Naturally dramatic life - unworthy of friendship?

[SparklingBalls]

This is coming off the back off a few threads I've been reading across MN, and yes, I am a long-term poster and have NCed for this.

My life has always involved drama. For the most part I had nothing to do with why - abusive home, sexual abuse as a teen and young adult including multiple rapes, homelessness brought on by shitty friendships and lack of relatives who to this day give a shit, relationship abuse followed by single mum pregnancy, abusive marriage including an attempt on my life through him, escape from this, now financial difficulties.

I know that people always say that drama attracts drama, but honestly, I'd love nothing more than a simple life. Very little of my life drama is of my own making (suicide attempts and OCD-related disorders may be, but stem from childhood trauma, which won't cease to rear its ugly head despite meds and therapy), but the main thing in my life is, I am being constantly shat on from a great height.

I have always tried to do the right thing, got a job, got promotions, kept the kids, supported them as a single mum. I have tried again and again to build up friendships and relationships, but the continuous onslaught of shit happening in my life drives them all away. I try to stay upbeat; I have tons of gallow's humour; it is hard. But it seems I am doomed, not just through more shit happening by the month, but also by lack of friends, family, anyone.

On here people always say that it's people's own fault if their life is dramatic. But mine could fill several soap operas without me trying.

It pushes people away, I guess. So my AIBU - is it me, is it always people who are dramatic who have dramatic lives?

I totally agree, but you are talking about bringing up past trauma. Lots of people are talking about an unwillingness/discomfort/pulling away from helping friends with current difficulties.

People saying that they are just looking for light hearted interaction. Someone saying they aren't competent to comfort a friend who slashed their wrists (probably not, but they are still your friend and you should support as best as you can). Then peoples saying that they can't talk about their sick child any more, or that they lie and say they are ill if their depression is bad. It's actually really sad.

If someone tells they need to literally lie about their mental health to their friends, then that's sad. That's not to say it should be the only topic of conversation, or that the support should dominate the friendship, but if occasionally you can't admit you're having a crap time and have a cup of tea and a hug with friends, then what's the point of friendship?

No, people are talking about pulling away from a friend who constantly has “current difficulties”. Someone who is constantly in crisis is usually suffering from unresolved trauma. The OP in says she is unlucky, but that’s just not the way life works.

And many people who are saying they only want light interaction want that BECAUSE they have been pulled into so many dramas with friends. They are protecting themselves and their mental health.

No one begrudges someone a cup of tea and a hug. What usually happens is that people make decisions that have negative outcomes for themselves and they want support for that but no “suggestions” whatsoever. Relationships then become unbalanced because that person constantly needs support from everyone else. Friends spend a huge amount of time and energy trying to support them through this particular crisis, but then realise that the crisis never ends. Which is perfectly reasonable.

the thing is: plenty of people have depression or have sick children so it’s confusing to me why it would be coming up all the time. Why would it need so much discussion? Are you expecting friends to track your mood weekly? Shouldn’t you or a doctor be doing that? I don’t really get why it would be a significant part of your relationship.

My life was traumatic from the day I was born 3 months prematurely, weaned off heroin, and I was saved by the top NICU in a London hospital. Without medical intervention, I would most likely have died. I don't want to be too outing but I was adopted and had a wonderful upbringing, for which I was and still am extremely grateful and I was given a chance in life that I might never had

I have had a lot of "drama" over the past 8 years too, from w head injury and post concussion syndrome, then a medication induced neurological involuntary movement disorder, my DB dying of cancer, ectopic pregnancy, and a lot of ill health after my 3rd baby was born. The last few years have been horrible, utterly draining and really put things in perspective.

Yes I was unlucky recently but I never tell a new friend that I have been through this until I know them very well, and wouldn't dream if blurting it all out in the first few meetings. They would probably be sympathetic but understandably might run a mile 😳😱🤣

Sorry for the typos, am on my phone 🤪

I think people are conflating quite a bit here. I don't think many people go into details of their traumas with everyone they meet. Personally, I only know one person who does currently.

But you can't deny trauma when it happens, neither can you deny constant shit falling your way.

Yes, the mortgage thing could have happened to anyone, that wasn't my point. The point was, it happened shortly after I'd left an abusive marriage (where just a week before I left something precious I owned got broken in another one of his rage fits). Two weeks later that I had a leaking roof, despite the survey. Two weeks after that a strom took off the front gates. Then I got a message through friends of friends from someone I blocked years ago to say my mother way dying (not true). Then one of my kids caught chicken pox. A month after that my (then) new date gets arrested for something he didn't do (he didn't, it got proven a while later).

