Sides of Resentment

I kinda pride myself on the fact that I (have learned) to see other peoples' pov, and that I am never to proud to admit I frelled up and say "sorry".

But until very recently I never felt like it was a chore or that I was being "played" into feeling guilty about stuff I really shouldn't feel guilty about. I honestly feel that if somebody misinterprets what I say once, I might be expressing myself poorly but if it happens on a regular basis, is that really me?


Communication is work, people are different; and when you communicate, these differences will come into play. People tend to express themselves poorly, especially when dealing with emotions. I fear I am no exception but I do tend to want to see the other's pov which (I feel) makes communication towards me a whole lot easier. I choose to think they mean well. That if I hear something hurtful I probably misunderstood in the first place, and I will ask explicitly what the are trying to say. Most of the time I did misunderstand and once explained we can move on in our conversations.. All good...

But what if you feel like somebody is doing the misunderstanding thing (almost) on purpose. As a way to harm you, keep you under, make you guilty? First up I wonder WHY would anyone like to do that, as it seems pretty frelling hurtful to me. But hey, I can't claim to know anybodies motivations but my own. So lets leave the why they do that out of it. How would you respond in this situation?

I responded by bending over backwards to make my point in a calm, reasonable manner, apologizing for my poor choice of words, restating in different words what I meant.... nothing. Still everything I said was interpreted as me being an utter B****H and I apologized again and kept silent.... (and if you know me you know how hard that is to me ;). Then they went on stating a long list of my wrongdoings telling me how hateful and what a terrible person I am. Of course not to hurt me (Duuh!! How is a person supposed to react to stuff like that. It's painful to be told that, whatever the motivation behind it). I could feel myself getting mad. BUT, trying to see the other persons pov, I kept silent, swallowing my anger (I got mad because I was hurt, I get that) and even frelling apologized AGAIN!! In retrospect I think that is where the resentment really began to kick in (on my side) but that is not what I wonder about.

The question is: how far do you go in righting a wrong. Even though you feel that the mistake was excusable, you wronged someone. How much punishment do you take? Is that up to the hurt party or do you have a say in that? Can you (or I in this case) say, "listen I know you are hurt but here is my line in the sand. I will not let you punish me anymore, and if that means we cannot be friends, so be it. I'll miss you but..... Bye". And the truth is that if that is the statement I want to make, not much of the friendship or love survived the punishment in the first place. On the other hand, I did wrong somebody, so should I just suck it up and let them get it out of their system? :) Kinda hard to know what the "right" thing to do is while I can feel my own resentment growing.

Wish there was a book on it. ;)

Of course, open to yall's views