u/pswelcometomylife

The title sounds weird, but let me explain.

Let me illustrate with a made-up example: Let's say you want a child to engage in good conduct for behavior. Like, let's say they're being loud or something. And, the reason you give for why they should be quiet is "because everyone else is quiet." And that's the only thing you say.

This causes the person to be potentially swayed to do bad things in the future by applying the faulty reasoning themselves, or having people use a similar reasoning to convince them. This means people, possibly up to adulthood, will have to deal with the consequences.

Continuing the made-up example, they learn that everyone else doing something or not doing something is a valid reason for (in)action. So, let's say, they observe another child getting bullied, and they might participate too, or be another bystander like many others, but they don't intervene because nobody else is. Or they try to, and they're told by a peer something like "Do you see anyone else caring?" So they use the reasoning to reach a faulty conclusion of "this is justified."

Obviously this is exaggerated, but there has to be someone who understands what I'm trying to say. Maybe a clearer example is when you beat a child, which inadvertently teaches a child that violence is a valid strategy to get what you want, regardless of the original behavior the initial beating was suppose to encourage/discourage.

Or, if the child DOES understand that the beating is just to get children specifically to do something, then it inadvertently teaches them that certain social groups deserve to have different rules for enforcing acceptable behavior imposed on them, as opposed to the groups they are not part of.

I've had a bad habit of thinking about saying the worst, most hurtful things imaginable to my family if I got yelled at and I didn't restrain myself.

But I've also recently thought about doing something similar to my therapist, because I feel hesitant to try her advice of "just ask clarification" when I'm told to do something, because it feels like deliberately going out of your way to "poke" a family member like that will just be worse than just letting a misunderstanding or an accident happen. Because you did something, and so that means you provoked someone.

And thinking about doing something politely after getting hurt, whether it's trying to explain from someone being inconsiderate, or trying to apologize after someone getting angry at me, sounds like humiliating myself for nothing, or coming back to get punished further. Because other people have often gotten to be mean or hurt me, but I'm always wrong when I do it. Nobody ever cowers to me. But I'm supposed to be nice even when I get yelled at.

I feel like if I didn't displace it, I'd internalize it so incredibly hard, that I'd seek to be the perfect daughter to the exclusion of any of my own desires, constantly trying to work at what they want, and burning all of my possessions that I feel get in the way of that goal, and cutting off anyone who feels like they're in the way. And then I'd have nothing for myself. And then I'd eventually kill myself. So I try to do things so that I never cause anyone to be upset with me, and can just passively live.

I've even thought about some violent retaliation tactics because I've thought before if I'm not careful, my good graces may become irrecoverable and no matter what I do, and it would be like I stepped into a house of mirrors I could never logically escape. Because I'd always be wrong because I exist, from becoming a scapegoat.

I wouldn't have even gotten into therapy if I didn't have a "backup plan" to post all my feelings out to a secret account I had to deliberately emotionally affect others. The only reason I don't do it now is because I don't try to do anything at all, and spend most of my days at home in passive activities.

How do normal people go through life without feeling like their mistakes are permanent, and trying to make things better is exactly what would make things worse?

My therapist has told me that essentially my mother tends to be the problem in most of the negative interactions I have with her, even though my mom tends to put the responsibility on me for things going wrong, because I "don't ask for clarification" or "brush her off" sometimes. I don't ask because I feel like I'd be acting frustrating, looking like I'm playing dumb, or seeming like I'm questioning her intelligence or authority, and essentially CAUSING her to get angry at me rather than it just "happening."

Previously when she'd get mad at me there'd be times I'd offload it onto others online in a really toxic way, or if I anticipated her anger I'd do that or plan some kind of horrible thing like "If she gets angry that's the start of the end where she might start getting angry at me everyday until my life is hell all over again, and I'll do [X] on whatever day to hurt them/myself and it will be their fault." And I genuinely think the only reason this hasn't happened in a while is because I've had little reason to expect her to be angry recently.

But if I start actively making decisions about my life, especially intended to better it like going out then there's a risk of her getting angry again if she doesn't agree with my decisions, or if my focus on those decisions detracts from other responsibilities until they are completely neglected. The act of triggering her feels like it creates this fragile state where she is even more sensitive, while I am simultaneously less able to focus or think clearly due to the initial effect of triggering her. So accidentally triggering her again feels more likely, which feels like it can build on itself in the worst way.

But how can I just brush her off as wrong without guilt about it? The only other option than acting out is withdrawing entirely, and sucking it all up like a sponge in succumbing. And if I decide she doesn't matter, what's stopping me from deciding nobody else matters, either? It seems functionally almost identical to deliberately acting out in response. How am I supposed to correct myself if I don't take her anger at me into consideration?

