To think that people who constantly cut others off for being “toxic” are actually just unbearable themselves?

[UniqueOlivePombear]

If you’ve had to “remove negativity” from your life five times this year, maybe you’re the common denominator.

I tend to agree, and I'm someone who's NC with my entire immediate family. You can't choose family, unfortunately.

In my adult life I've only ever cut one friend off, and I didn't make a big song and dance about it. We had a huge argument and then we never spoke again and that was basically that.

But you can choose your friends and you can choose how close they are. No one drops into your life as a fully formed BFF. There are a few people I know, whose company I enjoy and who I'm friendly with, but I sense a few yellow flags in their characters. So I keep them slightly at arm's length and that's OK! There have also been a few people I've realised didn't make me feel great, or who were behaving in ways I didn't want to be around. I didn't announce I was cutting them off, I just quietly drew back from the friendship and saw them a bit less.

The Venn diagram of people who make a big deal about Cutting Friends Off and people who have extremely dramatic, on-off-on-off-ad-infinitum relationships with awful men is a circle, I've found.

Not necessarily unbearable, but if it's happening a lot from multiple different groups, I'd say it's likely the issue is with the person doing the constantly cutting off. That doesn't necessarily mean they are obnoxious, but they're potentially someone I don't want to be around too much unless and until they've worked on themselves.

It's hard to say. I remember thinking this about Meghan Markle. If I knew a bride who, despite being from a large family, only had one family member attend their wedding, I wouldn't judge. Families can be very complicated. I'd have sympathy for her.

But if eighteen months into the marriage, her new husband had a massive falling-out with his own family as well... I'd start to wonder if she was the source of the drama.

@Hattie907

The personality traits/behaviours I’ve seen in “serial cutter offers”, shall we say, are:
Spoiltness and entitlement - just good old fashion selfishness and an inability to consider how their behaviour affects others
Avarice
Being rude and overly opinionated and being able to offend even the most laidback people

I'd add to this also inflexibility and lack of pragmatism/perspective.

All relationships and friendships have ups and downs and there will always be arguments, differences in expectation, miscommunication in any meaningful relationship.

You sometimes have to just accept that you won't see eye to eye, you won't bring someone around and maybe you're not right. You don't always have to resolve everything. Sometimes it's enough just to know you don't agree but that you understand each other better.

I will silently cut off people for my own
peace. I live the most drama free, content life and don’t like it to be disrupted by people who do things for drama and entertainment.

Yes but most people are going to still make themselves the victim and say that “I was the problem because I let people walk all over me” instead of anyone who was ACTUALLY the problem being able to just say that.

I was the problem for a while and had to work on myself to fix my bad traits. The reverse was also true about boundaries. So I worked on myself to be a nicer, better and more considerate person while also learning some boundaries and cutting off someone who was genuinely my abuser and a narc.

I think it can be.

However I got told I must be the issue becuase we had issue with two family members and neigbour.

Except neigbour had long history of picking fights and we just one in a long line and frankly we managaed the situation better than many others.

The family was us saying no and getting push back mostly round kids and new demands on our time - the thread in DIY section here poster was being told not allowed to redo a wall by her Mum in her own home was at one time part of the course for us - plus later emerged again we weren't only ones with problems with them.

So context matters.

👏🏽

Seeing her interactions with Mindy Kaling in her new cooking show sealed that for me. She is SO passive aggressive and condescending.

Great thread thanks, lots of wise and insightful replies that are personally helpful.

I read that "if you meet one arsehole, they're the problem. If everyone you meet is an arsehole, you're the problem".

Yep, I'd agree:
Want it all their own way
Tight - don't contribute, but also tend to brag ('my new house has an enormous lounge... I'm buying myself a whole new summer wardrobe...')
Shove their opinions down your throat but regard yours as stupid

Or maybe we've just met the same people!

Agreed - I work with a woman who is NC with her family on both sides, her OH's family on both sides, her neighbours, her ex-colleagues, many friends.... apparently they are ALL toxic and/or narcissistic? What terrible luck!

Can be either or.

Like many said, someone with a toxic upbringing will subconsciously seek out toxic people and also act like a magnet, attracting toxic people to themselves. There can come a tipping point at some point in their lives where they realize this and gradually start looking at their relationships in different ways, and go through a phase of cutting out relationships that are bad for them and so it looks like a pattern where they are the common denominator. In fact, they are, but not how you describe.

Then there are others who are incapable of resolving conflicts of any kind. In a normal relationship, you disagree or make mistakes from time to time. Two healthy people will be able to move past it - usually by making a compromise, seeing things from the other's perspective, apologizing, that sort of thing. But there are some people who are unable to do this. Once a conflict arises they are unwilling to meet the other person in the middle, expect the other person to go all in admitting full responsibility, and then when they don't get what they want/need as conflict "resolution" (full submission from the other person) they label them as toxic and cut them out. That in itself is the toxic behavior and these people usually leave a long trail of bad blood behind them.

That's why it never makes sense to get involved in other people's disagreements. It can take a long time to observe and understand which situation you are dealing with.

