#you still need to move w grace both for the sake of retaining your empathy and for the sake of giving yourself peace of mind

[stuckinapril]

I keep thinking about how I met this person thinking they were a good unselfish person only to discover the complete opposite and just feeling disappointed in not being able to see that before… it’s just wild for my brain

I don’t know if that’s necessarily a healthy way to frame it. Not saying you’re wrong in your assessment—I have no context of what you’re actually referring to—but generally speaking I think we fall into the trap of dehumanizing people to a fault when we’re hurt. I feel like it’s less that people are those one-dimensional, inherently awful, irredeemable caricatures and more that maybe two people crossed paths at a time they weren’t ready to cross paths yet. Maybe you were confident and assertive and unwilling to dim yourself, and that brought out their insecurities and forced them to confront questions about themselves they weren’t ready to answer yet. Maybe they didn’t have the best emotional regulation to begin with and couldn’t factor your own emotions into the equation. Maybe they had a rough situation at home. This isn’t an excuse for anyone’s shitty behavior, but it’s an exercise in empathy that’s required in any kind of relationship.

It does suck to find out someone isn’t who you thought they were. I’ve been there so many times. But if they really were this horrendous character, then they’re just become another lesson for you to refer to whenever you’re vetting people. They’re another data point to draw on whenever you’re deciding whether you’ll invest in someone or not. And the more people you experience, the more you’ll realize that people tell you who they are in little ways all the fucking time. I’ve historically given people more grace than I likely should’ve, but even then no one was so good at masking that I wasn’t on to them in some capacity. It’s at that point that you kind of have to ask “do I want to keep going w this, or am I at a place where I want someone who’s a little more able to meet me where I am?” and sometimes it’s good to drop it and sometimes it’s good to pursue it and see where it goes. People are so unique and individual that there’s no one size fits all for this kind of thing. That’s something for you to gauge.

If ultimately you do have a horrible experience w someone, I don’t think holding on to the anger is healthy. Some people do feed off of that and get off of it and validate themselves w it, but I think that’s a juvenile mindset that needs to be left back in middle school. For me I just go through that person’s rationale for doing what they did, however imperfect that rationale is, accept that it happened, and then just move on w my life. You can call that a form of forgiveness, but I see it less as forgiving someone and more as making peace w them (and w the situation itself) for my own benefit. It doesn’t have to involve actually speaking to the other person. It doesn’t have to involve confronting them or seeking them out for closure. It could just be you, by yourself, coming to terms w what happened, drawing your own private conclusions. It really is so powerful to realize you could give yourself closure, without being at the mercy of someone who may or may not grant it to you.

That to me has always been superior to burning energy holding on to petty grudges that don’t go anywhere. You want to always navigate things like this w your limited time on this earth in mind & where you wanna put it—and moving on faster gives you the ability to try again w the next person, rather than drive yourself crazy agonizing over someone who’s no longer in your life. Choosing to dwell in negativity harms no one but you in the end. Respect your time, make peace w what happened, and let it go.