I feel like I cannot always trust her to not be angry if I came to her about my problems, like maybe it's my fault they exist or maybe I'm stupid for not being able to fix it myself. My therapist even said that her suggesting "counseling" made it seem like I was the problem in the house that needed to be fixed.

I ended up having a friend group turn sour on me because I reacted horribly to how it felt being in it, but I'm not sure if I had a justification for being angry at all.

For starters, I had a habit of at best asking really complicated questions, usually about how to deal with situations, and most people wouldn't really understand them because they were long and very conditional, and that was like the BEST I could do for trying to get closer to the group, everything else I did was pretty much attention-seeking, toxic, and negative. I didn't share any hobbies with them at all, which was mostly gaming, and it felt like I was reading/listening to aliens talking when they had conversations/activities I couldn't really join. I remember one time in our group chat, in the attempt to connect, I made a poll like "Fav Thanksgiving food?" and nobody touched it, and one person even remarked "This is like a failed attempt at a Reddit thread."

Even when we were in a group setting hanging out in real life, it felt like everyone was content to boisterously talk and joke around me while I just silently sat there. Even when I tried to get there attention, like "Hey, can I/we do this?" I'd get ignored or just looked at for a moment before the group decided to do something else. I guess I was going against the grain, too much. I even remember we were out at this amusement center, and most of the group was in a different booth than me, and I try to call over to them to get help for how to turn the machine for the activity on, and it was a stranger who noticed me and helped me get it to work. I also remember generally nobody really approached me for deeper relationships, unless they wanted to date (it was a mostly male group), and a lot of the time it felt sexually motivated.

There were also some people in the group that espoused opinions that I didn't verbally disagree with because I thought it would be a losing battle and all I'd accomplish is being told I'm wrong, like how one guy recounted how his little sister was wrong about society still needing feminism because "women live on easy mode." Or the guy who said about a video someone shared about kids speaking in tongues, "I'd rather they do this than the gay stuff they're pushing in schools." Or that other guy who basically thought "neurodivergent" was this weasel-word for learning disability, and also said that you need to let kids beat the crap out of each other to "get it out of their system" because adult intervention just causes the resentment to fester.

I feel like I'm probably a hypocrite for wishing so badly I could have connected with them on my terms when I didn't even make the effort to understand their hobbies, or kind of dumb for not just leaving if I didn't like them much, all because I thought I'd embarrass myself in the process of making new friends because I was getting old and hadn't really had close friends for most of my life, so other adults would be more socially competent and would be turned off by any possible weird age-inappropriate methods to make friends.

It just feels like I've been ignored in every single way that matters to me. I don't really have deep discussions with people, and even when I have, they would never bring up any points from previous conversations. They'd just talk about whatever popped into their heads. Plus, people in general don't really try to approach me even if we're in the same friend group, unless they were trying to date me, which most of the time felt like they only cared about my sexual value deep down.

I've used talking about my childhood as a crutch for closeness before, which I don't think is really effective. I've also vented excessively about my feelings, which people have hated, and which at this point even I am tired of doing. But being ignored or rejected just makes me do the annoying things more, which makes it worse.

I apparently have an issue with getting angry when things don't go my way in a group. I remember asking others for help in how to participate in an activity we're all doing, they'll all ignore me (which has at least once led to a stranger intervening to help me learn). I'll get ignored if I try to ask anything like if I can get to do something, but I've been told once I get upset, somehow the entire mood changes because of me even when I don't say anything. I'm bad with "going with the flow." And I hate when I just sit there quietly not doing much as everyone else boisterous talks to each other, never acknowledging me unless I say something.

How do I stop caring about whether or not I'm heard or seen if that doesn't even matter and just live? How do I be happy being around someone who literally admits to me they don't care if I don't even remember our conversations, and will always be fine doing anything because it doesn't matter? Am I stupid and selfish for wanting someone to actually ask questions about me when they're already happy just looking into my eyes and smiling?

I feel I have to clarify that what happened was above the belt, with his hands, while I was sleeping. I texted him asking if he liked it after it happened, and he said he felt bad and I said "It's okay." A month later he did it again, and after I texted him the same question he said "I diddddd", mentioned how I "said I liked stuff like that" before, asked how I felt, and when I said "I don't really care" he later said that response made him uncomfortable and he wasn't going to try making advances anymore if I wasn't into it.

