Mid 30s male.
Have you been in situations where youve been young, 21-30 and other family members have asked you for help for many many years everyday, so you sacrifice parts of your youth and life to help out, only to be judged in your 30s by the same people and not being appreciated or valued for the time/energy/stress you put into in the past, but now you can’t get your time back, and the people you helped just brush it off saying “nobody asked you” but you look back and they literally asked me all the time, and now that they dont need your help with that specific thing, you realise they only contacted you in the past or had a kinda relationship with you because you where solving their problems, but now they just say “if I was in the same position I wouldve done the same thing” and they just act like you never helped? You have this feeling that you cant trust that person anymore cause youve seen a side of him but its hard cause its family.
Its a feeling of dissapointment because I look back and all the time I spent helping out when nobody would with HUGE problems that nobody wouldve helped them with, now I think “I couldve done this or that instead”. I helped/sarificed expecting nothing in return, just transparent noble help from my side.
You start to realise that they dont really care about your problems and only used you (specially a sibling) with guilt and me being an empath when needed. Its hard cause its family and you have been raised told “family first, always help your siblings etc”, but you know they dont actually care and you have this gut feeling they want you to fail and whenever you start to do good things for yourself, you sense their “meh…” vibe.
As I said, I dont want anything in return but normal “hey I know you sacrificied your time helping me, I just want to thank you I really appreciate it”, but to act like I never helped out in very hard hard times in their lives its just amazing. Now all I can think of is “focus on yourself work on yourself” but I cant manage to stop thinking about my age now and feel so behind in life compared to people I went to school with.
2 comments
One-sided “friendships” — yes, had them. Very common actually.
Don’t have them anymore. I will not subject people to this in reverse. I always let people know, “I just need help with this and I know you can help. Can I pay you for the time or do something for you?” If it becomes too involved I cut them loose. I don’t waste someone’s whole day on a personal project that benefits just me.
I ended up having more technical friends for a period because of this — it used to be easy to get sucked into being tech support for the less capable. (Still is.)
Be careful though in dismissing potential friendships on this basis alone. Sometimes a new friend is found from an one-sided initial period but ends up being more mutual or has a connection that runs deeper.
What it’s done, it’s done, the bullet left the gun.
Don’t think on that time as “time wasted helping someone who was using you”, but “time invested on doing what I thought was right at the moment and learning that this person/that people wasn’t/weren’t worth.” Thinking on what could have been or what you should have done is only useful if you want to berate yourself and make yourself feeling like shit.
It sucks, because basically is switching gears on something that you have ingrained, but it is the only way to go. You can try to talk sense into them, and try to make them understand that you put a lot of effort in a lot of stuff for them and you don’t feel they appreciate it, but at least in my experience, the best path to do is helping only if you get something in exchange out of the deal.