on herself. Round at her house one day she and her husband described a perfectly normal interaction with an acquaintance and expected me to express the same shock they did.

I think my transgression was telling her that it was that even though she didn't drive, it was irresponsible not to have car seats for her young children and constantly cadge lifts off folk. The next time I asked her if she wanted to meet up she ignored me and posted a bajillion pictures of herself and another friend doing stuff on FB. It really made me laugh.

Sorry to go on, I'm just quite excited to realise that it wasn't me but definitely her.

She was the most sensitive, easily offended person who could remember the smallest slight years later and never forgave even accidental offence.
Yet at the same time she was a "call a spade a spade" type who said the most crass and critical things to other people and was then outraged if they took offence.

It's ironic isn't it? some of the people who can manage to find a personal slight in the most innocuous of comments and who most easily take offence are often the people who suffer from a complete lack of diplomacy and empathy themselves.

You've described a former friend of mine! This thread is making me feel so much better about me now being one of her "rejected" ones.

it's ironic isn't it? some of the people who can manage to find a personal slight in the most innocuous of comments and who most easily take offence are often the people who suffer from a complete lack of diplomacy and empathy themselves.

So true!

It's a nice realisation, isn't it BikeRunSki?

And yy to the "I'm brutally honest, me" stuff. They don't tend to be too honest with themselves!

You have just described my MIL. For years I wondered what I had done wrong, but she has this history and I don't.

This is very cathartic to me, and topical!

I had a friend go totally cold on me a year ago - to this day I have no idea why. But like pretty much all these posts she has a history of imagining slights, throwing total tantrums when drunk, cutting people out etc etc etc Drama Llama.

Then this week, out of the blue she invites me over so we can 'move on' from where things got a 'bit bumpy' (outs self).

Fuck. That.
Thanks, but no thanks.

Tis a wonderful relief!

I never knew that I have so many sisters!

The one I know is careful not to burn all her bridges at the same time to completely isolate herself from the family.

All favours are forgotten like the small matter of free full-time childcare for 6 months 7.30-6pm+

All niggles and slights are remembered, many going back 40+ years.

It was a relief when I finally got assertive. Of course I'm an uber bitch for it, and only blindly copying someone else.

I interviewed a young man like this recently. He'd had four jobs of less than 2 years each and in all of them he'd been the victim of terrible mismanagement, as he told us at length. Now I know there are a lot of crap managers out there so it's possible he was just really unlucky, buit how could he not hear himself?

I recognise Y-chromosome's male variants too. The same thing but presents very differently.

I think my late great grandmother was one of those. I never met her but the damage done to her grandchildren still shows 70 years on.

My parents in law ( primarily motivated by MIL) fall put with people often.

PIL's brother ( no contact for 35 years).
Next door neighbour.
Various friends and work colleagues.
Their sons in an alternating pattern.
My poor old lovely Mum.

They truly are very stupid!