I remember at least the second time, I only slept like 4 or 5 hours because of what happened because I was waiting for him to eventually stop, and got paranoid when I had to catch up on sleep at home about getting called down and pissing someone off by not responding. I already felt like he had other unreliable behaviors, so I ended up worrying that this type of behavior would extend into other things like, as specific as scenarios as something like having bad time management on a vacation so we get stranded in a foreign country, or us living together and him casually brushing away opportunities I could have to better myself, like someone asking him if I'd like to work on this or that and him simply saying no to them instantly without even asking me first. I thought it was a sign he'd casually disregard EVERYTHING else for his own desires, too.

At the same time, I feel like there are certain degrees that get completely lost in the definition of "sexual assault" that make it more violent-sounding than it can be. I felt I treated him with the same contempt for pure self-motivation, as I would have if he had done it with pure malice. If he didn't mean it, then what about his other redeeming qualities I completely threw out the window by hating him? He said he was going to take care of me so I wouldn't have to work. I genuinely thought things like "Did he ever like me for any reason other than my body?" because it genuinely felt like he was more interested in paying for things I could have than actually getting to know me, and would at best seemingly wait until I volunteered information, and would then rarely follow up on it.

I just don't know if I'm being too petty or not being angry enough.

Let's say you keep bringing up various things they do that keep bothering you after they accumulate to the point you text dump them about it. And usually, they respond like "I don't know what to say" or "I don't know what to do at this point." It feels like they don't usually address the points. They might even say "You get mad over the littlest things" and might say you get upset when "things don't go your way."

They tell you "I just wish you'd tell me in the moment." But you wish that they would just show an understanding of the general pattern of behavior you are trying to call attention to, because it feels like that's the way others expected you to learn everything and that this person is just getting out of it. You feel resistant to telling them in the moment beyond the usual way you calmly ask a request or for information, and they ignore you in the moment. Because it feels like you would have to be rude and mean for them to actually pay attention even if it's just "please do what I want right now" instead of "can you please do this?", but you're too scared to do that to not push them away and ruin both your days, so telling them after the fact felt safer at the time, but just accomplished that anyway.

Are you wrong for doing this and for feeling this way?

Like, given the choice of one of two individuals:

1. The type of person who has difficulty feeling bad for their actions towards who they have harmed, even though they are perfectly aware intellectually that what they did was wrong. They realize the way things played out didn't have "real" consequences other than social ostracism, but could have gotten a lot worse. And plus, their actions didn't really give them what they were aiming for and didn't feel good anyway. So they change purely to improve their own long-term well-being rather than making up anything to their victims, who they aren't even interested in interacting with again.
2. Someone who feels tremendous sorrow over what they have done to the people they hurt. So, in their quest to be redeemed, they may contact the individuals they've harmed with offers of amends. They may not stop until they have eventually sought forgiveness from those that they've harmed. This person may think whatever they do, even if it's interfering with others people's lives, is worth doing if it somehow makes up for what they did. Of course, they may find their efforts are continuing to hurt people, which in itself becomes something to atone for, repeating the cycle all over again. They keep doing this even though experiencing it keeps hurting their own feelings, "for the sake of others."

Assume that the initial "bad action" either of these people have done is the moral same.

Like, out of a sense of pure spite and bitterness from being spoiled.

Because they may never do anything around the house and obviously get yelled at, and even when they try, everything they do is just wrong and just as bad as doing nothing. And they also get yelled at for even asking what to do, because they're supposed to know or figure it out because they're old enough.

Even when they always cry at being yelled at, they're accused of crocodile tears and pulling "poor pitiful me shit." Because really they "get off" at a parent being upset at them, and are told they "like it" even if they deny it. Seemingly almost because the parent is merely alive. Despite performing distress, they still cause what makes them do it, so it's on purpose and wanted. It seems to be a mix of both sadism and masochism.

If a teenager convinces themselves this happens because of something the parent is doing, could they be denying something they subconsciously know, or is it possible that they absolutely know what they're doing and they're just deliberately lying?

And is it the case that it's nobody else's fault but their own for this?

This question sounds stupid, but let me explain.

I usually default to extremely passive behaviors, or whatever I can get away with doing out of sight. Like scrolling online, doing chores when nobody is around (so nobody can get on me for doing it wrong). I usually don't ask anybody to help me with anything, like going out of the house since I don't have a car, unless it is so extremely important that it can't go unaddressed, like school, or some kind of payment issue. I will usually do things others ask like "Can you please..." because I have a lot of free time, so it feels unreasonable to say no. And I specifically don't try to take on any new obligations so I would have something else to do because I don't want to be yelled at for them interfering with anything I might need to do at home. Or even for it somehow being a "waste of time." So I don't try.