It's just shitstorm after shitstorm after shitstorm. Like a bad soap opera, and I have very few months between these incidents where I actually get some peace.

I have a lot of resilience and I mostly get through it all, some way or another. But the onslaught is constant, sometimes, and it's hard to keep a lighthearted conversation in circumstances like that, because inevitably you talk about what's going on in your life.

Leaky roof, chicken pox, some rando from the past making things up, a person you barely know getting arrested, things getting damaged in a storm – this is honestly just life and these things happen to everyone else with similar frequency.

I think the mistake you are making is viewing everything through the lens of ‘omg my life is always filled with drama and harder than everyone else’s’ (it might be harder than a lot or most people’s, but apart from the abusive ex - so sorry that happened to you - these aren’t really examples of that).

I reckon this can be to do with having experienced genuine trauma and out-of-the-ordinary misfortune at some point and I don’t say that as a criticism, just as perspective.

I think sometimes when there are lingering emotions from a situation in the past we can be drawn and compelled to experience and perceive new permutations of that situation again, which allows us to identify what is wrong with the scenario and feel the emotions we were entitled to feel the first time - be it anger, injustice, sadness, or whatever, and say - it’s not right that happened! I feel XXX. Experiencing trauma and adverse events out of our control can I reckon also see us develop a ‘persecution’ or ‘victim’ mentality (possibly for want of better terms) that makes us feel helpless or like things ‘just happen’ to us. I reckon therapy/counselling can be really helpful with this sort of thing. Just my opinion.

I agree with @Minteraye . Most of the things you described are really just life.

I will point out though that leaving an abusive relationship and immediately (within a few months) starting to date another man and then not dropping the whole thing when the new man is accused of a crime is the kind of thing I would 100% distance myself from a person over.

This is what endless drama looks like. Not the chicken pox or leaky roof.

You are conflating things over which you have no control (the weather, contagious diseases) with things that are actually under your control (friends, dating). If you manage the latter, the former will actually seem very bearable.

I am struggling how to phrase this but is it really the case that none of your friends have problems greater than unexpected bills, broken gates and chickenpox, which are some of the recent “dramas” in your life? Are none of your friends dealing with seriously unwell (physically or mentally) or disabled children, marriage difficulties, unemployment or financial worries, inability to get on the housing ladder, illnesses themselves, problems with aged/dependent parents? If not you have a very lucky group of friends. I would be genuinely interested to know your answer to this question.

I hope my post didn’t seem harsh. The point I’m trying to make is that life is hard for many people. It sounds from what you have said as if you have overcome huge trauma and hardships to make a good life for yourself and family. Perhaps you need to reframe your thinking so that each “setback” does not seem like a drama but just part of life’s struggle which you will be able to overcome, as you have overcome much worse.

Yes, agree with Mustard that you have achieved a great deal in the face of great hardship and some horrible experiences (and I’m so sorry you’ve experienced these things - they should not have happened).

Maybe you just feel tired and like you need a break and a bit of looking after. Life can feel relentless and pushing forward while also processing these experiences I’m sure -can- leave you feeling depleted and like each new thing is a fresh trial. I also feel like sometimes when you (one) feel sad or worn out about something in the past it can feel easier to draw people’s attention to other, newer issues as a way to express how you’re feeling (especially when people feel or you feel you should be ‘over’ older stuff ).

So in addition to the stuff above, well done on doing so well, and yes you do deserve a rest x

Of course these things happen in my acquaintances' lives. But they have, maybe, something "bigger" like that happen once every few months. Most of the time their lives are the mundane struggles we all face - long days at work with family to look after the rest of the time, the normal wtf at the prices we are all seeing right now. Their weekends are filled with everyday things.

What doesn't happen to them is that these seemingly every week or every other week something new and big gets added to their lot; it happens a lot less often. And it happens with reasonably "little" things or random bigger things. There is no break. Some have commented that I seem to attract bad luck.

Yes, you're right in that my resilience right now is wearing thin. But then I have no one to look after me; lots of people have parents, a partner or a friend who will occasionally give them a hug and a break from it all. The most protective thing I have in my life is my (rather tiny) pet.

And of course I ditched the person I was seeing. Didn't stop me from having to deal with the police first, or the inevitable rumour mill that followed.

You can’t possibly know what your friends or acquaintances are carrying.

