The older you get the more you will realize that your friends are people who have made mistakes and bad decisions and even just fucked up and hurt people.
And obviously your boundaries with your friends are completely up to you but you do need to recognize that if you cut off everyone who has done something wrong, you’re going to end up with no friends (and you yourself will have also fucked up in your life, and not lived up to those impossible standards either).
I’ve found it’s much more constructive to learn how to say “hey dude, that was massively fucked up of you,” because most people are really willing to say “yeah, it was, I need to work on it/not do it again/apologize and make things right” ESPECIALLY if they are hearing it from you as their friend.
Sometimes the kindest thing you can do for another person is to tell them that they’ve done something wrong, help them fix it, and stay their friend because it’s what we would want from them if we did something wrong.
I do very much agree with this message.
Communication is always better than none.
Now, this will get venty, but I’m going to bring a bit of personal experience in. I cannot make a read more on mobile, so I’ll tag this.
This sort of behavior (cutting off for making a mistake) has happened to me a couple times. Both were major fuck ups that made people uncomfortable, though in two ways. The second, and more recent, was FAR, FAR worse, but that will be vaguely discussed.
Both were the result of me not thinking about what I was posting. I showed regret, let people know about the truth behind things, made as clear as I could that I was not intending to harm. Even with the really bad one, I entered a state of mild panic, trying my hardest to ensure the people there knew being hurtful was not my intention.
Both times, the people affected did not listen.
The tumblr experience led to me being cast out of a group by an unknown individual continuing to spread the word of what I had to keep repeatedly explaining was a mistake and not at all thought to be what was described to them. The end result was me becoming so distressed even opening tumblr that I deleted everything I had ever created in regards to that community, including art, two blogs, and more. It was the only way I could escape the mental health spiral. Even then, the person continued, causing a temporary blog creation intended to teach what happened and why I deleted literally everything.
The second was on discord. By then, I had developed such a significant fear of upsetting others, I would have a breakdown even from being alerted to a mistake. This second one was extremely awful. I admit it should never be said by anyone, yet because I did not know the implications and was running on impulse and a thought river, was sent. I do not claim to have been completely in the right because it was that bad. However, the group in the server, people I’d nearly befriended, doubled down on the fact it happened. I apologized as best I could, and explained what happened in the process. I broke down horribly, but didn’t say it immediately because it was probably a bad idea. Instead, I was demonized, with these people making claims that ‘if I can’t apologize properly I’m not truly sorry’ (I have social anxiety and autism and have never been good at apologizing, it’s always mixed with explanation) and that ‘autism doesn’t make you say (thing)’ when I had stated I had not thought the send through. I tried to explain further, apologize further, but they kept saying I was trying to make myself the victim and was like someone who’d done that thing on purpose. I had to leave the server, and had attempted multiple times but my brain kept dragging me back to see if they changed. Instead I saw ‘good riddance.’ I finally deleted the link, and copied something else so it was never coming back. I couldn’t stop crying for hours.
Not seeing that someone made a mistake hurts them more than the mistake hurt you. The tumblr experience traumatized me in such a way I have a permanent fear of upsetting others, and one that I can do nothing about. Tone indicators do nothing, if I am told about a mistake that upsets someone, I have a breakdown no matter what. The discord one almost certainly made it worse, and raised paranoia about a fic I’d made and posted the link to in that server- so much so that a spam comment on the fic made me think it was them trying to make people not read it and hate me.
Deleting everything about something has become associated with trauma for me. I still do it sometimes for far more minor things, though not always everything- always the offending send/post. That may seem normal, but in my case, it’s because even seeing that send again will make me break down all over again.
It’s okay to be upset. It’s not okay to immediately cast the person out and demonize them when they feel extreme regret or are desperately trying to state the truth behind a mistake. Don’t be like these people. Don’t leave a trail of broken minds.