I never try to go out on my own unless it's some sort of "safe" type like going to my college campus. I've been told I COULD schedule transportation to go to the mall, but it feels like I could somehow pick the worst time which would for some reason make someone upset at me. Or if I inexplicably forget to tell anyone that could piss them off even if I respond promptly after they ask where I am. But at the same time the idea of telling someone "I'm doing [X]" feels like there's this odd chance of me getting a "Okay? Have fun?" in response at best or "So does that mean I have to do anything?" like I'm somehow being antagonizing. I also don't share anything I'm interested in to not be judged for liking something weird and pushing people in my house away or making them resent me for being weird.

I feel like it's unsustainable to never do anything unless prompted, because I've been told to ask for clarification when I felt cornered into doing something I didn't understand - but I usually don't because I don't want to look like I'm questioning authority or someone's intelligence, trying to play dumb to get out of it, or just being annoying.

I feel like if I were to repeatedly engage in things just because I wanted to, even if it was "innocent" like going out and seeing new friends, even in spite of bad reactions repeatedly, I'll just be making things worse for myself in the long-run. My life is peaceful, I just have this desire haunting me to do something more, and since I've suffered repeated failures from trying to actively do things in the past, it feels like I know I'd be doing something wrong if I dared to try.

Literally the only way I could be comfortable in doing this is if I was allowed to say it was everyone else's fault that they lied to me and said it was okay for me to do such stupid things, if I were to suffer negative personal consequences. But that feels bad for everyone. And I'd be the one choosing to do these things, anyway, and I'd have the choice to not listen, so no matter what, it would be on me.

But I fear that just as not doing anything could also have social consequences, not doing anything might have physical consequences. So either way I might die early from either deteriorating health, or not being able to take care of myself from pure complacency, so why not choose to do things that I personally want?

I'm mainly talking about the idea that hurting someone (or at least their feelings) means that you're wrong, no matter who does it.

Growing up, I remember my peers generally rejecting me, sometimes even bullying me, for reasons I did not understand. Adults didn't seem to care that I wasn't making friends, and only fixated on me when I did "excellent" work in an actual school context. I remember most of the time when I tried to talk about it to adults, they would either come up with workarounds because they couldn't or wouldn't solve the problem, or tell me I was being unreasonable.

Like how after getting breakfast in school in one grade in middle school, I'd bring the bag with me into the bathroom, and then it would get stolen while I was in the stall. I cried to adults about it, but all they said was to go to the bathroom at home(?) before getting breakfast. Or what I experienced in middle school, with being told "put your head down" by one kid in class who would never get heard saying it (that I would comply with for some reason), or the time he mouthed "trash" across the room, and another kid even encouraged me to tell the teacher, but she was just like "So he called you trash from across this loud room?" like I was lying, or because I was fixating on him because I must have wanted to be bullied.

I even experienced this one time where we were in this middle school auditorium, and this girl told me to move to a different seat, so I did. Then, in the same period, this other kid, who was also like me, in special ed but not being mainstreamed like me, also said to move to a different seat, and suddenly all the adults got up in arms because they apparently heard him but not the girl, and told him not to do that. I had already faced previous instances of being gently rejected by adults when I'd try to say something, so I guess that might have been why I didn't try to tell them about the girl. It was the same one I suspected was stealing my breakfast. So I guess I came to the conclusion it was HER right to do it, but not his, and that you're not even allowed to do something like that that others would normally be able to if you're also the same kind of person.

I remember being punished for the handful of times I hard hurt someone or been disruptive in some way, by being put in a room to be quiet without any real conversation, probably because I was supposed to "know better" by that point. Meanwhile, I never once even had another person be forced to apologize to me...even though I also was never forced to apologize to anyone else.

Like, I don't actually have a memory of being told "keep your hands to yourself", but I feel like it HAD to have happened because of how much I've seen the message ingrained in various parts of culture later in life. But like, in elementary school, there was this kid in a special ed class I had that wouldn't stop touching me, so I'd whine about it, so our teacher just sat us both down together, grabbed both of our hands, touched them together, and said "See? Touching isn't bad." Another time, the same kid from middle school who I said was like "sit in that other seat" in the auditorium - we were in a P.E/auditorium combo room, watching an "award" ceremony, and he wouldn't stop pressing his leg against my thigh, smiling while doing it. So I ended up literally moving my chair away from him because I didn't like it so I was against the wall and people coming back from the stage had to maneuver between me and him. And I remember getting punished by being told i had to wait in the empty special ed classroom because what I did was "inappropriate." I don't even know if the teacher knew what happened, or ever told me to "ignore it", or what.

