If you often don’t understand why people resent you, it’s time to figure it out. Here are five common communication mistakes that make people hate you.It happens that a person, for some unknown reason, suddenly starts to annoy everyone. Nothing happens for no reason, and if this happened to you, it means that you just don’t notice something. Here are five common reasons why people start to hate their friends, co-workers, or casual acquaintances.
1. It’s not what you said, it’s what you didn’t say.
If you’re not very social, you probably think that keeping quiet is the best thing you can do to avoid screwing up a conversation. If you’re an introvert and often wish the person next to you would shut up, you feel like your silence is a favor and a gift to other people.
And then you find yourself in this situation: you’re walking through a shopping mall, you meet a colleague and you prefer to just walk past so as not to start an awkward and unnecessary conversation about nothing. And instead of grateful silence, you hear behind your back: “What an asshole.”
So what’s the problem?
This is the biggest social mistake you can make: ignoring people without wanting to offend them. You didn’t respond to an invitation, ignored a funny message with a smiley face, didn’t wish someone a happy birthday. People get terribly offended by this, and an introvert may not even understand when silence became an insult.
In fact, silence is even worse than insult: it is disdain. Imagine that you sent a resume to an employer. What is worse: if you were rejected or if you were not answered at all? Of course, the latter. Your resume was not even read and no one bothered to inform you that you are not suitable.
Many people feel that being told to fuck off is better than just being ignored, because at least then they know you notice their existence.
So remember…
People who are offended by your silence think that you think you are so cool and strong that you don’t even think about other people’s reactions to your silence. And also that your silence is a way to tell them about it. To silently spit in their face.
2. You accidentally put yourself above
Let’s imagine this situation: one weekend you got so drunk that you picked up a hottie at a bar, slept with her (him) in your car and puked all over the seat, which cost you 1,000 rubles to clean.
It doesn’t seem like a very scary story, so why not tell it to a co-worker who always tells stories about his drunken antics? But for some reason, after this story, he starts avoiding you.
What’s the matter?
The thing is, you showed him (although you might not have thought about it at all): you are slightly higher on the social ladder in terms of income and entertainment. Let’s say he hasn’t had sex for a year, he doesn’t have a car and doesn’t even have an extra 1,000 rubles that he could just spend on the consequences of a drunken prank.
That’s all, he doesn’t feel good about you because you’re so immoral, but because he doesn’t have the same thing.
So remember…
This invisible, stupid, but real struggle for power happens in every conversation . In any dialogue, one person is smarter, richer, more attractive than the other, and both know it, but flaunting it is not at all comme il faut.
For those who are unsure of their social status, this question is an open wound, on which salt is periodically poured. Therefore, it is customary to belittle one’s position and one’s merits, so as not to offend others.
People who are not very skilled in social interactions often make this mistake: it seems to them that there are no people below them on the social ladder, and therefore they cannot touch any wounds, because they simply should not exist.
And in fact, they can. You say: “My relatives are such monsters,” and your friend at that time thinks: “Yes, and I have no relatives left at all.” And no one says that this is right, but, unfortunately, it is.
3. They think you owe them
Have you ever had a breakup where you heard someone say, “You can leave me like this? After everything I’ve done for you?”
Or maybe you had a case when friends asked you to help, you refused for logical reasons, for example because of work, and they got really angry, as if they paid you, but you didn’t show up.
Another option: a person stops to talk to you and makes it clear that you have somehow seriously offended him and should apologize, although you do not see any guilt in yourself and in the end you begin to believe that it is he who should apologize for his unjustified demands.
What’s the problem here?
The person gets so annoyed because he thinks you owe him something, and you don’t know it. It’s an absurdity that manifests itself to some degree in almost every relationship: someone thinks they’ve done something valuable and important for you, and now you’re tacitly indebted to them.
This is what happens in most failed marriages . The wife thinks: “He was so lonely and lost when I met him. If I hadn’t saved him, he probably would have died of boredom.” And the husband thinks differently: “I gave her a home and comfort, if it weren’t for me, she probably would have gotten involved with some scumbag who would have probably beaten her, maybe even kicked her.”
Each believes that the other is in an unpayable debt, and when it turns out that they think the same, it is stress, shock and mutual insults.
So remember…
People want you to be in debt to them because it gives them power over you. And if you don’t pay the debt they’ve created for yourself, it pisses them off.
4. You are wasting their time.
You’ve only written one email to your boss. It was just one simple question, but despite that, he jumps on you and grabs you by the throat, figuratively speaking.
Or one evening you drop by a friend’s house unannounced, he opens the door and says, “Oh, it’s you, nice to see you,” with a look as if he’s sending you away.
Or it could be like this: you find yourself on the other side of the fence in example #1. You wish someone a happy birthday, and in response – dead silence, cold as space. And you know for a fact that this person is not an introvert, that he or she texts 100 people a day. What an asshole!
So what’s the problem?
In the first example, the boss was too busy with his own problems, and then you came along with your question; in the second, your friend was busy and had no desire to listen to your three-hour story about your latest adventures; and the one who didn’t respond to the congratulations simply received too many of them, so it’s impossible to respond to them all and not miss a single one.
And in each of these cases, politeness prevented them from saying it directly. Because if a person says they are busy, it means they have more important things to do than you, and they have the right to choose whether to consider your case or someone else’s. And that means they have more power. And that, as we have already established, is impolite.
When someone doesn’t have time for you, it’s always offensive, and there’s no way to say it without triggering the second point: he has more social advantages, so to avoid showing it, he might just keep quiet.
Or even worse: if a person is bombarded by many people with their own affairs, and he really just doesn’t have enough time, he can snap at you, although without directly saying that he has no time. As if that’s better. But that’s how we are.
So remember…
If a person is taciturn with you or does not answer your calls at all, he may well be in a hopeless situation. He is bombarded with tasks and requests from the crowd, trying to answer everyone, and very often such people, gritting their teeth, write a response, thinking to themselves: “What a bastard, he could have googled and found out everything in five seconds. But no, he asks.”
5. If you are happy, then everyone is happy.
This is generally the most common social error, which is present at all levels, from roommates to entire ethnic groups.
There are many examples, such as when the office imposes a silly rule that the thermostat should no longer be touched without the supervisor’s permission, or when one partner decides that the couple will no longer eat meatloaf on Friday nights.
You don’t understand why you need to change anything, introduce new rules, because everything was fine anyway. The trick is that it was only good for you, while others suffered from it. And when you start protesting, saying that you’ve always done it this way and everything is fine, people get mad.
Why is this happening?
You are in your comfort zone and simply do not notice how uncomfortable or bad it may be for someone else. This is what gives rise to all the conflicts and misunderstandings.
One of the partners doesn’t like going out on weekends, he just sleeps all Saturday or sits in front of the TV. The other understands that he can’t be dragged out into the street, and stops even trying. And when a breakup finally comes, the homebody can’t figure out where the problem is in the relationship, because everything was fine. It was fine for him, but he just couldn’t see how it was for the other person.
It’s very easy not to notice this until it’s too late .
So keep in mind…
You don’t think about money when you’re eating out, but if you don’t have money to eat, you’ll start thinking about it, and constantly. Accept the fact that everyone has different needs and desires, and if your loved ones aren’t getting theirs, you can’t ignore it. It’s not a problem for you, but it is for them.
Of course, you can’t do it so as not to irritate or piss off anyone at all, otherwise you risk turning into a weak-willed creature who neglects his own interests for the sake of someone else’s approval.
But thanks to these tips, at least you won’t allow something like this to happen unconsciously and then wonder: “Why is he so offended at me, I didn’t do anything.”
