Have you ever been personally "despised?"

Yes, and I certainly know why. Its my fault I guess, but honestly, I can justify my actions that brought it all about. So let your hatred burn you to the ground if that's what you want to do!

Yes.

I won awards at one of my workplaces. I was a model employee. Then my best “work friend” suspected I was having an affair with our boss. She suspected that was why I was promoted and doing well (not my work performance, which I prided myself on)

She spread that to everyone. One by one all of my friends turned on me and everyone hated me.

She and I had a bitter confrontation on the work floor and we were separated from thereafter.

My boss, who initially had my back, was worried things would turn on me, so he ended up betraying me as well.

I turned in my two week’s notice and painfully worked alone for two weeks so I would get all of my benefits.

I have never before or after been hated like that. AND to go from beloved to hated.

It was horrible.

I have no contact with any of them and haven’t for over 10 years.

Yes. Close friend of two decades. He suddenly turned on me. Apparently he thought I was having an affair behind my partner’s back, which I’m not, and anyway most couples in our (now former) group are open to some degree and he’s always giggled whenever people have whispered about their indiscretions. (Said former close friend had a partner who cheats on him, so it’s projection.)

The other members of said group have rallied around him, which has blown my mind, some no longer speaking to me and my partner.

It’s been bizarre and hurtful but, honestly, may be the best thing to happen to us, because the friendships were superficial and now we’ve surrounded ourselves with better people.

It’s weird having someone out there who hates me but I’m getting over it.

yes, my mother. She's a cunt.

Yes, and I'm proud of it. It took a lot of work, and I couldn't give a fuck what anyone thinks. I love strong reactions from people, and long after I've forgotten about those people, they will remember me.

I've caused so much drama and trauma, it belongs in a sitcom. Karen Walker could take lessons from me.

And since I am a Leo Stellium, it would never occur to me to even wonder what people think, much less care.

More than once. I figured out why later in life after giving this more thought than it deserves.

Yes.

Once when I was ushering at church a lady who had been a member before I joined the church, but had also stopped attending regularly before I joined, showed up for Christmas eve service. As I handed her a bulletin she hissed at me “I hate you!” It was weird because I knew nothing about her beyond her name and as far as I could tell she knew nothing about me. And also not really Christmas appropriate.

Anyway she’s dead now.

Yes and of course it affected me.

in elementary school, a school admin announced the death of a colleague over the pa system. Some of the students made rude comments and yelled back at the intercom, "who cares".

the teacher started screaming to us kids, who don't know any better and haven't learned empathy " you're all scum"!!!!

then he got another teacher to punish the classroom!

What adult screams to an 8 year old " you're all scum"?

one who despises children and that is most people who have chosen teaching as a profession.

Obviously that colleague was a close friend, r10. An 8-year-old should know better. Team Teacher, scum.

Yes, I have been.

Yes. People tend to think I have had had it easy in life

Fuck 'em.

I don’t know, R4. I kinda get it.

R8, her last name wasn’t Klaxton, was it?

R10, you know who complains about this shit, decades later, on Datalounge? SCUM, that’s who.

#imwithher

One of my co-workers posted that he "couldn't help but chuckle" on Facebook, when my Dad was dying in hospice. I was ready to bring a baseball bat to work to bash in his ugly Muppet head.

I ww'ed you r15. that was delightfully cunty.

No. But I bet you have OP

If you've ever raised a teenager...

Yeah - a closet case homo high school classmate. He picked on me relentlessly. He once read out loud to the English class a short story (homework assignment) wherein he’d chosen to write a two page tale about me acting gay and smug and then being torn to shreds by a pack of wild dogs.

Apparently he showed up to a class reunion with a husband or long term boyfriend, so, yep.

R22, that’s a story of someone despising themselves.

R18 no, I don’t remember what it is, but I do remember it was something very Irish, her first name name was Mary and she was roll-poly shaped.

R22, that’s a lot to pack into two pages.

I was in a theater group and good friends with a woman also in it. A second woman joined and we despised each other from the first meeting; there was no reason for it, just an intense mutual dislike we clearly both felt. It was innate.

My friend got to be friends with the woman who despised me and it was uncomfortable all around.

... and rejected of men?

Yes. Some old money and also old gay in his 60s. He’s an alcoholic who has wrecked two of his vehicles, is dating someone who is 40 years his Junior yet cheats on him, and thinks he’s the only one allowed to be right all the time.

Think of an alcoholic Julia Sugarbaker who is actually wrong about everything.

He hates me because I’m much smarter than he is.

I don't believe I have been personally despised. Have people been cross with me? Sure. But personally despised? If I was, they didn't let me know it.