I could just be acting petty, and it's entirely possible this pettiness is what has been causing these issues from childhood in the first place, but if that's the case, then I WISH I could turn it off without feeling like I'm giving something up from it.

So I didn't really learn that "hurting people is bad." Or even that "hurting people is necessary when the people you're hurting have also hurt people." It just felt like I was being told "Some people get the privilege of hurting others if they are worth enough to society, and others exist for the sake of absorbing it" and "people (with the right) can hurt others even in the most horrible of ways, proportionately to how much their own feelings are hurt." And that it had nothing to do with what you actually did, because the rules could flip at any moment and make you bad regardless of what you were taught earlier. It seems like even doing something about it or complaining was the issue, and not what was happening. Or that my feelings didn't matter, because whatever I felt bad about was automatically wrong.

It didn't help that my mother would scream at me everyday for not doing anything right, and not trying, because if I asked her or said I didn't know what she wanted me to do so she wouldn't be like "You rearranged my shit!!" it would just make her even angrier. And I didn't tell anybody about it because the only thing worse than being yelled at at home, is knowing that people were even quietly judging me for my complete lack of ability at school, instead of just getting mostly ignored like I actually was. I didn't want it to be my own fault my life was worse than it had to be. So she never really got punished for it. I even told a middle school teacher once she expected me to "take care of her" and he said "you're the child, that doesn't make any sense" but he had a talk with her once and after it he said he "understood." What did she say to him? I don't know but all my life it's like adults want to say this or that is wrong, but when it comes to it, adults will go to the ends of the earth to respect the legitimacy of other adults actions no matter what they are, because the right to treat their child however is the most sacred thing you can't mess with. Like you as a person are the part that doesn't matter.

Now as an adult, I've had random people treat me with kindness as opposed to the constant disrespect of being a child. And I have no idea if it's because I picked up enough without realizing it to pass as worthy of something, or if it's the mere fact I became an adult that made me deserve respect, or if it's because they were mostly strangers and if they knew the real me then they'd treat me just as badly as in the past, like when I was forced to interact with others for an extended period.

I remember even as an adult wanting the right to just go off on someone, not even to fight for any particular cause, but just for the sake of the act of going off in and of itself. But even when I had, it always ended up badly. It feels like I have to wait for someone else to defend me because I don't have the right to defend myself. I don't know if I have the right to do that just because I'm a person, an adult, because I was hurt, or even at all.

Even when I've done as little as express an opinion in friend groups, typically the BEST response I get is being told that I am wrong or that something about it is misleading about whatever actual situation I'm talking about. It's never the same response as in school. All adults like it when you do exactly what they want in a classroom, but nobody likes you when your opinion is unprompted, unless they're of course, scrolling Reddit and they are passively happening upon it. You can't demand anyone's time, meanwhile others can demand yours. Why? Because you are you and they are them.

I genuinely don't know if this even makes sense, but if it doesn't then it just seems like more evidence that I can't expect other people to hear me. Am I just so astronomically blind to my own faults that all I see is how others react and not what I'm doing? And are they just so annoying that I'm not even worth the effort to be told what I'm doing wrong so I just bumble through life idiotically?

I can't even bring myself to hate anything anymore because that just invests energy in things that I feel have too high of a cost to change, so I just placidly accept everything because "desire" that goes unfulfilled is a fucking living hell on earth. I have a family member who got me to play a "frustrating" game on her phone once and I was so calm about it that she said if she had the patience I did, she could get a lot more done. But it's more resignation on my part than anything else. Still, there's this lingering desire I have to be able to have real choice, that feels like if I fulfill it in even the smallest ways, like trying to make friends, it's going to bite me in the ass somehow and I'll feel like a joke, like crossing when it's clear only to be hit by a car going at mach speed as a funny slapstick gag.

Even as an adult I've failed pretty hard in things from getting yelled at about them to the point I'm scared to do anything without permission, or to even get permission.

Was put in special ed as a child. Obviously I was not trusted to learn correctly. It did not help that anybody my age wanted nothing to do with me, like I was wrong for existing.

You might think teachers making me feel good about my writing and art talents would negate this, but it doesn't, and I'll tell you why: They were merely giving me permission to talk about very specific things in a context where I was given very specific instructions for what to say. I couldn't just speak my mind unprompted and have people listen to me like adults or anybody my age. I was essentially a dog who did tricks, and still could not make decisions that other people would be forced to respect. You could be the most special thing in the whole world and still not deserve to have anything you request or ask be acknowledged. "What does autistic mean?" "It means you're different." "Will I be able to ride on a normal bus next year?" [proceeds to have to ride on a little white van with nobody but the adults who knows how to speak English].