The three people who I've had experience of doing this to me (two friends and one family member) have done it to everyone over the course of their lives and all three shared very similar personality traits.

So I would say, yes in my experience they were the problem. All three were very manipulative, demanding people who would never apologise or could not apologise. Also everything was to suit or please them, not me or anyone else. I feel much freer now I no longer see them or talk to them. I used to dread the texts or phone calls or meet ups as something negative would always happen (in different ways but with similar patterns of behaviour).

Mental health issues also featured for all three, but it got to the stage I could no longer cope with being used as an emotional punching bag. Their poor mental health should not have been an excuse to treat their friend (or in one case family member) so badly. I don't wish anyone ill and I do hope they are all moving forward in their lives but I'm much happier without them now.

I'm sure it's not always true but I can certainly think of a few people I know who fit the bill - always surrounded by some kind of angst, be that disastrous relationships, let down repeatedly by friends or relatives, abused or under appreciated at work etc etc.
Any of those things could happen to any of us once or twice, but when it's time after time for the same person I think they need to look to themselves for the reason. It may not necessarily be that they are "bad" of course - they may be making recurrent poor choices or have a skewed perception - but if I was finding myself repeatedly in the same type of situation I think I'd be wondering what it was about me that was causing or allowing that to happen.
Unfortunately the people I know who are like this tend to be very quick to blame others for their situation and reluctant to recognise their own responsibility. Some years ago I made a friend to whom I was initially very sympathetic. Life has not dealt her the best of hands it's true but no matter how much I tried to support her it was never enough and eventually I was worn down by her continual negativity and refusal to take any practical steps to change things. Plus it was all a one way street. When I was seriously ill all she saw was the inconvenience it caused her that I was no longer available to her. So eventually, to protect my own well being I ended the friendship. I have no doubt that I am now added to the very long list of people who let her down and if she's made new friends they probably think I'm a horrible person. I now realise that it is likely that the other people she moaned about to me were also probably, on the whole, decent people too. You can't help someone who isn't willing to help themselves.

Yep, I know someone like this. She love bombs new friends and sings their praises to the Heavens. It's very intense very quickly. Then a few years down the line this new wonderful, amazing, fantastic friend is never mentioned. They've disappeared into the ether. Then she meets a new, even more incredible friend and so on it goes.

Really depends on how many people you have in your life, if you have several hundred then yes I can believe 5 of them show toxic behaviours, especially at a time when stress is high because of all the things happening in the world and cost of living.

I think it depends on the scale. If it’s everyone else, then yes it’s either your poor choices or you.
There are people I choose not to have in my life because of their behaviour, which wasn’t ok but wasn’t toxic either. As well as lots of lovely kind people I enjoy spending time with.
If you can find the balance hopefully you’re not the problem.

People often surround themselves with people who are similar to them, so if one person is toxic they will often surround themselves with other toxic people.

I think my point is that if someone cuts off five "toxic" friends or relatives within a year, it may well be that all six individuals are toxic.

Look at it another way, a murderer can be disgusted by a paedophile and the paedophile disgusted by the murderer. Both are right to be disgusted by the other, both are disgusting individuals. It's not always "one person is right and the other wrong."

Yes I would have agreed. And then I started to see things.

I started to see that my personality type and things that I did were actively magnetic to certain types of people. I was raised in a very coercive dysfunctional family. It was scary for many reasons. But you don't tend to realise this is what you lived. And then you meet people and develop relationships that last a while and there's a repetitive of that dysfunctional dynamic. You still don't realise this.

And when you do alot of work, usually counselling because you don't understand why things are such a struggle, you start to see a pattern. An absolute lack of personal boundaries, being a people pleaser and various other traits will have magnetised certain people into your sphere who are pretty high along on a continuum of narcissism up to sociopathy, hopefully not worse.

So the individual is the common denominator indeed, and if they do enough self reflection they'll understand all of it, and might take action.

I only had to cut one right off entirely for personal safety. Others, unrelenting boundaries to help with their tendency to be coercive and manipulative and yes, a little bit toxic, really help.

Yes I agree.

Or maybe they did let people walk all over them

I'd never come across the terms 'toxic' and 'narcissist' in this context until a few years ago, and it's always the biggest cretins on my Facebook using them.

I can't abide social media for all the public declarations on any subject really. It's agonising, it's a joy not to engage tbh.

I watched a great podcast the other day. Throughout history we have had characters high up on the continuum of a personality type that is defined as narcissistic, sociopathic and psychopathic.

The famous people in history are probably famous for what they were willing and able to do as a person within the realms of a personality disordered state. ( As defined above).

What's different now is simply the language we have to describe it. We can identify common traits and behaviours of such and name it. That fir me has been amazing. But - we have SMedia so everyone's situation is in your face, including thoughts and declarations regarding narcs etc which is grating for many.

Maybe come away from FB. If those are your friends and you feel that way it must drive you nuts.

I got to a point where I realised the people who were not good for me. For example I had a lot of one sided relationships or people who used me when they wanted something & taking me for granted & when I needed a support from those people they weren't there for me. There's only so much a person can take.