Sorry but this is more of a rant because I’m getting a bit sick of the same unimaginative “You don’t seem to like your friend much” posts whenever someone posts about a dispute with a difference of opinion.
They often don’t say anything derogatory about the person they are posting about or anything that hints they don’t like or respect them but the same response still gets added to multiple threads.
When this is implied the OP then has to defend themselves or others jump on board echoing the sentiment.
It could be something as simple as “My best friend of 25 years has asked me to make her a birthday cake for her daughter. I would love to do it for free but I can’t afford to buy the ingredients and it will take up a lot of my time, AIBU to ask for a small amount of payment?”
The next comments are “Oh you don’t seem to like your friend very much, do you find it cheeky she’s asking?”
It completely changes the tone of the post and puts pressure on the OP to reexamine a relationship that was otherwise completely fine!
I can understand it a bit more with the people who post in AIBU and list a lot of negative personality traits about the person they are posting about or who bring up past examples of bad behaviour. I find this is usually to paint a back picture though and give a proper representation of the situation, these are the cases where it’s not clear cut and it’s a fair question to wonder if they are being unreasonable.
Not all relationships are perfect all the time and close relationships mean you take the good with the bad. It’s not normal to always agree with people’s behaviour and actions.
I know this is just an online forum but for some people they don’t have anywhere else to turn to for advice or support. I see some really sensitive questions posted on here, there are a lot of threads about people struggling with mental health issues, struggles with parenthood and women in abusive relationships just starting to have their eyes opened.
I see some great supportive answers and the OP starts to open up then the whole thread gets minimised with “you don’t seem to like your partner very much?”
This could be after the OP has posted he’s great 95% of the time but occasionally throws his dinner at the wall or shouts in her face!
It’s not helpful and it could be the difference between someone realising that their partner’s behaviour isn’t normal and they don’t need to put up with that treatment, or staying with them because they think they just don’t like them very much.
I apologise for the long post. It was only supposed to be a quick observation but I got carried away!
I suggested to someone with a genuine problem to post on here for some impartial advice on a subject I have no experience with and afterwards I worried that it might make things worse.
I thought it was sad as this is supposed to be a supportive site primarily aimed at women and it has a huge advantage that it’s mostly people in the UK. This could be an amazing resource for people or AIBU in taking it too seriously?
I did suggest my friend posts in a different section as I know AIBU attracts more critical responses, a lot of people do post sensitive issues for traffic though.
I also find some people post about serious issues asking if they are being unreasonable because they have been conditioned to believe that they aren’t, the fact they have that tiny seed in their mind means it should be nurtured and not just shut down.