Reply to Breaking up with my toxic mom group (Ashley Tisdale essay)

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Let’s say the other moms didn’t like Ashley: their options were to pretend to like her or to break up with her.

I think it’s less mean to break up with her.

Ashley should find good friends who like her.[/quote]

But apparently they did the mean third option: pretend to like her to her face, even attending events she hosted and telling her that if she was included in certain activities it was an accidental oversight, while secretly disliking her and talking shit about her behind her back.

Agree she should find friends who like her, but having been through this myself, it's a real mind***k when you get out of a friendship with people who were fake nice to you while being nasty behind your back, and it makes you feel really unsure of yourself entering into other friendships because you are often thinking "well is this real though? is this person being nice to me because they like me or just because it's easier than being direct with me? can I trust them and share personal things with them or will they use that against me and gossip about me with other women when I'm not around."

This is why mean girls suck. The damage they cause is not confined to the relationships they poison with their bad behavior. It lives on.[/quote]

It sounds like they were nice to her to her face but didn’t include her in their activities. If that doesn’t scream that they didn’t want to include her, I don’t know what does.

She should’ve moved on. It’s what I tell my kids to do when someone isn’t brave enough to break up with them in exactly the right way.[/quote]

I mean ultimately that's also what she did.

Though it sounds like they included her in some activities but not others, which would have been very confusing and might have led her to hang on longer than she should have. She describes people who showed up to her daughter's birthday party, sent her flowers when she expressed upset over having been excluded from something, and went out of their way to tell her that any exclusion had been accidental. That's textbook gaslighting and it's understandable if her response was initially to trust what they were saying and assume she'd misunderstood.

This is why women need to learn to be more direct in their interactions with each other. Learn to say hard things, like "I was upset that you kept talking about your vacation house when I was dealing with damage to my home during the fires" or Or "I didn't invite you because I have been frustrated with your behavior lately." Or even "we aren't friends in that way, I'm sorry." Too many women lean on this fake friendliness all the time. Stop it. Just be direct in a respectful way and let other people decide what to do with it.[/quote]

Or just walk away earlier?

With regard to trust, I tell my kids to go slow. Start by sharing small things, and see how their friends react. Also, see how they talk about others.

If you want them to change the way they act, talk, behave, etc. who cares about the reason why they are the way they are. They’re not the friends for you.[/quote]

She's an adult. Not your 7 yr old.[/quote]

You're giving former child actors/singers too much credit. Many of them have all the social skills of a 7-year-old. It's sad what being in the industry from a young age can do to your development. None of these people know how to handle interpersonal conflict like mature adults.[/quote]

Who hasn't handled a situation badly at least once? Acting like just explaining all the rules of how to be perfect to kids means they will never make a mistake is just weird. [/quote]

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