What happens when you combine someone who would say no to an outing with people who assume that person would say no to said outing? You get someone who feels left out and excluded and a group who don’t think anything of it. I have had that happen more than once in my life and it really sucks. What especially sucks is that the friends who did the excluding did it on purpose. They thought about inviting someone, but decided they knew what the answer would be. So instead of still inviting their friend and giving her the chance to make her own decision, they decide not to put in the effort to make that friend feel included. And I’m sure we all know how that story ends. The excluded friend sees something on social media or hears people talking about it and asks why she wasn’t invited. That’s when the truth comes out and they have to admit that they thought of her but assumed what her answer would be. They clearly don’t think it’s a big deal, though, which may make it hurt even more.
I like how Elizabeth talked about FOMO on Monday. It is definitely easy to feel FOMO, especially in the world of social media and group texts. Another term that I have heard recently is FOBO, which stands for Fear Of Better Options. What I heard about FOBO is that it can cause indecision when people are invited somewhere because they worry that if they agree to one thing, something better may come along that they will ultimately end up missing out on. Talk about never being satisfied or feeling included!
Today, I really want to focus on the feeling of being excluded. People can exclude us on purpose, as mentioned above, or on accident. Sometimes it’s blatant and sometimes it’s not so obvious. Whatever the case, it always hurts when we feel excluded. I can give you many examples from my own life of feeling excluded or feeling like I was the “backup” friend who would get invited to hang out because someone better wasn’t available.
Do you feel like the “backup” friend? The one who only gets invited at the last minute because no one else can come or there is an extra movie ticket? The one who gets asked if you are going somewhere, not because your friend cares if you are going, but because she wants to make sure she will know someone there? The one who will be in the middle of a sentence when your friend turns away from the conversation because someone better walked up? I can relate.
When I was younger, there were so many times that I felt excluded by certain people in a specific setting and that unfortunately led to me starting to exclude myself from things. It was easier for me to not go to parties and events than to continue going and feeling left out despite physically being at the events.
What I believe to be the straw that broke the camel’s back was one Halloween that was supposed to be like any other before it. I was in high school and taking a community college class with a “friend” at the time. We had class in the morning and I asked her if she had heard if the group we were a part of had any plans for that night, as there had been talk of making plans in the past weeks. I expressed interest in doing something fun and she very clearly told me that she had not heard of any plans. As my family never had any trick-or-treaters, we were surprised when we heard people coming to our house that night. Do I even need to tell you who was there? It was that “friend” of mine with her queen bee besties and a bunch of people from the group who supposedly had no plans that night. Apparently they were driving around to the houses of people they knew to go trick-or-treating. Still to this day, I do not know if that was their lame attempt to try to “include” me or if they just wanted to come because everyone knew that we bought candy every year and no one ever came to our house. I believe it was the former. It was a very awkward and silent car ride when we still did our scheduled carpool to class the next week.
I want to end with this: you are not the first person to feel excluded and you will not be the last person to feel excluded. Knowing that is comforting to me because I know that I am not alone in this feeling, but it also makes me sad to know that there are so many other people who feel this pain. If I could, I would take away the feeling of being excluded and I would make it so no one ever feels excluded again. Even though I can’t do that, I can do my best to not purposely exclude others, even if I think that they will decline my invitation.
Abbi