R26, now THAT is an intriguing story--spontaneous, almost telepathic mutual dislike between two people upon first meeting, with no prior knowledge of each other.

It's like you were enemies in a past life, one of you did the other dirty in some spectacular way, and your souls have re-encountered in the present life but still feel the grudge. I dare say, it's like an Irish folk tale.

Yes, too many times. It’s tormented me at times over the years but now I really don’t give a shit because I didn’t do anything wrong. They can all bite me, though many of them are now deceased.

No, never. I'm certain there have been those who've rolled their eyes when I left the room, but nothing stronger than that.

I've noticed that people with very poor social skills despise anyone outgoing who is friendly and relaxed. I certainly needn't adjust to them.

Narcissists quickly despise me because I won't play their game. So much the better.

Oops, I forgot question #2:

[quote]And, if so, did knowing that someone was carrying around such animosity toward you, putting that energy "out there," affect your ability to live life?

Yes, it means that when you're having to deal with something they're involved with, it's like a constant and exhausting swim against the current.

I don't know about "despised" but I've been (mildly) the villian in a few people's stories, I guess.

Only a depraved, degenerate, completely ignorable and spiteful cretin thinks screaming scum to misbehaving kids is appropriate.

I don’t know. Plenty of Karens always. I was shocked later at the level of resentment my SIL had for me that came out after my brother died, but she’s passive-aggressive so I couldn’t tell for a while.

So ignorable that you had to chime in with that prissy little comment, r36. Those kids were cunts.

Impotent

An impotent shrill male screams at kids. But my mom came up to school and straightened you out. That is what you really want. To be straightened out by women. Pathetic.

He was despisèd

If only the great mothers who instilled the much justified moral indignation in their daughters had followed through with a lesson on when it is appropriate.

the ignore feature works on datalounge. too bad it doesnt exist irl

There was this asshole kid in high school who (apparently) hated me with a passion.

I barely knew who he was.

People were always going out of their way to tell me how much this kid hated me.

Years later, I worked in a small research laboratory with a niche, highly specialized expertise in certain autoimmune diseases. This was in LA, and my “enemy” still lived in a shithole southern state.

My lab got a request to test from….the asshole’s mother.

It would be impossible for me to express the astronomical odds against this happening. It virtually guarantees we are living in a simulation.

I could have interfered with the testing, but obviously I didn’t. I think his mom got diagnosed and treated thanks to our lab.

Yes. But why would we allow someone else’s deep insecurity and bitterness impact us?

— Audra, Kecia, Bernadette, Terri, Sherie Renee, Madonna, Sir Andrew, Kevin, the chorus of Anything Goes, Glenn Close, Mia, and half of Broadway

Who is gonna explain Freida Klaxton to R24?

[Quote] Then my best “work friend” suspected I was having an affair with our boss. She suspected that was why I was promoted and doing well (not my work performance, which I prided myself on)

[Quote] She spread that to everyone.

Ladies and gentlemen, the one and only “female ally of the gay community” once it gets personal.

I’m a critic for a well-known publication, and made my peace long ago with the fact that some people whose work I’ve reviewed probably loathe me. I’m sure there are people who adore me, too, if they received a glowing review.

The trick is to be equally indifferent to the lovers as well as the haters.

Long story. Skip if you want.

I’ve talked about his before on here because it upset me so much, but I’ll retell it again for this thread.

I retired in June from my job as an elementary school teacher. My job was a prep teacher. I was on a cart and went into classes where I taught science. The teachers used this as their preparation time to get their own work completed. Anyway, one of the teachers had a prickly personality, but our relationship was good, or so I thought. In June 2023 during the 2nd last week of school, she blew up at me I front of her class because I asked her if she could look after picking up the iPads the class had been using. I was running late for my next class and didn’t think this was a lot to ask of her. She was furious and tore a strip off of me. Things had been building looking back on this where I know she wasn’t happy with some things (ex., I did a friction experiment using rice and although the floor wasn’t 100% clean when I left (it was pretty close), I came back on my lunch and swept the room myself when the students were at recess.). Following the blowup, she wouldn’t look or speak to me for the rest of June, including our staff party. The following school year she continued this - for the entire year. When it was just her and I, she ignored me, but in front of others (students, staff) acted normally. It was horrible. I don’t like confrontation and she knew she could bully me which is what she did. I didn’t think a teacher would act this way. I’m a man and she’s a woman by the way. She ended up transferring out in my last year after being assigned an impossible teaching assignment by our principal. This made my final year so happy. I can’t imagine treating another human being the way she did me.

R49, the teaching profession attracts bullies and those with severely arrested development. The standards of behavior are also completely different than those in a typical work / professional environment. I’m not surprised you had this experience, though you sound like one of the true gems.

