Hi! This is my first time posting something here. This community seems to have some good wisdom and I think I have a lot to learn from it. I had an experience yesterday which really shook me up, and I am wondering what I can do about it.
Yesterday, a friend of a friend named Bob came through my town on his way home from a road trip. He’s the best friend of someone I used to sleep with casually, who is still in touch with me from time to time, but Bob and I were never particularly close. We always hung out in group situations. Although we were never close, he stays in touch now and then and texted me asking if he could crash here for a night. He sounded excited and suggested that he come here, pick me up, and drive about five hours to a cool museum in st. louis, then would drive back and stop and camp at a park he’d researched on the way home. All of it was his own suggestion start to finish. I was really looking forward to seeing him. I don’t have many friends, and those I do hold dear live far and wide. I travel about six months out of the year, and when I come back to my home, I pretty much go into hermit artist mode. I live on a huge piece of land and use my time here as an opportunity to get in touch with nature and myself. I’ve always enjoyed solitude, and being around people all of the time overwhelms me. It’s always nice to see a friend, though, and I was really looking forward to Bob’s visit.
From the time he pulled into the driveway, things seemed a little odd. Before he even got out of the car, he asked me if I had any weed (I stopped smoking pot months ago, unbeknownst to him, and was never a heavy user to begin with– pot is the only drug I’ve ever taken recreationally). He seemed very let down when I said I didn’t have any. As soon as he came in, he told me that he had decided against the st. louis roadtrip and wanted just to crash here for the night. We made smalltalk and I asked after our mutual friend group. He mentioned the person I used to sleep with and said, “He and his girlfriend are really having a blast together! Haha! Sorry.” It was a little hard to hear, especially because this person stays in touch with me in a flirtatious way. It seemed to me to have been said purposely to sort of poke at me. I suggested that we take a walk in the woods, and things went from a little awkward to decidedly strange. For example, at one point he cut off a random anecdote about work i was relating with, “maybe you should just stop talking now, i don’t think i want to know the rest of this story.” The overall vibe was just like a slightly curled lip and a hand put slightly out to keep someone from coming any closer to you but with the least careful possible attitude about the dislike, like a mild annoyance that’s not important enough to really think much about, but is borderline disgust, like, “please, whatever it is that you’re going to do, just don’t, i don’t want to have to deal with you.” it was bizarre. i’m not sure i explained that well at all, but there it is.
I have felt this vibration/tone only one other time in my life. It was when I hosted a celebration at my home for my childhood boyfriend of seven years, who had passed away the year before. I was never close to his friends around town, and he had recently started dating someone else just before his death. As a result of both of these things, his friends were not inclined to like me and seemed to be confused as to why the event was at my home and seemed disdainful of me. During that party, I remember offering one of the guests a mango, which he had never had before. He literally wrinkled his nose at it and asked me if eating it were going to make him sick. When he took a bite, he spat it out in the sink and said it was the grossest thing he’d ever eaten. It was a feeling that I am offering something from a pure place, and it is being actively rejected. That was the same feeling Bob gave me.
Back to Bob. At every moment, he seemed like he was either actively annoyed with me, or was trying his hardest to make the situation of having to be around me tolerable. We went to bed early and when he got up in the morning, he started packing his car to go without even having breakfast or talking to me. I left a small gift for him on top of his bags, and when i came back into the room he had packed all his things, but had left it on the table. The item was something I had picked up at a hoodoo shop on a visit to new orleans, and it was a package of powder which allegedly drives away bad energy. There was an image of a black unicorn on the bag, and it said “black destroyer” on the front (i’m an artist and I tend to like things like that for their aesthetic and quirkiness). I told him it had been a gift from me, and he said, “yes, I saw it. I don’t think I can take that.” I asked him why, and he said, “What is that, some racist stuff? A KKK hood? I don’t think I can take it.” I was totally taken aback and weirded out. He hadn’t even bothered to look at what it was, and his immediate reaction was so beyond negative. Needless to say, we never went on any of the excursions he had suggested before coming. They weren’t even mentioned.
Before he got in his car to go, I asked him outright what his opinion of me is, and he said, “You’re a snob and a know-it-all.” I think this is the same thought that my exboyfriend’s friends, etc. have of me as well. My sense of humor tends to be sarcastic, and while I think I’m pretty book-smart, I am painfully aware that that doesn’t count for everything by any means. I am shy and often choose not to show others my personality, so when I invite someone into my home and they treat me this way, it feels extremely difficult and challenging– again, like I was willing to open up and share, and it was actively rejected. The experience really shook me. He was actively unkind to me, and though I have racked my brain for what I did wrong, I really can’t figure it out. I was myself and it was rejected. I can’t figure out why he’d have gone out of his way to see me and wanted to spend time on fun trips with me, but as soon as he saw me seemed to want to leave right away and to degrade me in a way– rejecting my gift, making a point of telling me how happy his friend is with someone else, cutting off my story, etc. I am wondering– is there something I am doing terribly wrong? Is it my fault that I get treated this way from time to time? Or is it a matter of people misinterpreting me? I am not sure if I should internalize this experience and actively try to change something about my behavior in some way, or if this is something I should release and not allow to affect me. I know it’s difficult to judge the answer without having met me, but I am really searching for answers and cannot seem to make sense of it. Any feedback is really appreciated. Thank you so much for reading and responding!