Why People Suddenly Don’t Like You

(Or: Why Family Members Opt Out of Family Events)

I’ve made a life-long study of human behavior and psychology, specifically as it pertains to interpersonal relationships. As far back as junior high school I was reading all the books I could find about psychology and how the mind works, at that time mainly for myself and a desperate need for self-improvement, considering how stressed and depressed I was as a kid, but with the side benefit of learning a lot about humanity in the process.

In that pursuit, I became huge on supporting common courtesy and etiquette, recognizing how important it was to helping us all get along and have a starting point common ground from which to interact and form relationships (of any kind).

I wanted to address what too often amounts to a misunderstanding about relationships that seem to strangely cease or dissolve without any explanation; the friend who no longer seems interested in spending time with you, the acquaintance who is now shunning you, or even the family member that no longer comes to family events without any explanation.

The default response is usually along the lines of “that person no longer likes me” or “I must have offended that person,” or similar.

When very often, it has nothing to do with you (us)…at all.

Instead, it’s all about the no-show person, and what they have going on in their life, and where they are in their headspace at this point in time.

If there is a genuine problem, whereby the other party is outright offended, most people can detect that; the offended often have a hard time hiding it and are (perhaps even subconsciously) looking for a way to express that offense, an opportunity to confront it without doing so directly. We’ve all experienced this. It comes across as mind games and subtle offenses.

But if there doesn’t seem to be anything that could’ve caused the avoidance, I can tell you from personal experience…both myself being the “offender” and having had it happen to me personally…it can often be about what the other person is going through at the time that makes them, for whatever reason, uncomfortable being around you because of how they feel about being in your presence.

Meaning: You inadvertently cause them to feel badly about something that is going on internally with them, through absolutely no fault of your own.

As a man, I can give you an easy example, and understand that the examples are endless and can apply to a wide range of issues:

I’ve lived at a poverty level income for a large portion of my life. As I’ve explained elsewhere, I was at the bottom of my class due to having constant panic attacks at school coupled with pretty severe depression. I say “pretty severe,” because I hate to whine, and am sure there’s always those who could’ve had it worse.

So I was doing what our society would deem “the lowest level work” after I finished school, for countless years, because I couldn’t get a college degree, and options back then were few.

With certain friends I just lied about my work. Since I did some part time stuff that was outside of that realm and more “respectable” by society’s terms, I would tell most people that’s what I did full-time, as the mere mention of my main work would always, as a cultural standard, illicit responses more along the lines of the pathetic, so much so that it would be uncomfortable for all parties.

“You do THAT for a living???”

I experienced this first hand when I was at a wedding, sitting at a group table with a relative who knew my actual line of work, and one of the people sitting there was unknown to me (as happens at wedding events, we can get assigned to tables where we don’t know people). He decided to start conversation by going around the table of about 8 people, and asking us what we did for a living.

I stated what I actually did because a relative was present who knew.

I was older at this time, and so used to being embarrassed about my position in life that I learned how to stifle that shame. One learns how to sort of step outside one’s self, a sort of numbing of the emotional response when discomfort is ingrained in one’s life for many years.

Most of the other people had already said what they did for a living, and they were all middle class jobs or better. So when it came to me, and I stated what I actually did, the person asking…first likely realized he shouldn’t have gone around the table asking…but then proceeded to mock the line of work, referencing visually and graphically certain aspects of it, out of an obvious discomfort in not knowing how to respond.

In doing so, he definitely made the situation more uncomfortable for everyone.  He lacked common social etiquette to begin with.

Had I not been able to “step outside of myself” as mentioned, it would easily just be more of a humiliating experience.  I have always felt good about my ability to detach myself from my ego in most any instance relating to most anything else in life, except when it came to this topic…as a man, and as most men can relate, we need to feel good about who we are and what we do as men.  When we don’t have that, it dismantles who we are as people.

This is compounded when people interact with another and realize the person has a head on their shoulders.  People can’t understand how a well-presented, seemingly highly intelligent (so I’ve been told) and articulate person could be doing THAT line of work, for THAT amount of pay.

And of course when people wonder about that, it goes in only one direction…”What is wrong with him???”

So back to the explanation, when people don’t feel good about themselves around others, or feel SOME KIND of discomfort about the nature of the relationship, perhaps the dynamic or what the person knows about the other…avoidance is the easiest way to manage it.

And that’s exactly what I’ve done, and what other people do.

When it comes to family, I have opted out of as many events as I can, because of how I felt about myself, and what family knew about me.  It’s again that sense of male pride mentioned above; when you’re considered the lowest on the totem pole of society, and your family are all doing well or even excelling (at least in comparison)…it makes one not want to be around others that are quietly judging even if that judgement is merely a perception and not a reality.

We have no way of knowing what is going on with the third party that could be causing the avoidance.

Keep this in mind next time someone seems to shun you, and you can’t figure out why. It very often has absolutely nothing to do with us, and is just something the third party feels they have to do, to most comfortably manage their current life situation.