My own mother made me feel like everything I did was wrong, ESPECIALLY if it contradicted her or I did it without her permission. The dumbest example was the time she had me sit at a computer and do all the typing and clicking for her saying "type this, click that", all because she wanted to find an online form to complain to a fucking Burger King. I eventually got tired of going nowhere, so without asking her permission, I just typed and clicked what I thought would worked, and even though it did, she literally screamed "AAAAAAAAAAAAAA! AA! AA! AAAAAAAA! I DON'T EVEN WANT TO DO IT ANYMORE BECAUSE YOU DID WHAT YOU WANTED TO DO!" I pretty much felt like I couldn't ask anything from her because it would bother her, and never felt emboldened to do anything but complain. I never even tried to sneak out, because I didn't want to test what fresh new hell would be possible beyond her usual screaming about how I did things wrong even when I tried.

It generally feels like I'm being pushed by explicit and implicit forces telling me I can't do this or that even as an adult because I were to get too passionate about seeking things out, I'd be punished for wanting the wrong things, or face consequences for them.

Even when I am told I am smart, or have something interesting to say by someone who isn't an adult who needs me to write something for them, usually:

1. They exist for exactly 5 seconds and then I never see them again like the universe noticed an "error" and corrected it.

2. They stop being interested in me as a person at some point, and at best just tolerate my presence and/or just give me material things.

Even now in my new house after my original mother passed years ago, there was a certain incident that prompted me to talk about this: My current mother mentioned that she wanted to head over to an address, that I wanted to go to on the day of an event to sell things, to scope out what it was like. My dad and I did not tell her we were going over there, and he was underwhelmed by it and mentioned it was a possibly bad neighborhood. He explicitly told me to take a picture of it, to show her. When we get home, and she gets home, I have my phone ready to show her, but she mentions the event location first and says she wants to go there on the day of the event to see if it would be worth going to at a later date, to see if there's "warm fuzzies" about it. I end up not showing her the picture. Why? Because in that moment, what I felt I could tell was that she was saying SHE wanted to make sure she felt good about it, and if I showed her the picture and said "Well, we already went over there", that would necessarily imply that I was saying "Your opinion does not matter, I've already made up my mind" and that would be disrespectful. So I said nothing. Because my opinion isn't good enough to overshadow hers, and it is rude to even try to do.

I am perfectly intelligent except in the ways that actually matter. A part of me can't even bring myself to express opinions to other people or even try to make new friends out of a fear of catastrophic failure. Why do I even feel the lingering desire to do something like that when my static life is much more predictable and comfortable?

Complaining about it is the only thing I really know how to do and feel safe in doing.

It genuinely feels like letting myself have too much of a self-directed will, could possibly lead to me liking it way too much, to the point that even if my own mother tells me to stop, I'll have this horrible compulsion to continue anyway in a self-destructive spiral. "Just because something feels good doesn't mean it's good for you to do" is how I approach almost everything. So if I never give myself the opportunity to miss something, by never having it in the first place, I can avoid unnecessary grief.

I hear that people are supposed to "self-validate" but, what if a person is dead set on being wrong, and would have to pretend to genuinely believe in the right things? What if I'm wrong about literally everything that matters? Do we not have any other choice but to make them the exception and treat them we wouldn't treat someone whose values we actually respect? I'm genuinely not sure I even have ANY values at all beyond my own self-preservation, so that only necessitates I please other people more.

I've had this issue in the past, where one of several basic situations may occur:

1. I ask this person something ("Can we please go to [X]?" Or "Can you please pick something?", etc) and I'm met with silence as the other person is looking away in the distance or on their phone. They may take a moment of silence and then ask me "So what do you want to do?" Or "So do you want to do [Y]?" Or they just continue not responding, so I don't ask again.
2. I ask them if we can do something right in front of us, they give a reason like time or money or doing it later or the lines as a reason to not do it, but they don't say the words "can't" or "shouldn't." So I ask why or point out something, and I'm given reasons that don't make sense and I'm asked "Do you want to do it later?" And I'm like "Fine" and then it never happens. Or if I persist and we keep circling the drain, then we talked for nothing, or the things turns out to have not been worth a long conversation.
3. Because of this^, I might be asked "Do you want to do [X]?" And then I feel like I'm going to be asked about it multiple times, and so I feel held hostage when I just want to get out, because trying to argue "no" just feels like pushing them away, so I say "Fine" to make it end faster.
4. Or I ask if we can do something, they say "Okay!" And then do the wrong thing entirely without clarifying what I wanted.
5. This person won't even pick anything when prompted. They ask "What do you want to do?" Then I ask them that. Then they ask me it again and the cycle repeats until I always pick at their exact prompting.

