Me too; I have had a similar experience this past year.

Three people that I’ve had in my life for years, whose judgement I’ve relied on; they were so terribly wrong about so many things.

When I cried about Prussian Blue, they said:

A: “He’s a prick, forget about him”

B: “He’s a psychopath”

C: “A healthy person would have spotted the red flags much earlier”.

I asked her why she was saying this. This was a man that I had devoted many months of my life to and I felt hurt and denigrated that she dismissed him and thereby my judgement as pathologically flawed. When I protested her response, she suggested that I see a psychotherapist, intimating that my problems were way beyond her, that I was somehow ill, instead of simply a human being who was hurting.

I wept and sobbed for hours every day for six months

I wanted her to sympathize, to intimate somehow, yes, this could have happened to me too, instead of the implied judgement that I was weak, stupid and undiscerning.

Prussian Blue took me to a fabulous Greek restaurant in Silkeborg once. He said that he’d once gone there with his wife but they left when they saw how much it cost.

He took me to a fabulous Greek restaurant in Silkeborg. Photo: Unsplash.com, Dogancan Ozturan

My friend’s response was: “He’s a psychopath” when I related the story to her.

You see, my view was that he was trusting me by telling me a story that showed him up in a very bad light and it warmed my heart that he trusted me enough to do that.

I was quite astonished that my friend put such a negative spin on it.

And then I began to ask her why she said that. For years I have always trusted her judgement above my own because she was so socially adept and I wasn’t. Just asking her why she would make such a comment opened up a dialogue where I continued to question her assumptions, not acquiescing to her superior judgement, as was my wont. As we sat in that rather fancy restaurant eating a late lunch, my blind trust in her rightness ebbed further and further out on the sandy flats.

“You should have spotted the red flags sooner”.

She said a normal person would have seen the red flags sooner. Photo: unsplash, Liam Desic

To give her credit (or not), she’s a therapist.

Our conversations continued to make me feel, again, idiotic, naive and just plain stupid.

The questions that she used to explore the topic made me feel really, really terrible.

I just wanted her to nod and sympathize without judging me.

The judgement, often unspoken, pained me deeply.

When I protested, she threw her hands up in despair and frustration, saying that she always said the wrong thing, according to me.

I was just being difficult.

I hate being difficult. I want to be fun and a delight to be around, not someone who is difficult because I consistently reject your “solution” and evaluation of the situation, which in my view is fundamentally flawed or at best, limited.

I didn’t want her to evaluate, I just wanted to be heard. She seemed unable to hear me without pursing her lips slightly, looking away and sighing: resisting the urge to speak but being unable to avoid judgement.

Thank you for sharing this, Victoria.