In some esoteric theories, it is believed that the soul decides what lessons it wants to learn on Earth. And because of this, your family members, partners or even friends are chosen prior to you being born. These are known as either soul mates, twin flames or karmic relationships and the idea is that you learn something from each.

Let’s say this theory is true; it would help explain a lot about the people you have in your life.

I’ve had a couple of people in my life over the years since I was a child who have no regard for how others feel or for how they make others feel. They do not process anything: not their actions, not their feelings or not even their impact on others, they’re too self-absorbed to notice. To notice that they hurt even those they claim to love the most. And for years I made excuses for these individuals and would put up with this behaviour. All that would happen is I would allow myself to be manipulated, taken advantage of and used and when I became angry enough to voice my frustration my own words would be twisted and used against me. There was no consideration for how I felt at all. If they were happy it was expected that I should be happy, regardless of any pain caused.

Now, you may see these people as bad or terrible or manipulative but to me they’re people who were probably placed in my life for me to learn some kind of lesson.
I see them as wounded as everyone else but for whatever reason they are not interested/capable/willing to go through the process of getting over their wounds. All they do is run away from their problems and lie to themselves and the world. Generally these kinds of people are not resilient enough to want to follow through with changing their behaviour, they are who they are and I cannot change them, rescue them or save them. And this has been the biggest lesson of all. I cannot change others. Only they can change themselves and only if they are willing to do so.

What else have I learnt?
Love for oneself. SO NB.
Creating Boundaries. SO NOT EASY.
Forgiveness. SO HARD.
Release. EISH.

I used to take responsibility for anything that went wrong in the relationship, friendship or familyship, to try and always be better because, maybe if I was trying so hard they would notice and want to do the same.

What I’ve learnt is that people do not change unless they want to and unless they are ready. And if you are this type of person and you’ve lived your entire life not processing anything, using people and manipulating them and always trying to make them feel sorry for you because you are of course the victim in your own story then you’ll never see a reason to change. You won’t care how you make others feel, you’ll just pass over it and say, “well it happened a long time ago, why bring it up now?” without even realising that time doesn’t heal anything.

Then when the people you’ve used are no longer interested in being in your life, you’ll make yourself believe that they’ve turned their back on you and that people are selfish and don’t care about you when in actuality you’re the selfish, careless one and all that’s happened is that people became tired of being used, tired of wasting their care or love on someone like you.

Working through things, processing issues and situations and trying to understand feelings is what heals people and are foreign concepts to these types of people. There is no point trying to explain why you no longer make an effort or why you feel the way you do because they’ll just turn it against you; not accepting their role and not realising that they have the power to change the relationships and themselves; finding it too easy to blame everyone and everything else.

I always used to try be the supportive person to these kinds of people because I always hoped they would learn to understand their impact but the reality is you can only support them as much as you are willing to allow yourself to get hurt or damaged. Because when they’re in a bad place, you’ll be the one they’ll take it out on and you’ll wait your entire life for an apology you’ll never get. I used to want them to see what they were doing to their lives and those around them because then they would start to heal from their own wounds that they were carrying. I would fail however to see that they weren’t interested in this. They are happy to live in their misery.
I had to learn that you cannot show people what they do not want to see and you cannot tell them what they do not want to hear.
All that occurs is denial and lack of responsibility.

I have learnt that the best thing you can do is to send these people love, create boundaries, have patience with yourself and your triggers and look after yourself. Accept that people cannot change other people; let go of the anger and forgive, not for them but for yourself and set yourself free.

Then let them be.