Hi Janine,

Sure, I didn’t want to be friends with her…

So what if she had different expectations than you do about that? What if she wanted to be friends with you, had thoughts that you two would have a great connection, could read each other’s essays, walk to class together, or whatever? What if she stopped you one day with the sole purpose of establishing this connection with you, and you could sense this immediately, and it made you feel uncomfortable? How would you respond?

“I’ve got to get going. I’ll see you next Tuesday”??

Well, to some people that would sound like you shunning her, like you treating her “less than” or rudely.

My point is this: If you are going to put people on the spot with the intention of striking up a new friendship with them, you’ve got to be able to handle it when it doesn’t work out the way you want. It’s entirely possible that this guy had no intention of hurting your feelings. If you can’t accept the way a person responds to you when you put them on the spot, then don’t put them on the spot. There are better, easier ways of making lasting friendships.

B

Dear Janine, I would like to comment on your posts but I have a question first if you don’t mind: the guy you had the confrontation with, can you explain in what ways he treated you badly? Was it “only” the incident on the stairs when you greeted him or other incidents as well? And if so, what happened? Sorry if you allready wrote this before and I missed it.

Hi Janine,

You did a very good job describing how that new suitemate treated you because I could almost feel the hurt myself while reading it. This must have been very disappointing and difficult for you. If it were me, I’m not sure I’d be able to live in that environment. Thank goodness you had your own bedroom.

So this living situation you described, is this the suite you lived in last school year (fall 2018-spring 2019)?

What year of college are you in now?

Do you have any idea why this new suitemate would treat you this way? What do your instincts tell you?

Yes, I think it’s logical to conclude that the reason the other girl on campus (the one who’s the head of the club) was rude to you is because her best friend (the new suitemate) may have told her something about you. Obviously, you don’t know that for sure but it’s plausible.

What about the other girls in that suite? How did they treat you? Do you consider any of them your friends?

What’s your current living situation this school year? Are you living with any of the same girls you lived with in that earlier suite?

Sorry for all the questions. Last one: How did your peers treat you in elementary, middle, and high school?

Maybe we TB members can figure out why this is happening to you and then come up with some ideas on how to improve your situation. What do you think?

B

Dear ninibee:

I re-read your posts in your three threads this morning. In your second thread, Nov last year, you and I communicated very well. You addressed me by name every time and you were polite and gracious to me. I then made a mistake and posted an impatient post to you and you didnt reply to me on that thread. Next, on your current thread, Jan this year,  I made the same mistake on page 1 in my second reply to you. I was impatient, somewhat annoyed, and you didn’t respond to that second post or to my third.

It was my mistake to post those two replies that turned you off to communicating with me. I will make sure that in this post I will be patient. If you do reply to me next, I will make sure that from this point on, I will answer you calmly and patiently every single time.

The following is my input today, there is a lot there, so take all the time that you need to read it slowly, maybe over a few hours or days:

1. The theme of people being nice and friendly to other people, but not to you: June last year you shared that your boyfriend didn’t want to go on dates with you, but before the relationship, he texted another woman, “CONSTANTLY asking her on cute days.. every day”. You felt very unwanted because he suggested dates to the other woman, but not to you.

January this year you shared that this former co-tenant in your dormitory building “seemed so nice to everyone else”, but not to you. He posted on social media “a lot of altruistic posts about how much and how deeply he cares for the planet and people”, but he didn’t care for you. So you confronted him for being a hypocrite: “do you realize you treat people like sh** just the same?”

You then shared about one of your former roommate in that dormitory building: “She would chat and say hello to the other girls in my suite, but refused any social interaction with me whatsoever”.

The common theme is that these people wanted other people in their lives, were nice to others, but not to you. Having communicated with you earlier about your relationship with your mother, I figure that this theme gets activated in you again and again because your mother was nice to other people, but not to you. I am not sure about it but I am guessing. You can let me know if I am correct, or not.

2. Your mother rejected you many times before you gave up connecting with her: She rejected you in very hurtful ways. I don’t know those ways, but I have no doubt that they were very, very hurtful. You tried to reach out to her again and again, wanting her approval, desperately needing her to see you as a good little person. But she never gave you that approval. As a result of her repeated and continuous rejections and disapproval, you eventually stopped trying, and you stayed away from her.

At one point on you got confused (and we, daughters, often do get confused regarding our mothers, where do I start and where does she end; which part is me, which part is her), incorrectly thinking that it was you all along who rejected her. But in reality, she rejected you first, and many times before you finally gave up trying to connect with her and rejected her back.

You wrote in your Nov thread regarding your mother: “I found her repulsive and often outright rejected her.. As a child, I often wished my parents would divorce and that my dad would re-marry someone else”- first she was repulsed by your efforts to connect with her; first she rejected you. After a whole lot of rejections, years of it, you finally gave up and rejected her back.

