no subject

[lotesse]

How do you hold the people around you accountable? When leaving, or straight cutting ties, doesn't feel right?

Comments

[eva_rosen]

Good old 'the reason you suck' speech has seldom failed me. If not on a one on one terms, letting know everyone around you're well aware they're acting shitty and you're done pretending otherwise might help, if only because people like to seem not shitty in front of large groups.

[lotesse]

I'm rubbish at conflict like that! Good thing D. does better; I guess he sent our problem friend a "why you suck" text last night. I just always feel like things are my fault, and get frantic to have them fixed so I don't have to be the bad guy.

[princessofgeeks]

Well, setting boundaries is very hard when, as you say in your comment there, you always feel like things are your fault and you must fix them.

If something is the other person's fault, you can't fix it. And if they don't care or won't fix it, then it stays unfixed.

This can be very uncomfortable.

The metaphor I like is the dirty spot on the window glass. If it's on their side of the window, nothing you do on your side will help, but the spot is still there.

Sounds messy. Good luck.

[lotesse]

Yeppp. This is why I was living in the woods at the edge of the world for the last few years; I know I'm no good at this, and for a while it was easier to stay alone. I'm going to keep trying interaction, though. I want to come back down to the world, at least a little.

Thanks for the comment -- it's helpful to be able to clearly label the discomfort, at any rate! The window metaphor is very good.

[greensword]

The two major types of things I tend to have to hold other people accountable for are boundary violations and failures to meet commitment. I tend not to have a problem with the former, not sure why - I guess it's just easy for me to conceive of my boundaries as important and worth protecting, and also to view boundary violations as objective wrongs. Like, I'm doing the world a favor by teaching this person to respect boundaries, you know? Holding people responsible for commitments is harder, because everyone flakes sometimes. What I tend to do is quietly remove myself from commitments and refrain from entangling myself with them, and if they ask why, I tell them something along the lines of, "no hard feelings, I'm not mad, but I need to know you'll do X in order to do Y and you haven't been doing X".