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How to deal with disrespect from friends?
Hi, so this has been on my mind, as it has been happening for a while now, but I'm not sure how to deal with disrespect from friends. I'm not sure if this is normal, but my small circle of friends have a tendency to do a lot of power moving. Here are examples of said behavior:
- Mostly contacts me because I'm the "back up" friend. I'm rarely invited to meet with this person's other friends, and they prioritize other people over me. In a few cases, it was quite blatant. The friend in question would be in town but would never reach out to me (I've seen his FB posts), when he did, he would mention "Yeah, I had nothing better to do..." when we're catching up at a bar or something.
- Inviting other people without asking me when it's clear I just want to hang out with him. At the time, I had a car and he didn't, so when I invited him to hang out, I had to drive to his house to pick him up. What has happened a lot of times is that he would invite his friend (usually someone he barely knows) without asking me, to our hangout spot. It would be awkward having this rando in the car. The weird part is, he asks his other friends if it's ok to bring me along, but never asks me if he can bring someone else.Â
- Will only have a phone conversation when it's convenient for him. When he's out of the house doing other stuff, as soon as he gets home, he ends the call.
- Takes days to respond to something over messenger. This person, would take 3-5 days for him to read and maybe respond to any message I send him, unless I'm telling him that I'm at his house or vice versa.
- Never shows up to events where I know everyone and he knows nobody. Although a bit unusual, this person, I would invite him, and he would almost always flake last minute or just simply decline. I know this particular character has a massive ego.Â
- Orders me around blatantly. In situations where normal people would be more tactful, he would be unnecessarily a dick. For example, "Do you mind just grabbing something for me on the way?" VS "Grab this for me now". I've been wanting to say something about this for a while, but he usually slides this in so fast and casually that I don't have an immediate response. By the time I think of a response, it's too late. I've read Lucio's thread here about setting boundaries late (https://thepowermoves.com/forum/topic/dont-stew-better-drawing-your-boundaries-later-than-never/), but I've rarely addressed something in the past to set boundaries so it's a bit of a barrier for me.Â
- When we get into an argument, he ghosts me indefinitely (1-2 years). This person has done this on two occasions, and when I tried reaching out to him to work it out, he would give a "brush-off" response ("I don't have time for this", "I'm busy"). Only reason why we reconnected is because we are still friends on FB and I posted something asking for help. I think he's aware that I don't have many friends and is using it against me. Nowadays, I try to avoid big arguments with him.
I have 3 "friend"s, and each bullet point can be tied to one or more of them. Keep in mind that these are recurring behaviors.
Usually in the past, I would confront them straight up by saying something like: "Hey, I know you've been doing X...you need to stop it". Old me was very tactful, I know.
The outcome is usually one or more of these:
- They deny it, which sometimes leads to an argument. They'll usually fade away slowly from that point or ghost me.
- They'll apologize but keep doing it. My ego wouldn't allow me to deal with it, so I'd cut ties with them.
So nowadays, how I deal with this, is by being passive-aggressive by trying to play the game back on them. It fails though, because in the end I am hurting myself since I don't have many friends to begin with. And to be honest, I don't think it's working.
My question is, how would I address this disrespect? (especially with the guy that ghosted me because I wanted to bring up something) I'm known to be a bit "confrontational" so I'm a bit hesitant to say something.
Hey JP,
Good social and emotional intelligence in being able to spot these dynamics.
It seems like these people either feel that they are:
- In some significant way "above you"
- they are giving more by hanging out with you
- you are taking more by hanging out with them
Or a mix of all of them. And that's why they feel like they can behave the way they do, because they probably think it's fair that you put up with their demands and behavior.
Now I don't know the exact situation, or how your socializations unfold, so I can't say if it's just a feeling they have, because they are narcissistic or have badly miscalculated reality, or if there is some truths in their perceptions.
Personally, I would seek to address it by going at the source of the problem (which, right now, I can't be sure of what exactly it might be).
I'd also take a look at how your socializations with them go.
Some of the basics are: are you generally pleasant company, crack some jokes, laugh at their jokes, make people feel good, avoid hogging the conversation, share some insightful tidbit of information, etc.
When it comes to approaching this situation, instead of demanding better treatment, I'd try to show I have the negotiating power to deserve and demand better treatment.
That would start by not asking to hang out anymore, which puts you in a weaker negotiating position and only confirms their perception that you are taking, and I'd start developing other friendships as well.
Thanks for the input Lucio. I've been monitoring myself a little more closely. I noticed that although I am generally pleasant to be around, I do make jokes at other's expense occasionally, but I don't think that's the issue. I think the issue is two-fold:
- They subconsciously see me as someone that has less value than themselves
- I'm picking up a lot more of the nuances since learning more about power moves, so I'm a bit sensitive, but I'm also misinterpreting some of them.
To be honest, I was kind of emotional and ranting when I wrote that post. I now realize that some of those things on the bulleted list don't actually happen as much anymore. This might be because I recognized what was happening and addressed it in an indirect manner. So yeah, now that I'm seeing these things, it's making me more sensitive. Could also be because of the pandemic, which also makes it a bit harder to meet new people.
Glad to hear, JP.
It might indeed be a case that, once you have become more aware of power dynamics, you suddenly saw more of them. Plus, by focusing more on them, they expanded in your mind beyond what was happening in real life.
And, of course, it's possible that as you became more aware, higher value, and more assertive, people also started to subconsciously re-evaluate and re-assess you, leading to generally better behavior.
