Feeling sad when someone reacts with hostility when you have good intentions?
This has only happened a handful of times. Almost all the time, if I compliment someone, ask someone about themselves etc, they respond positively.
A couple of examples come to my mind of someone reacting suspiciously when I did or said something nice/harmless. In college myself and some friends had moved into a house, and I suggested it would be a cute idea to put a whiteboard on the fridge. One girl responded “but we already have the group chat. Are you trying to imply that we’re bad at communication?”
Another example is people being like “why?” in kind of an annoyed seeming way when I ask where they got an item of clothing from, or where they took a particular picture. When we were 15, I asked my friend where she got an item of clothing from and she seemed suspicious, and then accused me of wanting to copy her. But then again we were only kids. When someone asks me these things, I take it as a compliment and just tell them lol.
In general, the pattern seems to be these people thinking I have a sneaky, “bad” meaning behind what I say.
It also kinda hurts because this is a difficult world - I feel like we should try to recognise and appreciate when others have good intentions, instead of being hostile towards them.
Has anyone else ever experienced something like this? If so, how do you kinda move past the hurtful aspect of it?