life is easy

A phenomenon I’ve observed over time is that every time I’ve met someone who has a huge & specific grievance about ‘how people are’ vs how they ought to be, that person is almost always eliciting the behavior from others without realizing it. I.e. Once met someone who was HUGE on inclusivity in communities & never kicking anyone out. Meeting them, I thought ‘sure that’s a nice value.’ Down the line, saw firsthand that they had patterns of instigating conflict unnecessarily, seeing others reactions (distancing themselves, sharing their hurt, etc.) as bullying of *them* and had therefore been kicked out of communities an abnormal number of times. Another time, I got close to someone who was obsessed with ‘good faith’ & honesty in relationships. I thought, ‘sure, that’s a nice value.’ Down the line, learned that this person become so insulting and manipulative at the slightest indication of rejection that the only way to safely be close with them was to be abnormally withholding of any sort of sensitive information (and in some cases to outright lie). There are more cases of this I could give however the underlying point is that I truly believe both of these people (& many others I could reference) genuinely believed they had pinpointed a ‘fault’ in mankind’s general nature that others weren’t brave enough to take issue with, when in fact they were seeing way more of the problem than the average person due to blind spots/distortions they had that were eliciting said behavior more consistently in others. When we talk about ‘toxic’ people playing the victim, I think the thing that gets missed is that a lot of the time they’re not playing. They really are blind to how their own distortions are continuously recreating the situations they most want to avoid. It’s a sad cycle (for everyone involved!) but way more accurate to understand it through the lens of distortions (in most cases) than assuming conscious intent.