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][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don't know one womens group that doesn’t eventually break up or splinter, for various reasons.

Even if they get together on occasion they are one big happy organism feeding positively off each other. They are many groups of 2 or 3 loosely connected to others.

Also friendship wax and wane that is life.

How do you get past 25 years old and not understand this. [/quote]

Yeah.  I kind of thought she really shot herself in the foot here by breaking off with every member of the group.  She should have just spent more time with the people she got along with and less time with the larger group.  [/quote]

It’s weird to be half in and half out with a group. Better to have a clean break.[/quote]

No group does everything together. We have a large friend group in our neighborhood and not a single event has everyone at it because people do have other things going on in their lives. I can also do things with some of the members of the group if I want. It's not a monolith. [/quote]

This isn't really that deep. The other women were just not good enough friends to want to tolerate any BS. If she felt slighted or ostracized she doesn't owe friendship to one or two of the women who were basically acquaintances or randomly sent her flowers then ignored her. This was not a lifelong friendship. It has run its course.[/quote]

That's fine. I just think it's dramatic to say you have to break away from the entire group because some people don't like you. Just don't hang out with them then. [/quote]

If your "friends" are planning a group outing at your kids birthday right in front of you, not including you, they aren't very good friends. These people suck and the posters bending over backwards to explain it away or blame the people who don't stand for poor treatment sounds a little nutty. It's ok to move on and make new friends, these people sound pretty awful. [/quote]

It's fine if you want to read the more dramatic version of events. The way she wrote it she didn't explain how she "knew" they planned the other event while at her daughter's birthday party. I think she was being overly sensitive (which I get, she had a young child/children at the time and that's exhausting/draining). That doesn't mean she has to be friends with these people. If you don't want to spend time with them, then don't. I just think she, and many of the posters here, are being very dramatic. [/quote]

DP. I think some of us have just found ourselves in groups with these dynamics and understand how it works. I actually think you have probably been in one of these groups too because the language you are using is exactly how people talk in these groups. The person who is being iced out or excluded is always "overly sensitive" to that exclusion. Someone who points out unhealthy dynamics in the group is being "dramatic" or "the one who is actually causing the drama." This is true even if the person who is speaking up does so calmly and in a non-accusatory fashion. It's also true even when other members of the group tend to act very dramatically to any perceived slights or exclusions. Because it's about power. If you have power in the group, you are allowed to say "why didn't I get invited to that" and no one will accuse you of being over sensitive -- they will apologize and make sure to include you next time. And if you don't have power in the group, people will tell you that you are being over-sensitive and that people just forgot and it's no big deal.

In a functional friend group, someone saying they feel left out or hurt by the behavior of another group member would not be a source of drama. People would welcome having issues raised directly, apologize for any harm caused even if it really was totally intentional, and then move forward with a better understanding of one another and everyone's needs. If you are actually friends with someone, and they say "this hurt me," your natural response should usually be that you are sad they are hurt, not to be dismissive or tell them they aren't justified in feeling hurt or they are causing problems by expressing their feelings.

This was not a functional friend group.[/quote]

I haven't been in one of those groups because my friend groups (and I have many of them) have always been functional. Everyone is allowed to say how they feel, we can disagree, we can even get upset with each other, but we're adults and we can talk it out. So I will note what you said since you have actual experience with this and I don't. To me, the behavior of certain people seems overly sensitive or dramatic, but that's not because I'm dismissing their feelings, it's because it seems like people are making assumptions in order to further their narrative. Perhaps that isn't the case, but it's hard to tell. [/quote]

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