As PP have said the majority choose to keep this private and therefore you are therefore assuming they have less burden than you. Even if they do or don’t how is it relevant to you?

All that’s happening here is you are losing friendships and have asked for insight - others are suggesting why and how you could nurture and keep friendships but you are refusing to consider or accept and are just doubling down on your victim stance which is the opposite of the approach recommended.

The older I get the more I withdraw from these types as I have seen it all before as often it is a selfish one sided approach to friendship where the support and advice given is never taken or appreciated and often back fires (read up on the drama triangle). Old friends of course I will support but have no space or will to take on the traumas of new friends.

I have had repeated and compounding traumatic events in childhood and throughout my life which are still a huge burden to me but I will not inflict them on my friendships as they are too precious.

Based on OP's updates, I think it comes down to 2 possible things:

#1. bad mental health/ repeated poor choices - this should be addressed with support group, therapy, etc - fine to seek support from friends but not as your primary support source

and/or (so not saying #1 is necessarily the case)

#2. poor socioeconomic status / lack of safety net, despite the superficial trappings of middle class stability. It may help to make more friends at your own socioeconomic status level. I definitely don't mean this in a "know your station" kind of way, I mean it in a "we need both diversity and similarity in our social circles" kind of way. Whether you're more privileged or less, you don't want to be the only one who's that way in your social circle as you'll feel alienated and unsupported.

Just wanted to make clear I'm not shaming less privileged people, it goes both ways... If you're a lot more privileged than your social circle, your problems can come across as trivial and dramatic "first world problems" to them. If you're a lot less privileged, the compounded practical issues you face can also come across as ridiculously solvable and dramatic to others.

As an example, in uni (a very prestigious one so most people were quite well off) I had a friend who lost her Oyster card for the Tube, couldn't afford to replace it, so missed an important in person viva that morning, but couldn't afford to extend her rent in the city to retake that module in person, so ended up at risk of dropping out of uni because of one Oyster card... I thought her life was so ridiculous then but looking back when you have no safety net, little things can build up into a nightmare.

It's a difficult one. I understand what you are saying, OP, and no doubt your friends' problems may be trivial compared to yours. BUT nobody likes to be told that their problems are insignificant, or to get into a competition of who has it worse. Especially after the pandemic, cost of living and the Ukraine war has already decimated so many.

I am reasonably well off, and to the outside world, it may look as if I do not have any problems. But as I said, I have been struggling with DD's chronic illness for years. I don't talk about it to anyone buy my sister, because I want to keep her affairs private.

You sound like a dear friend of mine who has been through a lot - I like her a lot and she’s fun. But I can only manage to see her every now and then as I feel drained afterwards.

She has recently been diagnosed with ADHD (aged 40s) which seems to have helped her understand herself and communicate with me. I don’t like to armchair diagnose but might be worth reading up on that too?

@SparklingBalls

I think maybe we are missing something essential because it seems like you are not really engaging with what posters are saying. I feel like if you reread all of your posts, they are just repeating the same point over and over - which is that you are just very unlucky and you have a worse life than everyone else. You are resilient but at the end of your rope.

The question you asked is AIBU - is it me, is it always people who are dramatic who have dramatic lives? essentially asking whether you are attracting drama but you seem very certain that you are not, despite most posters trying to gently explain that you are.

Are you really open to discussing that or is this thread really more about defending the position that you are just unlucky?

I do agree that your life is probably not harder than anyone around you, most people wouldn't bother to mention chickenpox, or a broken gate, or a leaky roof, not unless it directly impacted the person they were talking to " sorry, I cant swap duties with you tomorrow, I have got someone coming round to look at a leaky roof". It isn't drama or trauma, it is something that happens if you are lucky enough to have a roof. Likeways, broken gate only happens if you are lucky enough to have a gate, and child with chickenpox only happens it your are lucky enough to have a child.

I expect you are complaining about non- issues to people not lucky enough to have these things in their life, and possibly find you insensitive?

I still remember resentfully from decades ago the colleague complaining about the cost of childcare while I was desperately trying to get pregnant...

These are a mix of things that are not drama and are pretty boring for others to hear about (roof, fence, your kid getting chickenpox) and drama that sounds at least partly driven by you and your choices, which makes it very irritating for the people hearing you complain about it. So yes, if you want to improve your friendship prospects it does sound like you should change your approach to conversation.

@SparklingBalls one thing I found when my MH was poor, was that I 'took on' every drama and felt the stress and weight of it emotionally. So in your cases, you mention a boyfriend's issues. Those are his not your dramas. Healthy boundaries would stop you from feeling you need to take them on.

