It’s a bit of an odd one but I have recently successfully applied for a new job. This was off the back of how I have come to be treated by members of the team I work for including my supervisors. Basically despite being the longest serving member of the team and having a postgraduate qualification in our area of business I am regularly shot down by team members when I offer a view or an opinion on our caseload, and at the last team meeting my supervisors hit his hand on the table and told me to shut up and put up with a situation I had flagged as a potential issue as well as also suggesting a couple of ways in which we could mitigate the situation. He did not like it, and in fact seems to never like it when I offer views and opinions. One time (over teams) he told me to use my “inner voice” and just the other day I made a comment identifying a link between two jobs and he commented with “nothing to do with it”. One of my colleagues then messaged me on the side to say he was being rude and that my opinion was absolutely valid so I know I was right to point it out. Other times I’m just largely ignored, or if I’m away like in a meeting or on my lunch break the team will plough ahead with a course of action without my viewpoint and yet when others are away when a decision needs to be made, they’ll say “let’s wait until XX gets back from lunch and then decide”.
Anyway, I’m just waiting on my start date and then the count down to being out of that environment will begin!
The thing is, I’ve now started to noticed that this sort of thing happens at home with the way DP talks at me/ doesn’t really listen to me and quite frankly it’s bloody annoying.
He’s sulking right now because a few weeks ago I said something like “you really ought to do thing A if you want to do thing B at some point”. He nodded but took no action at all.
Fast forward to today and thing B has cropped up, but he can’t do it because he hasn’t done thing A, despite me telling him he should and him agreeing at the time…
I wasn’t going to point it out, as he is a bit miffed about thing B not happening but it sort of popped out. He was moaning about the fact that he can’t do thing B and I said “well this is why I said you should do thing A a few weeks ago…” He got in a huff, rolled his eyes and stormed off. I realise I might have come across as a bit of a know it all but if he’d just listened to me/ valued my opinion, etc etc. then he would never have found himself in this position. This was the point I wanted to make but he stormed off and is now not speaking to me.
There are loads of examples of things like this now that I think about it - like when interest rates first went on the rise and I said we should try and remortgage before they get any worse, but he laughed it off like I was an idiot. Last week we had a mortgage appraisal and the advisor said “why have you left it so long to remortgage, you could have saved thousands if you’d done it years ago”… he acknowledged that he should have to the mortgage advisor and said he now regrets it… after the meeting when I said “I told you we should have done that”… he again, got all huffy and puffy about it.
As I’m typing this out I can see that I’m being annoying but in the moment I just think “this is proof that I was right!” and want him to acknowledge it. But he doesn’t…
It seems that this is just my life now as whether at work or at home there’s someone who thinks they know better than me, or who wants to challenge my view or opinion, or just plain ignores me, hoping that I might just shut up. Even my kids do it! Urgh.
It feels as if my options are a) keep my opinions to myself or b) accept the fact that I will get ignored/ some sort of pushback and/ or no acknowledgement when it eventually transpires that I was right.
A while ago, a friend of mine got kicked out of a club we both attend for speaking her mind. I felt the same as her but didn’t say anything so I’m still in the club. She told me her whole life had been like this - with her rubbing people up the wrong way/ challenging injustices, etc. etc. and I remembered that I used to be like this many years ago, before I met DP. Admittedly I didn’t have many friends and guys would break up with me because I wasn’t girlfriend material (ie compliant). Now I’m old and grey, I realise that I’ve lost this part of me and have become a bit of a pushover in my old age… how do I get the old me back?! I liked her, even if no one else did!