I've recently been trying to work on my people pleasing and codependency issues and as a result have been reassessing past situations.
One that I'm having trouble understanding is from childhood. I had a friend, let's call her Sophie, who lived near me and so we grew up playing together.
At least once Sophie's dad dumped her crying at my house because he didn't want to look after her on his day off. Sophie was also bullied by former friends when she was about 10 and I know this took her a long time to get over. She wasn't ever very popular in general and seemed to regularly get pushed out of friend groups.
I was always nice to Sophie. However, I can see now that Sophie was not nice to me. She would dump me to hang out with others, make fun of me behind my back, take advantage of me, and ended up bullying me pretty horribly by the end of high school.
Not long before we left high school, I confronted her and asked what was wrong with her. Why had she always treated me like this when I was only ever nice to her?
Sophie stormed off without answering and I never heard from her again.
So what was Sophie's problem? I realise now that I was a doormat for her but I don't understand why that would have caused her to act that way.
Why would she keep treating one of the few people who were consistently nice to her so badly? Why could she not connect how horrible it felt for her to be bullied with how others must have felt when she bullied them?
DM/Mumsnet/etc - do NOT repost