You are not the only one who has these types of relationships. I had dealt with the same issue for years. I have always been sensitive to others. I didn’t want anyone to feel excluded. I made sure to remember all my friends’ birthdays and put a lot of time into choosing their gifts to make sure it suited them. The sentiment has never been reciprocated. It is an extremely painful thing to experience feeling as though you don’t matter to those you most care about. I decided to change a few things. First I had to decide that I had to stop being afraid of rejection. Because people pleasers almost always have a fear of rejection or they wouldn’t be going out of their way to make everyone happy. Second to go out of our way like that to turn our cheek and keep score isn’t fair to you or your friend. If you are going to turn your cheek you have to do just that…you have to choose to never be offended by it. Otherwise it has another name…a secret grudge. If you are keeping score you never let it slide…you just didn’t voice the judgment that isn’t the same. Third I had to stop taking care of everyone and spend six months taking care of me. Say no when someone asks you to do something. It will be really hard! Trust me!!! I cried a lot the first few months because when you say no you feel like you are rejecting them when really you are choosing to redefine who you are in their eyes. You won’t be a door mat anymore. You can be a good friend and not bend over backwards for people All the time. Your friends are capable of hiring movers, painters, and a shrink. I had to stop trying to be there for everything…that is called being codependent. During those 6 months I spent time enriching my spirit (you can apply this no matter what you believe in) my routine was I would read a bible verse that was about who I was in Christ. Which is a lot like an affirmation…you could do those too. Basically you tell yourself that you are worth being respected and loved. But build up your esteem, learn to value yourself, your time your talent your efforts. By the end of diligently giving love to yourself you will know who your real friends are because they will still be there. They will like that you learned to care for yourself and they will respect you more than they did before and it will show. I’m saying this with confidence because I did it and so can you! If you want a change you need to know; you can only be disappointed when you set expectations on your friendships. When you do something nice for someone if you secretly want them to reciprocate you will almost always be disappointed. This is why; a gift by definition is something given freely without expecting anything in return.(this is not something they even teach at home or in schools anymore if someone gets you a holiday gift do you have this overwhelming urge to run out and get them something even though you weren’t planning on doing so? We have all done this there is pressure put on us to match or exceed what people do. This a screwed up more than I can explain…a nice gesture should be just that a nice gesture with no worry or fear attached.) When we do nice things for people we have to look at them as gifts. I had to look back at all my friendships and see where they are….for example; I care about Mary and if she called me in the middle of the night I would be there for her…but I had to look at this from her point of view. Does she value my friendship as much as I do hers? If I called her at 3am because I was having some kind of melt down would she hang up on me or rant about how late it is? When you enter new relationships with people you need to decide right away how they feel about you. They will fall into several categories casual acquaintances; these are people who you talk to at work or if you see them in public they know your name and the conversation is very shallow, then you have acquaintances; those people you may make occasional plans with to shop, or lunch they know your husbands name your pets names your kids if any…but the conversation isn’t deep either. You usually discuss what you are doing like how much you loved those shoes. You don’t share personal things with these people. Then you have what I call the outer circle of friends they may have been to your house, you call each other for meals, movies, shopping it’s always casual you know a few personal things about them and they about you but neither of you is deeply invested, then you have your inner circle and this is going to be a hard to deal with but…you may only have 1-3 of these people in your whole lifetime. They are the people who know everything about you and they respect and love you the way that you are. They have good self esteem so they always want to lift you up. You share intimate things with these people and they would never even consider using painful past experiences against you. Now saying all this there may be flaws to my plan but it worked for me. I started upon meeting people to be choosier and seeing people for what they were. I had no desire to be friends with a gossip or someone who was going to judge everything I did and act as though it were somehow odd. I am who I am and I like who I have become. I am kind and loving to my friends, neighbors and enemies. I’m no longer let the thoughtless actions of others cause a reaction and change how I want to act. I choose to be nice even when someone is mean but I no longer let those people in so close that they can cut me deep. Some people are not worthy of trust. You can spot them by their words. I found this bible verse to be so true “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth will speak” so if a person is cruel they will tell cruel jokes. If they are positive they will speak well of people. If they are selfish and immature they will blame others instead of taking responsibility. The ones you want to befriend will have an overwhelming sense of purpose and they will always see how they took part in a situation and will be willing to apologize when they are wrong. They wont say things like “I’m sorry you feel that way” which isn’t an apology at all it’s an escapist technique to put the whole situation on your shoulders. I hope that this helps you overcome being an after thought. I hope that you find deep and meaningful relationships because everyone deserves to be treated with respect and love just as they are.

[...] I wrote a post a while ago titled So over being your afterthought, you can read it here. [...]