I am just curious about peoples' thoughts here.  Do you think that you could be friends with someone or a group of people after you have perceived them to have stabbed you in the back?

I brought this up to my therapist and I told her of an incident that happened, and she said that it is hard for anyone to deal with exclusion and rejection, and it is even worse when you have a history of it.

For years, I had tried rather unsuccessfully to make friends, and then I thought I was getting integrated into a group of people that I really liked.  A friend I used to work with is a pretty popular person, and he invited me out with them. For about a year and a half we did parties, and I went out with them a lot. I even dated one of his friends, but the guy ghosted me.

I started to feel like something was off after a while.  And then about a year and a half of hanging out with them, there was a big Christmas party. I was invited via facebook and I was starting to feel like I was being more integrated into the group and was really grateful.  I was so happy.

One day, the invitation disappeared.  I thought that maybe the party was cancelled. I was wrong. I was disinvited; and after the party, I woke up the morning after to see photos plastered all over social media of them having the party-all of these people I had hung out with every Thanksgiving and Halloweeen for two years and many, many, other times in between. Every single person who was there every time, was in that picture, and I was disinvited.  It was the worst feeling ever.  I was completely furious and I will say somewhat devastated too, but that is kinda dramatic.

I told my other friends about it, and they thought it was the crappiest thing they had ever heard of, and said they would drop the group, pronto.  I unfortunately had to agree.

Shortly after this incident, my friend called me to hang out. He called me one day and took me to lunch. He didn't address the situation directly, but said that "people have been acting like it's high school; this isn't a soap opera," and that "there has been a fight between a few people," and in regards to the Christmas party: "well, you didn't really know these particular people (the hosts) that well anyway." I think he didn't want to come right out and say what happened, obviously he knew, I mean everyone was there except for me. I thought the whole thing was ridiculous. I highly doubt he was the one who removed me from the invite list.

Since then, he's invited me to get togethers where all these people are there.  I almost never go. I went to his birthday, because it was his birthday, but it was kinda awkward. One of the women refused to speak to me or look at me as she usually did, acting like I was not present when I actually was. I don't like that. The man I dated was there, he was nice, but after he ghosted me, he would see me at the events and act like he barely saw me either-and I dated him. Then one of his friends was obsessed toward me. The whole thing just got to be so anxiety producing for me.

From time to time he will invite me to these things. I don't see why he still does. I wish he just didn't invite me at all. It actually makes me feel much worse and intensifies my depression to a huge degree than if he didn't invite me at all. Why? Because I know I really want to be there, and that I could stand to increase my social circle, and that I would have liked to been integrated...but that is not going to happen. What is actually going to happen is that I will be friends with him and the rest of the people will wish I was not there secretly or try do low key treat me like crap to get rid of me.  Not being invited would be much better.

To make matters worse, everything in my life socially has been very difficult.  Career wise has been terrible. There have been some conflicts even with my closest friends, power struggles with one of them that is causing disharmony in my core group. I am estranged from my family.  And, things have gotten really weird even with some "chosen family."  My relationships seem difficult on all fronts. Yesterday, the day the party occurred, I chose to stay back. I begged off last-minute.  I ended up doing something else that turned out to be not much fun at all, and just felt far worse.

I'm curious what people think. Could YOU return to people that you felt collectively stabbed in the back by?  Most other people in my life said "Hell, no," in regards to going back to such a thing. I have to tend to agree.  I find it much better to make a clean break and find the right people.  At least that is the advice I received.  My therapist said, "that ship has sailed." I have to agree on this one.