Misunderstandings With Friends. Don’t Let Them Shake Your Confidence

Oh I misunderstood you, and that lead to all this confusion. Whenever someone tells us that they have misunderstood us, we give them a leeway and blame miscommunication for any setback that it may have led to. Be it at work or in relationships, haven’t we all kicked ourselves for not being clearer, or for not putting out our views with more clarity. It could lead to mismanagement, fights, setbacks and even failures from which there is no bouncing back. But here’s the thing, there is a chance that you may be surrounded by toxic people who simply want to gaslight you and subtly dump the blame of a failure on your shoulders.

There was a friend whom I have now shut out from my life because in every fight that we had the blame eventually would find its way to my shoulders.

I know that I am not perfect. That I am prone to making mistakes as much as the person next to me. But that’s the key word here, as much as the person next to me. If every fight, every failure in any sort of personal or professional relationship always finds its way to your corner, there is a big fat chance that you are simply being conned into bearing the blame, one way or the other. 

As I matured, I realised what was happening in this particular friendship where apparently the other person was setting BFF goals non-stop and I was always struggling to “prove” myself to be a worthy friend.

This said friend had a habit of deflecting blame. They once blamed me for “stealing” potential friends from them. Only after conversations with said stolen friends did it come to light that they had never connected with this person on any level. And guess which route did my friend choose to take. “Oh I completely misunderstood the way you behaved around them and I got jealous .” And so the blame was again somehow on my ambiguous actions which did not sent clear signals to my friend.

Can you imagine the kind of havoc such a person can create in a love relationship? How difficult it will be if you partner always told you when anything went wrong that you were not clear about what you said, or how you acted or directed them?

We love to cut people close to us some slack but for our own emotional wellbeing one must always keep in mind that misunderstandings can be deliberate too.

So what do you do when you find yourself stuck with a friend, colleague or partner who tends to deliberately misunderstand you? You can take the route I took. Just weed out such toxic people from your life. You will feel so much lighter to not having to constantly worry about what you say, how you act and the kind of perception it creates. Cutting out a toxic friend from my life has also done wonders to my confidence.

I don’t overthink conversations. I believe in what I say more than I used to ten years ago. It may sound frivolous, but these little things they impact our lives and wellbeing on a subconscious level. Only when the burden gets too heavy to carry do we begin to question such issues. But it does not have to come to that.

I have now resolved to not trust anyone’s opinion on my way of conducting myself blindly, no matter how close they are. Once when you learn to filter out valid critique from the invalid one life becomes less complicated and much more fun. Certainly what all of us can use right now.