Reply to I want to get away from friend groups/communities with this specific type of woman: where to go?

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Reply to "I want to get away from friend groups/communities with this specific type of woman: where to go?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don’t know anyone like this. Maybe because I’m a minority and they avoid me? Yay.[/quote]

Maybe. It's also possible you do know people like this but just don't notice and thus it doesn't impact you. Which would be a real, not snarky, reason for yay.

I think sometimes this behavior annoys me more than it should specifically because I pick up on it very easily. I think the reason why is I grew up in a very dysfunctional family with bad power dynamics (one abusive parent, one enabling parent, lots of sibling rivalry, lots of pitting kids against each other by parents, parentification of older sibling, neglect of younger siblings, parentification of female children, enabling of male children, etc.). Obviously this was bad and as an adult I've gone to lots of therapy to untangle that and figure out how it impacted me and learn to recognize negative power dynamics in relationships.

One side effect of this is that I notice power dynamics, abusive behaviors (not physical abuse, which almost anyone will recognize, but the way people manipulate relationships to their advantage and the other person's disadvantage), controlling behavior, enabling behavior, etc. And once you see this stuff, you cannot unsee it. So people like this probably bother me, or "trigger" me, more than they would someone who just grew up with health family dynamics or hasn't dealt with emotional abuse or been on the losing end of a really bad power dynamic. You may just gloss over all this and just think "huh the one lady has a really strong personality" or "huh those two ladies are friends even though one of them always seems happy and the other always looks kind of unhappy." Whereas I will think "oh, that woman is using the guilt of implied obligation to force people around her to give more money to the PTA than they are comfortable with, and a lot of people do it because they are afraid of her or afraid of being perceived as cheap or gossiped about as having not give as much as others." Or "oh Mary is forcing that friendship on Carla because Mary wants their kids to be best friends but Carla doesn't know how to say no because Mary is very vindictive when she feels slighted and Carla is worried about making an enemy of her."[/quote]

Wish I had this insight when making friends here in my twenties - could have saved myself some dysfunctional connections![/quote]

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