A rant

Okay, I've had this thought on my mind for a while and I wanted to express it somewhere to get it off my chest. Normally, I'd do this on Facebook, but due to the fact that the people I'm going to rant about can see what I post or know people who could see the post, I'd rather not risk it.

So here's my rant:

My family has some people that we would call "friends of the family". Overall, my brother is the one who is closest to them out of all of us. Which is fine.

The people who are friends of the family always say that "you (my brother) and your brother are always welcome to visit us anytime you'd like!" Which does sound welcoming, right? However, when you actually get down to visiting them, the sentence quickly switches from the previous sentence to "you (my brother) are always welcome to visit us anytime you'd like! And, well, if you wanna bring your brother along, I guess he's welcome too".

This is infuriating to me. Because honestly, though I'm not a 100% sociable guy and could chat up a random stranger on the fly, I will do my best to make myself as noticeable as possible when trying to meet new people or people I haven't seen in a while. And frankly, I think the only feeling worse than loneliness is when someone said that "you're welcome" in their house, when in actuality, you're not a second banana. You're not even a third banana. You're the banana in the back of the counter slowly turning black, constantly telling the people in the house that you're still good to enjoy.

These people see me as someone who's "optional". Their "welcoming" is basically them saying "you're welcome in our house, but we're not really gonna make you feel welcome or strike up a conversation with you. We won't mistreat you, but we don't really wanna make an effort to interact with you".

It honestly just burns a hole in my heart knowing that these people say that I'm "welcome" in their house, but in reality, I'm about as welcome as the floor lamp sitting in the corner of the room.

So tell me: has anyone else had this sort of experience?

 

You caught them at a good time when they said all that. Then when the good feeling wore off, they realized they did not exactly mean it.

I don't exactly get those experiences, since I avoid the opportunity in the first place. I'm not the star of any show, anyway, so I can just sit on the sidelines.

 

I've gone through it before with a group of people I thought were my friends. It hurt badly. I deleted them all, but my sister was still part of the group. She did it for me. I know she would defend me.

I realized over time that they weren't even worth my time. I would rather be around people that do care for me. They hurt me, but the whole group eventually fell apart anyway. They do deserve each other though. They wanna act the way they act them fine. They will find out the hard way.

I'm sorry you had to experience that. I know it hurts.

 

Bring nachos and drinks of your choice and the movie collection of the Jason Bourne series. Some one has to start a discussion on what the heck is going on at somepoint during the movies right?

 

I haven't particularly gone through that exact process. I'm welcome into most homes I visit which isn't many as I don't have many friends. Doesn't help I'm not a social person either unless it's Anime related. But when I do visit, I'm either humiliated, ignored by so called friends or even the one who's expected to bring the entertainment. I really only have one household I'm welcomed in outside of family. I've just accepted it and never really thought about this. haha! Oh well....

Anyway, sorry that you've felt/feel negative through your experience /s everyone.

 

Also everyone I know on this community is welcome to my house. I mean it!

 

I've never felt that way outside of the family, but inside the family (specifically on my father's side), that's a whole other story. They're into stuff that I find boring: country music and agriculture, to name a couple right off the top of my head.
Where I have a passion for Anime, Games, and Technology, they were the exact opposite. A very stark contrast to my interests and what can really get me talking. So I'm always just there as a +1 to the family and always feel like it really wouldn't matter if I showed up to the family reunion or not. The only thing I have in common with one of my cousins, who is probably about 8 years old I think, was a passion for the Transformers series. I have a very small relationship with one of my aunts, who played Mario back when I was little. Out of about 15 people that I know from that side of the family, only 2 of them I can relate to, even just by a very, very thin thread of interests.

Whereas on my mother's side, my step-dad just isn't an animation type of person. It's got to be live action or it won't keep his interest, but he's at least somewhat of a gamer. He plays World of Warcraft (and dare I say he puts in more effort than me with like 8 or 9 level 100s vs me and my 5 level 100s (almost 6)). My mom however, tries to get into the same things I am. So I have to give her credit for that, and I always try to pick out some anime for her to check out because I know what would interest her. She's not much of a gamer, but she plays World of Warcraft as well. So sometimes when our work schedules allow, all 3 of us group up and level our characters together on our day off (we actually have 1 group that's leveling together and neither of those characters go off to level without the rest of them in the group). So I've pretty much kept closer ties to my mother and step-father more than the entire side of my (birth) father and his family.

 

I feel this is something we can all relate to on some level. Now my question to this is do you make frequent visit's to the place in which "your welcome" to visit? If not than maybe their not getting the opportunity to get to know you. The opposite holds true if you do visit on a frequent basis trying to get them to know you, yet their not putting forth any effort towards making you feel welcomed or getting to know you. If either of these holds any truth then yes it certainly becomes infuriating.

I'll admit I have had my own run in's on more than one occasion dealing with this. If there is anything that I have learned over the years having dealt with these dealings is you can't allow yourself to place the full blunt of the blame upon yourself. You were invited, so why should you feel guilty or have a sense of meeting expectations? Point of the matter is you shouldn't. Don't try to change your personality or behavior around anyone because in the long run it'll only serve to blow up in your face. Just be yourself. If it gets to where your feeling unwelcome d then excuse yourself and step out for a bit or leave. Don't continue to place yourself in a quote on quote toxic environment where it's only going to cause you unhappiness and stress. Believe me I know it sucks, but you've sometimes got to face facts it's not worth the hardship. I just tell myself that their the ones missing out by not getting to know me.

 

Well honestly, it's more of when my brother and I are in town and they say "holy crap! You're in town?! You guys should come on over!", in which my brother tells me I should come. Now, if I actually told him how I felt about these people, he'd probably call me something along the lines of an ungrateful bastard who's rude because he turned down such a friendly situation.

So whenever I go over there with him, it's always warm welcomes, hugs, kisses, yadda yadda for him and a "hey, how's it going" without even looking in my direction or making eye contact for me.

However, whenever I'm back in town, I try and avoid these people like the plague. Even when my brother messages me over Facebook asking what I'm gonna be doing for the duration of my time there, he suggests going over to their house if I'm not doing anything. In this situation, I would either feign sick, call other friends and ask if they want to do anything, or try to find some sort of valid excuse as to not go over there.

Because honestly, these would be my choices if he wanted to drag me over to their house:

1. Go over to their house and attempt (and fail) to make social interactions with the people
2. Stay at home and play a game/watch a movie and enjoy myself to an extent

 

I have a somewhat similar problem with my family. I've learned to occasionally say 'no'; that i'm busy, or feeling unwell. It can be really hard when its family and friends of family. You really don't owe them anything, but for family sake you gotta fold and just grin and bear it sometimes (as unpleasant as it is), but the more you use generic or vague responses (with a backup reason) then they will get used to an an image of you being a 'busy' person. Then you'll be able to excuse yourself whenever and get away with only having to go through it only a few times a year (depending on frequency of requests you get).

Well. Thats how i've dealt with it. It takes awhile to get to the end point though. Thats just me though, so you have a good think on it and in the end you just gotta choose what you believe is best for you - no one else.