Here is you giving up  on your mother: “I eventually just felt completely hopeless.. and I still see no  possibility for change. I have learned that I cannot keep going back to her”.

3. You keep experiencing now what you experienced as a child/ teenager with your mother: for example, you ran into this young man on the stairs of the dormitory building, wanting “to make a connection” with him (similar to all the many,  many times you wanted to make a connection with your mother). This is what you wrote about his reaction: “he just seemed uncomfortable, like I was creeping him out, like I had trapped him by stopping him to say hi”-

– I think this is how your mother reacted to you when you tried to make a connection with her, she seemed uncomfortable, like you were creeping her out, like you trapped her.

You wrote later: “everyone is seemingly telling me I’ve done this horribly wrong? Should  I consider myself a predator? Should I walk around making sure I don’t talk to anyone because I will just make people uncomfortable and trapped? Should I make sure I understand myself to be unworthy of kind human interaction?”-

-It is within the relationship with your mother that either you or her felt that one of you was the predator and one of you was prey, that one of you is making the other very uncomfortable, that one of you was trapping the other, that one of you is unworthy of kind human interaction. You keep re-experiencing your relationship with her, with other people who are either a bit unfriendly or very unfriendly.

“I honestly try my best to stay out of people’s way as much as possible”, just as you tried to stay away from your mother’s way as much as possible: “I would stay in my room or the backyard, and only use the kitchen when I knew she was not around… Sometimes I even felt afraid to be I the backyard, because I did not want her to see me from the kitchen window. I felt very nervous and uncomfortable to be seen by her”.

4. She rejected you when you felt good, when were happy and joyful: “I felt like I could not show any happiness… I felt like she did not like me enjoying myself. It was easier to be ashamed and feel bad about myself somehow”.

5. She hurt you and then accused you of hurting her:  “I would tell her that I felt hurt by her. Her response to this was always something like ‘I hurt you? You hurt me! You need to stop hurting me”.

But it was the other way around: she hurt you! That you were angry at her for hurting you is understandable: everyone gets angry when hurt, and very angry when deeply and repeatedly hurt. You were not the reason she was angry at you, you did nothing wrong to her. All you did was try to connect with her. When that failed and she rejected you so many times, you got angry; your anger at her being a natural consequence of her behavior.

6. You still need a mother/ you still need a connection that will send you the message that you are a good person, worthy of kindness: “I often wish that some motherly woman would show up and take me home with her.. My fantasy mother.. I would not need to feel ashamed to go back to her for help or support… She is not capable as seeing me as ‘bad’  in any way.. When she introduces me, I am seen as good and  interesting. Her positive view of me helps me to be in the world”-

– you needed your real life mother to approve of you as a good person, so that you can go out to the world with that good feeling, that you are a good person, deserving of affectonate and interesting interactions with people. But your real life mother shamed you for trying to connect with her, she disapproved of you, so this is what you took with you to the world: shame and disapproval, the bad feeling of  being bad, or wrong, uninteresting and undeserving.

Sometimes you get angry at people, and that further makes you feel that you are wrong and undeserving, and when people get angry at you, that too enforces your feeling that you are indeed… bad, wrong and underserving.

Your fantasy mother is different, she is the mother you needed but didnt have. You wrote:  “I am afraid I cannot find this, or that I am too old to receive this type of thing”-

– you can find this fantasy mother, in a way. You can find someone who will get to know you well and approve of you. It will not be easy to find that person. The therapist you did see, he is not that person. Not yet, maybe he never  will be. A new psychotherapist, maybe a woman, a more empathetic therapist, more involved, more responsive, is what you need.

It is a shame that even though your mother is well off, she did not give you what every child needs: a connection, approval. I agree, you can never find it in her or with her. But maybe she and your father can finance a good therapist for you who can give you that connection that you still need.

Over time you will learn to be okay with your own anger, you will understand its valid message, what it means and what it doesn’t mean, and you will also not be devastated when people show the slightest criticism and disapproval of you.

I will stop here and hopefully you will write back to me sometime, if and when you are ready to and if you want to.

anita

Dear ninibee:

You are welcome. “well, now what?”

The answers I am suggesting to you:

1. Start quality therapy with an empathetic, motherly type psychotherapist who is professional, competent, trustworthy and hard working. (Not so easy to find). She can be your fantasy mother for a while, before you no longer need a fantasy mother.

2. In the context of your thread, if you tell me what you need from a fantasy-mother-type here, and if it suits me, maybe I can be that person for you here.  I already promised you that “I will make sure that from this point on, I will answer you calmly and patiently every single time”. So I will keep this promise for sure.

anita