I feel like I'm going insane thinking about how this has repeatedly happened, and even how if I did the same things to other people, especially if I did it to my own mother, that this person has been doing to me, I'd get verbally lacerated for being inconsiderate and rude.

But people (honestly mostly my family) in general already seem to occasionally mishear me or not acknowledge something I said, so it's like...why am I angry about this if this is supposed to be normal for me? What am I, specifically, doing wrong? Am I just generally worthy of so little respect from being so consistently wrong that I don't deserve to be treated like I exist?

I've been made to feel like I can't just do anything besides neutrally saying "Can you please do [X]?" without having to put up with being ignored, not even given a "Give me a minute" or anything, or even having that be wrong in itself like I'm messing with someone by doing that. Because my immediate thought is having the urge to say something like "Oh my God, why are you not fucking listening to me?" And I obviously can't do that because that's rude. But I stop asking usually because I feel like I'd work myself up repeatedly begging only to get repeatedly disappointed by being ignored or having my main desires sidelined, making it more likely I'd be rude. So I can either put energy into restraining myself or I can blow up.

And I feel petty because it's all over stuff like which public activities we could do in the moment. And it makes me wonder if I'm overthinking it if I wonder if this person would be reliable in a situation that has more at stake, like an emergency or extremely sensitive scheduling involving actual work or favors.

Like, if you're not sure if you just have a bad attitude towards possibly neutral things the other person is doing. As in, they keep doing things you don't like typically without asking, and you don't say anything in the moment to "not be unreasonable" but then it piles up and you can't help yourself anymore. And even when you do bring things up all at once, you're usually told it's getting mad over "little things."

I am not saying that this entitles you to treat them badly. That is exactly what I ended up doing in a situation like that and caused a lot of unnecessary misery for myself and that person because I was too stubborn to leave, because I thought I would mess up any relationship I were to actively seek out myself.

I'm just saying, you're allowed to feel that way, because some people are absolutely incompatible for each other, because their default expectations for how other people should act are completely at odds with each other. The only reason you might stay despite active conflict is because of the Sunk Cost Fallacy.

To give actual examples of incompatibility, imagine one person is relatively passive and has a tendency to let others make decisions and consistently defers to them to make them. Another person appreciates equal amounts of putting forward ideas without having to be told. The latter would hate the former. Likewise, maybe one person was raised to do and say everything in the most direct way possible, and the other often uses implication and hinting because to them, being direct is when you're being "rude." These two would probably talk past each other and piss each other off. And it may not even be wrong for people to be like this, because it's simply what they're used to. But it's wrong to deny there are such fundamental issues in the core of their communication styles.

You should just walk away in situations like this. Sure, it might be terrible for them if one person has strong feelings about you, but imagine how much worse it would be for them if they had to go through you resenting them because you felt obligated to stay. You might think "Well, shouldn't you at least try?" But at what point do we stop doing that? Let's say we try, and then we're told to "try harder." At what point are we allowed to stop? Really think about whether you're are currently or ever have been happy around this person and whether they're worth staying around.

So many bad relationships might have been prevented if a person didn't have to feel like they had to put with up so many things that irritated them because leaving would make them bad because they couldn't pinpoint a specific active behavior that gave them a good reason to leave.

Like, for example, a family gets upset about something, but it might on the surface be so minor that it's difficult to ask others for an objective assessment of it without a garbageload of extra context to explain the reason why it feels so major to you.

So what you do instead is take a different, more isolated situation from a much longer time ago, from a completely different person, about a very different issue, and ask about it, hoping you're at least not crazy about that specifically. Because maybe there's a subtle similarity between the things which might be why you thought about it, when it happened.

Is this weird?

If I literally tell someone what I want, like to go somewhere or do something, and they tell me "But [reason why it's not viable like time or money]" and they're NOT explicitly saying "no you can't", but their reasons are usually so confusing I have to ask "What about [counter-reason]?" and they do the same thing again, and this keeps happening over and over in the same conversation until I eventually acquiesce, or only get what I want when the conversation has gone on for like 10 minutes already...

Then, if I proceed to, in the future, be told some kind of reason or given some kind of alternative instead of just being given or told to go ahead with the thing, and I just say "Fine" because I don't want to deal with a long ass exchange for something that isn't even worth that, or even God forbid, I try to do the same thing again, but then end up saying "Fine" relatively quickly, only to get asked about "What's wrong?" to pry a reason out of me when I just want to move on to the next thing already, so I feel punished for giving exactly what they seem to want.

Then is it my fault that I end up saying "Fine" to things I don't want?

