Hi Crawford,

Many people ask questions, but aside from anita, not as many answer them. Persistence is best. Hopefully you will see that people have replied and you will answer on the same thread.

Anyway, to answer this question, is it all comes down to expectations and boundaries. If someone can’t handle you at your worst, do they deserve to see you at your best?

Aside from maintaining a basic level of politeness, you can abandon or carry on friendships to suit your needs.

Keep in mind that each friendship is different. There is your party friend, your neighbor friend, your childhood friend, your church friend, your work friend, your crisis friend, your good time friend, your two in the morning friend, etc. This friend you have sounds like a good time friend. That’s great as long as times are good.

Best,

Inky

• This reply was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by Inky.

Hi Crawford,

You’re asking a bunch of different questions, so I’m going to quote them and answer below the quotes.

I know that i am responsible of how i feel but does that mean i dont have any responseibility over other peoples feelings?

No, you don’t have responsibility over other people’s feelings. They are going to feel and respond however they feel and respond, and there’s nothing you can do about that. You can tell them how their responses make you feel, but you can’t expect them to change based on what you would like them to do.

If i feel a certain negative feeling around someone and it makes me want to leave the person if it is not dealt with, is it my responseibility or both?

It’s your responsibility to let people know when they hurt you and your responsibility to leave if the behavior doesn’t change. It’s their responsibility to decide whether or not to change the behavior… but understand and be willing to accept that they don’t HAVE to change it. That decision is theirs and theirs alone. If you don’t like that they have decided to continue the behavior, it’s your responsibility to distance yourself.

If i feel someone is constantly in a positive bubble and cant accomodate for negative feelings in me, how can i adress the issue without blaming them for how i feel. In my perspective, i would have to confront them about it or let them know that i will have to leave them if it does not get resolved. This is my experience, i used to have a friend which i felt was stuck in positivity and never accomodating or taking negative aspects of others around him as part of himself. I was in pain but he could not take my pain as part of him and be with me as i am, feeling into me, being with me with the pain. This made me feel alone and that my pain was not valid, and i had to hide it to be able to be in the persons presence. I ended up confronting him about it whereas he acted as it had nothing to do with him at all, not showing me any kind of compassion or empathy. This made me leave him and our friendship. My question is, how to deal with negative feelings in relations?

I’m not sure what you wanted from him here. People can feel empathy without taking the pain into themselves. Were you wanting him to feel bad because you felt bad? I think the best way to deal with these sorts of things is just acceptance. I think it’s important to share how you’re feeling, which you did, and just as important to accept when someone feels differently. At the very least, you know that you should not go to this person when you are wanting to receive that type of experience. I think it can be sort of self-preservation/self-care to not want to take other people’s negative feelings and experiences in as your own, and it’s okay if he doesn’t want to have that deep of a friendship.

How much should we take into consideration others feelings as part of ourselves and in what ways are we responsible in relationship towards eachothers feelings?

We are responsible for setting our own boundaries and enforcing our own boundaries. We are not responsible for other people’s feelings. If someone comes to us and tells us something we are doing is making them feel bad, we should consider what they’re saying and whether or not changing that behavior lines up with our own feelings/beliefs. If it does, we can change it. If not, we don’t have to change it. It IS nice to compromise and change behavior sometimes, but not at the expense of our own self-care. He may not want to take negativity in because it affects him negatively, and that should be understood and accepted.

So, in that case, if the person decides NOT to change the behavior, it becomes up to the hurt person to decide whether they want to remain friends and just change the nature of the relationship, accept and deal with/look past the behavior, or distance themselves completely.

I guess I don’t understand what you want from him.  Were you looking for him to feel YOUR pain or feel HIS pain?

People handle things very differently. Some don’t like to express to others what they’re going through, and it seems like you’re expecting that he should handle things the way you do…. but some prefer to deal with things on their own and in their own perspectives.

Also, if you know he’s on medications that are known to decrease empathy, why are you looking for empathy from him in particular? To me, that doesn’t make sense. You would need to vent to a different friend rather than him. I would also be careful about labeling people as narcissists. We all have a little bit of narcissism in us. It’s a trait that exists on sort of a sliding scale. Although some do have more than others, that word is getting thrown around an awful lot lately, and it’s important that we recognize the trait when it shows up in ourselves, as well. There are lots of different reasons why someone might not be as empathetic as you might expect them to be, including being incapable of it due to medication and because they just aren’t that into you.

At any rate, if you’re no longer around this guy, I wouldn’t worry about it. It sounds like it’s better for you two to just not be friends, so I would cut your losses and forget about him as best you can.

Yeah, I know it’s frustrating and it hurts, but sometimes people aren’t as invested as we’d like them to be, no matter how long we’ve known them. He might’ve had a lot going on that you didn’t know about that he didn’t feel like sharing that sort of made him less capable of dealing with other people’s issues. Or he could just be a jerk who doesn’t care about anyone but himself. There are plenty of those in the world, too. Either way, it sounds like it wasn’t a good friendship for you, so it would probably be better to just leave that guy in the past.

Definitely good riddance then when it comes to him! You don’t need jerks in your life.

You’re welcome! And thank you, too! 🙂