When Someone Doesn't Like You

This week's blog post is inspired by my own life, so like everything I write, it's my own personal opinion.

To start off, like any human being who walks the earth, I don't like it when someone doesn't like me. It hurts. What I've learned from my most recent experience is that it hurts the most when the person who doesn't like you knows you really well and has been a best friend of yours for a long time. My personal reasoning behind it is that when someone who knows you upside-down starts disliking you, then it makes you feel like you must've done something wrong. But when someone from the outside dislikes you without knowing so much as your favorite color or whether you're a morning or night person, let alone what your fears are or what your seeds of growth have looked like throughout your life, then it doesn't hurt. You know they don't like the idea of you, but they don't even have access to even be eligible to hate the real you. It's easier to let it go with someone who only knows your surface. My hypothesis is that most of the time when someone doesn't like us, it's the latter; it's usually someone who doesn't know us all that well. They may know us a little bit, but they likely don't know the deep, intimate parts of us.

This is the case for me. My hope is to tell my story and maybe give some advice on how to get past knowing that there's someone who doesn't like you. It really is their loss if they don't see the amazing person you are. It doesn't matter what you've done in your past. Everyone is constantly growing in their life, so judging someone based off one decision or one relationship is not representative of a whole person.

This is what has happened to me. I'm not ashamed to say that I was the only one in one of my "friend groups" to not get invited to a birthday get together. When I say "friend group," I mean a group I hung out with; they were my best friend's friends, never mine; we never once had one deep conversation.

I'm fortunate to have two best friends, one from high school, one from college. Here's the tea . . .

I saw a photo of the birthday party night, and my best friend told me about it. She didn't end up going because she's fallen out with the group of friends herself as she went through her breakup, realized they weren't there for her, and also is now going through rehab; I've been one of the few people to support her. She's shifted friend groups you could say. My best friend told me that the birthday girl, we'll call her S (her name doesn't start with an s, that's the point lol), never liked me. She met me when I was dating a pretty awful guy, but she judged me, assuming I must've had some bad characteristics myself to have been dating him. She constructed my entire personality and life journey based off some guy I was with for three months. Yup.

Of course I was taken aback. I was surprised though to find that it didn't affect me. This is someone who never made an effort to get to know me like I did her. She knew nothing about me except that I'm passionate about mental health and that I write. That's it. She doesn't know that it took me a long time to get secure enough with myself to be able to dismiss red flags in men. She doesn't know that I agreed with nothing that my ex said that night. She doesn't know that on that night when I introduced him to her, I was melting in embarrassment that I brought him there. She doesn't know that it didn't really set in how bad he was until I had him meet her and everyone else. She doesn't know that, since then, I now have standards built with hard cement, that the last date I went on never made it to a second date because the radar was going off in my head, warning me he's not a good guy. She doesn't know any of this progress I've made. My best friend knows all of it, and that's because she was there through all of it, seeing how far I've come, listening. The feeling is mutual. First she saw all this growth in me, and now I'm seeing all this growth in her being able to part ways with a couple toxic friends and also being able to get sober so she can focus on her career and her passions.

I care what my best friend thinks because she knows me. I don't care what the other girl thinks, I really don't.

Not everyone is going to like you. There's several people in my lifetime who haven't liked me, and most of them have been people who never took the time to get to know me. 90% of my high school may think they know me, but they don't. I only know the people I befriended super closely. All the acquaintances from high school, I don't know what they've been through and they don't know what I've been through. That's why I try really hard not to judge.

I do it. I do judge, and I hate myself for it. I judge based off social media posts, I judge based on how popular the person was in high school, I judge based on one-minute altercations I've had with people. It's wrong. Again, I don't know them and they don't know me. I have no right to hate them, no right. I've gotten a lot better at simply feeling positively neutral when it comes to people I never got to know very well.

Just remember, that when someone doesn't like you, it's because they have something going on with them that makes them judge you or they may be envious of you. Maybe you remind them of someone from their past. You don't know what's going on. Please don't waste your time feeling insecure because of it. Think of the people in your life who do know you. That's what matters.

I have continued friendships with several people since childhood. I have two best friends who know everything about me. Their two opinions are all I care about. I have other good friends who know most of me pretty darn well and their opinions I also care about. Below that, people who know of me, they may have opinions about me, but I don't let those opinions affect me.

Now, if one of my best friends one day got mad at me all of a sudden, I would know I did something wrong and I would need to have a conversation and talk it out. If I do something and someone on the outside is mad with me, and I give the honest full story to a best friend, and they tell me I'm in the wrong, I'm going to believe them. My best friends are constructive. They'll tell me if I mess up. I like it that way. Everyone's said something they don't mean, including me.

Bottom line is we're not perfect and who we are is very much a multitude of events and experiences, nothing singular. There will always be people who hate you just to hate you, always. But there will always be people who adore and love you and who are your best supporters. Use your time on those people, not on the seasonal people who come and go. Stick with the roots of your tree.