It happens to the best of us, chile. Ain't no shame round here.
This is the third installment in “How I Do Hard Things,” an ongoing W2D-exclusive series exploring my approach to less than desirable experiences. I’ve got one on how to lose your job and another on how to get stood up. There if you need ‘em, praying you don’t. Onwards!
After feeling left out by a group of friends, calling them regularly but getting no answers, and feeling like I was always catching up to old conversations whenever we talked together as a group, I told them how it made me feel. They responded kindly, asserting that they had no intention of excluding me and apologized that it had gone down like that. About a year later, while on a group call, one of them accidentally brought up a trip they had been planning but hadn't invited me to.
It stung, I’ll admit. But not nearly as much as it used to. Not nearly as much as it could have. I took it on the chin, knowing that their decision was not a reflection of who I was, my value as a person, or even my character as a friend. Just because we’re friends doesn’t mean they have to invite me everywhere. The stakes were lower than I realized. I felt my feelings but also right-sized the impact. I decided to focus on what I could control. I talked to them about it, told them how it made me feel, and decided how I wanted to move on from there.
But let me tell you something. That was hard. A difficult experience, indeed. And if I’m telling the truth, there are some things I def could’ve done differently in the way I processed that experience. By God’s grace, I’ve grown from that and felt left out since then in different situations where I could simply do better. These learnings are from having to navigate this feeling more often than I would like to admit. My approach is a work in progress. As am I.
I present 6 steps you can take to get left out with grace, confidence, and care.
Investigate the feelings. Figure out if your feelings are rooted in truth. Are you actually being left out? Trust your gut, call a spade a spade, but don’t blindly follow your feelings if they’re not based on any actual evidence. Because what you may interpret as pain from exclusion could just be awareness of distance, an old unhealed wound, or a spillover of energy from another part of your life.
Tell somebody. Preferably, you should tell the people you feel are excluding you. But if that’s not an option, talk to somebody you trust. Exclusion is a powerful experience that, left unaddressed, can well up in really sharp and damaging ways inside of you. For me, this feeling has historically been a particularly different one to work through. So I know I’d be making a grave mistake not sharing it when it comes.
Don’t go around excluding yourself. The worst thing you can do is start engaging in self-fulfilling prophecies. Take care not to start distancing yourself, “moving accordingly,” or bottling up resentment. Not only is resentment a great way to poison yourself emotionally, but it’s also a great way to poison a relationship.
So what if you are? If you are indeed being excluded and you know it’s not anything personal, what do you do then? Well, I reckon the secure thing to do would be…nothing. If you still want to be in relationship with those excluding you and you’ve already expressed how you feel, prayerfully you’ve come to a conclusion together. But perhaps you’re being excluded because you’re really just not tight like that. Then, my dear, just let it go. Accept that you won’t be as tight with a group of folks as they are with each other. Accept that you won’t be invited to those dinners or events. Accept that you won’t be the first or the second or the third or the tenth person to hear that exciting life update. Accept the relationship for what it is and stop holding on to what you wish it were.
Do your part. Getting left out hurts. BUT it’s not like you just have to sit back and let things happen to you or fall apart around you or just sit in a relationship feeling that way. Telling someone is the first step around communication, but there’s a behavior aspect to that as well that could help counter the self-preservation urge to remove yourself from something you’re already feeling excluded from. What can you do? Zoom out and double check that you’re doing your part in the relationship. Are you sending invitations? Are you calling and checking up on them? You probably are, but it’s important to just double check how you’re showing up in a relationship you’re partially dissatisfied with. Because changing the way you show up or behave could really be the first step toward exercising your agency in the way you interact with others.
Move on. Life too short to be allowing jealousy or comparison to rot away our relationships or the way we see ourselves. Community is too important to be “moving accordingly” every single time something or someone hurts us. We gotta bring reconciliation and thoughtful decision-making back.
When trying to move on with grace, you’ve got to decide what makes the most sense for you and your situation. Do you love these people? Do you want to be in relationship with them? Do they love you? Do they want to be in relationship with you? Don’t assume the answers to those questions, search for them. And push for honesty on both ends. And once you get those honest answers, you can decide, with care and grace, whether the relationship needs to change or if the behavior in the relationship needs to change.
It ain’t easy. I never said it was.
To recap, getting left out with grace requires you to
The grace part of “getting left out with grace” is only possible if the self-confidence is in the room with us! Taking things on the chin is hard when you’re taking things personally. It’s easier when you know you’re a gem to be around and that other people’s behavior is often not actually about you at all.
Cheers to clear communication, loving relationships, and resilient self-confidence!
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