this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2025
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That seems odd to me that your therapist never asked for examples. If you ever feel like it, I'm sure people here would be happy to give you input if you're wondering how people might generally react to something in particular.
Thanks. It's probably not worth digging up conversations, I've been avoiding people I know for a while now so I don't remember verbatim how those conversations played out. I just remember the parts where a friend is spiraling because everyone hates him for being a colonizer and I'm like "I didn't say I hated you or was mad at you or that you're a colonizer?? I'm white???" or the part where a friend is talking about how evil he is for two hours while I'm trying to get him to stop and I feel like dogshit because I thought if I told him he was hurting my feelings he'd just apologize and we'd move on.
But that's not useful information if I don't remember exactly what I said before it. I just remember what I was trying to say.
Obviously without the full context it's hard to say for certain, but IMO if people are acting in the way you're describing in response to some criticism, that's more an indicator of work they should probably be doing on themselves than anything you did. I'm not saying there aren't times when it would have been helpful to word things differently because maybe there were, but I wouldn't be too quick to put all the blame on yourself.
The weird thing is, the majority of the time I wasn't even criticizing them. A lot of the time I'd be bitching about my own life and I'd try to be as specific as possible but my friend was convinced I was secretly talking about him, and our other friends agreed I was partially at fault.
Of course the times I did criticize them went even worse. I developed a habit of just agreeing with them and complying to all their criticisms of me, but that upset them more because it turned out they didn't believe all their criticisms and just said them because they were mad.
I don't know. I just don't want to make friends anymore because it's damned if I do, damned if I don't. I keep shoving myself into queer spaces because I always wanted to find love before I die, but I don't think I like being close to people anymore. It's confusing and uncomfortable.
That sounds incredibly frustrating. I really hope you're eventually able to find some friends who you don't feel the need to walk on eggshells around.