Quote:
Originally Posted by Trapped
But how have you dealt with it? How have you dealt with people who turn your backs on you.....except you know them so well you know where their forks go in their kitchen? And you know not to lean on the sink a certain way or else that hidden leak will re-appear? And you know not to step on that one tile in the corner because it has a crack just beginning to form that wasn't there years ago? And they've trusted you with all kinds of things in their life for years.
But all of a sudden you are a non-existent to them.
And then the ripple effect....the people who have no reason to shun you, but when you tell them others are shunning you, they take that as the cue to join in!
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This is a difficult question to answer. Shunning is meant to be hurtful, and they very well know that. I can only speak to my personal experience, but it seems that in the LC, there’s an unspoken expectation of reciprocity. So whether someone doesn’t live up to expectations or chooses to leave, in the eyes of the LC, it’s a grave insult. Shunning is kind of like their "comeback" to that perceived insult.
I left the LC very gradually, and I experienced shunning almost as soon as people started to notice that I wasn’t participating as much. One of the biggest eye-openers for me was when a brother that I was very close to (almost best friends with) didn’t invite me to his wedding. I was still in the LC at that point. At the very last minute, I did get invited, but it was only because another guest couldn’t make it. He succeeded in making his ‘point’ nonetheless. And as hurtful as that was, I think it also helped to show me that perhaps some of the friendships that I was so invested in were not as positive or healthy as they had really seemed. That was really my main takeaway from it all.
Another example that comes to mind is when I was in the LC, one area of service I was highly involved with was music service. A few other brothers and myself had been coordinating, taking turns playing guitar, etc. Then all the sudden, someone whom I had never met or talked to (and was new to the locality) was put in charge of that service group that and basically among other things kind of arranged everything in a way meant exclude me from participating. He actually assigned me to serve under someone who was just kind of learning the guitar. By that time the real issue at play was that the brothers weren’t happy about my waning participation in the LC in general, so they didn’t like that someone could be ‘useful’ in their meetings, but care less about attending the conferences, trainings, etc. So instead of just approaching me and talking to me directly so see what was going on, they wanted to take the passive-aggressive approach.
In retrospect, some of these of situations were really discouraging and even aggravating as they happened. But it also helped to show everyone’s true colors. Who knows, if I hadn’t come to realize that, I could have been stuck there another 10 years or so.