Many teachers themselves act like snarky 12-year-olds, and somehow this is seen as normal. My kid’s math teacher writes snarky comments in all caps and multiple exclamation points in parent communications. It makes her seem….a little slow.

In my job, I have clients from varied backgrounds and jobs. There are two groups who are consistently total nightmares, to the point I won’t work with them if it’s avoidable: nurses and teachers.

If you have an intense, hatred for another person you hardly know, or whose behavior has not had direct impact on you, you are projecting. Either you hate something in yourself that the other person seems to represent or that person reminds you of someone who has hurt you but, for whatever reason you can't admit that or confront that person directly.

The key is the intensity of the reaction. Obviously, there are people you meet you immediately don't like or who bug you, but if the reaction is intense and out of proportion, you need a mirror not a confrontation

I'ts not uncommon for people to become negatively obsessed with other people who, in their minds or fantasies, but it's lazy behavior and a red flag to keep your distance.

and what lesson was that?

that an impotent, shrill, presumably closed adult male who could find the balls to shriek abuse at kids, would immediately back down when confronted... by a woman?

Is that the lesson I was to learn??

a teachers job is to teach. Ya aint gotta like them either.

I didn’t post the R52 comment.

I had a vicious high school bully who stalked me even a couple years after h.s. About ten years later I learned through the grapevine he had left his wife and kids back in hick town, and moved to my city to come out as gay.

And you won't believe this: he cruised me in a Walmart. Came up too close beside me, I saw him and moved quickly away. I don't believe he recognized me.

Last I tracked him he had moved to Texas, was working some itinerant job and his Facebook was full of obsessive anti-Biden rhetoric.

[quote] if the reaction is intense and out of proportion

This is abstractly true, but difficult to put into practice, as who's to say what is "intense" or "out of proportion"? The object will always say, "That was intense and out of proportion," while the subject will always say, "No, it was exactly correct in all ways."

When I was a student, I had a job in a department store, working the jewellery counter. It was pretty easy work, and I liked the people worked with, with the exception of my supervisor, a woman in early middle age who had recently returned to work after taking some time out to have kids.

She was quite well-liked by our colleagues, and so was I. The only problem was that she hated me. And I do mean HATED. There were times when she almost seemed to be struggling to keep her composure when we had to discuss a work issue together. She held me in total contempt, and I could say nothing to her to appease her. It was young, 19 or 20, and totally unused to being treated this way, and my first instinct was that there must have been some aspect of my behaviour which was objectionable. I tried to change everything, but the more I tried to be acceptable to her, the worse she treated me.

In the end, I stopped trying. I suppose it was a valuable lesson that not everyone would like me, but the truth is that in the 20+ years which have passed since then, I have never met anyone who exhibited such animosity towards me. I’m a fairly nice guy, I try to be a good colleague, and I place importance on treating people with courtesy, but she absolutely despised me and I still occasionally wonder what it was she saw in me to provoke that reaction.

r50, a friend has taught teacher education courses for many years and says it does not attract the best and brightest.

My dad once blurted out, in a restaurant, about me, saying " I never really liked him". I remember i wasn't surprised and i just said, well I can say the same about him. Funnily enough, actually writing this post just made me emotional. For the first time i thought of myself as that kid, doing the things I did, and like an out of body experience, or a movie in my mind, I cud see my dad looking on and just having zero interest in me. Im sad for that kid. He died this year and I felt sad that the only people at the funeral were friends of mine and my sisters...only 1 cousin of his was there because of him.; no other relatives or acquaintances. Any success i had he just got jealou, so how can u win. Id say he was gay or at least bi, and drank to deal with that and a hay kid was a tough joke karma played on him.

I’m sorry, R58. I’M proud of you.

Absolutely. Similar to many here.

There are the rare few that I have done and/or said really awful things to unintentionally and deserve the hate. (I apologised when I could).

There are the abusers whom I plotted against and am thrilled they hate and fear me.

There are those who just hate me, without provocation, and that gives me a small thrill when I think about it.

R52 - See R51 re: projection and the difficulties of confronting parts of yourself that you don't wish to see.

My late in life Lez sister’s girlfriend hates me. Always snide, sour, rude. Grumpy. She treats my sister shitty too. It’s depressing.

Anyway, my sister confirmed that this bitch hates me because “She resents anyone I’m close with”.

Sounds healthy. 🥴

I don't wish to see an eight year old, bratty or not, ill mannered or not, being told YOURE SCUM by an adult in a position of authority.

Im sure I have been but since I was a young child I havent given to rat fucks what anyone thinks about me. My mother always said it'd be my downfall but it actually was freeing in life. I never had issues with co-workers because every single job Ive ever had I let them all know right off the bat I dont socialize or gossip .Period.