He had a tendency to essentially wait for my signal in everything or prompt me to act, leading me to getting upset because I was waiting or even prompting for HIS signal, which felt like me doing everything and him doing nothing more than financially paying for it. Except when he would suddenly decide to do something without warning or acknowledging me, like the time he went to a toy booth at a fair and didn't even look at me while he interacted with the vendor to "win a prize for the lady" and didn't seem to hear me trying to get him away. Or the time we previously agreed to go to a Halloween store later, and the moment I got in the car because I also needed to pay my phone using his, he instantly started driving without asking for my consent and I felt stuck on the phone while he drove. Or the simple time I was looking at something on a fairgrounds with him behind me, and mid-sentence I turn and he's meters away, so I run up to him saying nothing.

And also except when he decided to tell me I couldn't do something (like a specific activity in a building or event full of them) because of this that or the other over time or money or something, which often sounded like word salad, so at least once I "fought" to have my way through pointing factors out, only to be disappointed in what I was fighting to do, so I ended up with a habit of just immediately being like "fine" to feeling denied because I'd just frustrate myself further just to get nothing at all anyway if I pushed it.

For example, he would often not really plan anything for us to do unless it was a big event or a general area, opting to ask me what I wanted to do the moment I got in his car for the day. Even after I asked him what he wanted after he asked. Repeatedly, until I would always eventually decide. I was the one nearly always suggesting places to go or new things for us to do. And he often wouldn't bring them up again at all unless they already became part of our routine, which had at some point turned into driving around town aimlessly, or watching Reels on his phone, which if we didn't know what else to do next, he would suggest by default.

It also felt like he wouldn't really keep in mind things I told him beyond a surface level. I even remember the time he was literally right next to me when I had a panic attack on one day, and like a week later I asked him if he remembered the exact day and he just went "Um...." for a moment and I almost had a panic attack again because he couldn't remember. Beyond that, he'd seem enthusiastic when I talked about stuff I thought about or was interested in, but he'd never talk about anything I had previously brought up to him, and would default to anything he had seen or heard about on his own timelines instead. We also didn't even have the same interests in common. He mainly liked video games, and I liked a random assortment of things that never seemed to coincide with his own.

Even when I told him things, it felt like he was not listening to me at all by default. I often had to repeat myself multiple times. Or, he'd sometimes misunderstand and just go ahead without asking for clarification until it was clear he was doing the wrong thing. Sometimes, I'd say something and he wouldn't respond at all, like if he was already doing something like on his phone, so I'd just give up because I didn't want to piss myself off further, or push him away by getting angry about it. But I was doing that anyway.

The way I responded to all this was to essentially engage in emotional abuse. I ended up being kicked from our group because of it, and I ended up getting therapy (because I was under the delusion he'd speak to me and me being in therapy like he requested I do before he broke up with me, would get him to come back). I'd often list out a lot of my problems after they accumulated, then he'd say "I don't know what to say" and he specifically said "I wish you'd bring this up in the moment." But I felt like if I did that then I'd be constantly correcting everything he was doing, and if I didn't I couldn't trust him to change after a period of correcting him, so I never tried. He also said I got mad about "the littlest things", which also included stuff like...him letting an unfinished appetizer get taken while I was in the bathroom. Or the time we were in an escape room and I was going back and forth literally pressing buttons behind a wall, and he was just standing there telling me "Hey, look at the lights on the wall doing that!" like he couldn't tell I was causing it and I was running back and forth between the associated key pad and buttons expecting that he'd eventually tell me what the code he was supposed to be reading out was.

Now I'm supposed to be addressing all the core issues that caused this, but I keep mentally going back and getting angry when he's not even here. And it's just going to hurt me and also others if I hit a speed bump and proverbially bite my tongue and crash my car over it.

I just have to wonder if I was more stupid for thinking any of this stuff was worth getting mad about and should have tried things his way, or if I was more stupid for not seeing that all of this stuff was in fact bad - and also getting away from it before letting myself do something I shouldn't have. The reason I stayed in the first place was because I didn't trust that I could ever get another boyfriend at all, and I already had bad experiences with other guys so this guy was the best in comparison. Plus he promised to take care of me, which I had very little faith in myself to do even into adulthood, so I was pretty much using him as a life raft.

I feel like I need to be told directly and in-depth exactly if I was justified or not, and to what extent, by another real human being. And I feel like if I'm given a well-thought out enough answer, then maybe I can stop ruminating about it. Not someone who's job it is to tell me my feelings are valid like a therapist (even though I am seeing one). Someone who has nothing to gain from being nice to me, and may even be in the same general demographic or has been in the same demographic as me.