The storm and the chicken pox are doing the rounds but for you they had personal weight. You didn't attract them, they don't make you a drama llama. You just have fewer reserves of tolerance for coping with them than other people because you are already worn down. Most people would just mend the gate or take it down completely and not think twice about it, or would just cancel plans until child with chicken pox is better and not consider it a drama at all.

I t could really help you to compartmentalise things into: other people's dramas - I won;t get emotionally involved (that doesn't mean sunsupportive, just emotionally detached) current issues (eg train strikes, storms, viruses doing the rounds) and My Dramas. When you step back from bearing the mental load of other people's drama life becomes way easier. When you recognise your portion of Shit That Happens Everywhere as normal, that too is easier to bear. Then you just have My Drama to focus on and improve so that it doesn't happen as often. This can be improved by steering clear of dramatic and chaotic people, restructuring your life so it is less chaotic or complicated and continuing to access as much MH and trauma support as you can to overcome a history that you were powerless at the time to prevent.

I don't think drama attracts drama but I think there are a lot of predatory people out there who make a beeline for someone who has been victimized or is going through a hard time because they are seen as easier to manipulate.

It sounds like you don't realise how much other people are dealing with, which is why you feel like your life is "drama" heavy.

One thing I've been astounded by in life is how often I will mention something in passing that's happened to me, infertility, child in hospital, relatives with disability and dementia, and people will have also have gone through similar (and frequently worse) but its never come up.

I'm sure if I spoke about domestic violence and other issues there'd be people who could share their stories there as well, but tbh I would never see those as conversations to have except with very close friends and even then I don't feel like rehashing them often.

I wrote earlier about a lack of socioeconomic safety net but reading the updates again, it's extremely strange for a leaking roof, chickenpox, etc to be classified as shitstorms or drama, even if happening consecutively. These things are stressful and can suck big time, especially happening in close succession, but they are far from shitstorms (unless they morph into something bigger eg long term child illness, but even then a lot of people don't see the need to constantly mention that). No one has a perfect life at any point of time.

I think the most likely explanation lack of emotional resilience to cope with perfectly ordinary stressors – even if survival mode has enabled you to cope with the biggest stressors of them all.

It's no one's fault. If you had less than ideal parenting growing up, you may not have been taught emotional and coping skills. Also again, ironically if you've been on survival mode for ages (and have overcome really difficult odds), you may not be able to recognise the difference between an ordinary minor stressor and a shitstorm.

I don't discuss any of my issues with anyone really, do you share a lot? I only don't share because I am an extremely private person by nature and prefer it that way. I find my friendships are generally undramatic and calm.

However, If I told a lot of my friends all about a lot of things that'd happened to me, who knows how they'd react? I know sharing emotional things can make some people very uncomfortable and also we never know what other people have been through - so hearing about abuse or other negative things can be a powerful trigger for them and we'd never know. It'd be quite normal to avoid a person if the risk is there of having a conversation that suddenly turns negative and brings up unhappy memories. I don't necessarily think it means that people don't care, though.

Evidently not OP, but this choked me up a bit. I've been in that scenario so many times and it's been hard to explain to people why something seemingly minor is affecting me so much - having to move out of a flat because my work payroll changed dates, leaving me with a 6-week gap, and having literally nobody in my life I could ask to sub me the money, and an inflexible letting agent (and being 21 and dirt poor with no savings). Then having to quit my job because I couldn't commute via public transport from the friends' houses I stayed at for a few months after, because I didn't have family I could move in with. Then having no money to get a deposit together for somewhere new to rent so ending up having to just sofa surf for a while meaning I had to get rid of most of my belongings which I then later couldn't afford to replace, so on and so on.

One tiny administrative change knocked me significantly off course (financially, mentally, career wise) for nearly 2 years.

That precariousness lodges itself in your brain and I still now, more than a decade later, am so hyperaware of how wrong things can go that even small bad things happening feel TERRIFYING and all-consuming because I'm aware how close you can be to everything going horribly wrong. It doesn't always make you resilient, sometimes it makes you scared and suspicious and a bit floored by seemingly small things, too. A lot of the friends I've made in recent years who have v different socioeconomic backgrounds to me wouldn't understand that, and wouldn't understand why a string of bad luck would seem like the end of the world. I wonder if OP is coming from the same place, because I get it.

(Sorry this is such an essay, but it was so strange seeing that exact experience written down so clearly!)