Roommates stressing me out

[tuxedo cat]

I've written a bit about this before on here but I'm living with four other women (late twenties to early thirties, my age) and one of them is extremely rude to me and it's beginning to really upset me. Can anyone offer some advice?

 

My other four roommates are cool and friendly for the most part, but there's one girl (let's call her Olivia), who is inexplicably unfriendly to me and me only. I've been living here since August and she's never said more than a sentence to me even though we frequently run into each other in the kitchen and common area. I don't even know what she does or anything about her. I've always been friendly to her - saying hi and giving her a smile whenever I see her. For awhile she wasn't even saying hello sometimes when I'd say it first. You might ask why I haven't tried to speak to her more and it's because she's sending me blatant signals that she wants nothing to do with me. Like really blatant. What makes it difficult is she's friendly with everyone else, so I keep wracking my brain to figure out if I did something to offend her. She and I are both home a lot when we're not at work and we live in adjacent rooms (sharing a wall), so it's just become awkward.

 

Not only that but it makes me feel not so great. I'm sensitive to being rejected, and I have a history of being excluded by other women so it kind of taps into this old insecurity. Of course some of that is inevitable - some people won't like me - but it sucks to have to deal with it every day in my apartment in some conspicuous way. I haven't been able to make any friends (aside from two guys and one girl who moved away) since I moved here two years ago, so every social rejection hits hard. To be fair I haven't tried to put myself out there, and there are things I'm sure I could do to meet more people - like meetups, which I'm trying to work up the nerve to attend - but the fact that the instances where I have been thrown into a group of women like at work or in a shared apartment has so often resulted in rejection leaves me scared to put more effort in.

 

Tonight it sort of hit a peak. It's Halloween in NY and as usual every one is going out. Olivia asked each of my other roommates while they came home what they were doing that night and whether they wanted to go to a party with her and her friends. Except me... It sucks because I would have loved to have gone out. I had to use the bathroom to take a shower and she and her friend and another roommate had taken it over for an hour. I kept coming back to try to get in and leaving when I saw they were putting on makeup, etc. Finally after an hour had passed I returned and said "hey, any chance I could get in there?" Olivia, who was putting on her Halloween makeup said, "uh..for what?" and I said "shower." She sort of groaned and said, "You can try but my stuff is everywhere" and she started clearing it out. As she was doing so, I tried to make conversation by saying, "you guys heading to a party?" Neither she nor her friend responded. Not sure whether they had heard me I asked again. And they just said, "yeah." Taking my shower I inwardly felt like crap but tried to be friendly as I left and complimented them on their halloween makeup.

 

As I wrote above I have a history of being excluded by other girls. Whenever there's a group, one girl always seems to dislike me for some mysterious reason and will completely ignore me and exclude me from group activities. At first the other girls in the group are nice to me but eventually this one girl's bad energy toward me spreads to them. I've lost a lot of friends this way. To this day I have no idea why. I'm friendly and as far back as childhood I've never been a bitch to my female friends in any way (seriously). One girl even said to me a few years back that I was one of the most genuinely kind people she's ever met and that everybody she knows agreed that I'm really nice. The only thing I can think of is the fact that I'm awkward and very un-girly in a lot of respects and I've never had female friends as a result so I don't really know how to relate to women. But that doesn't seem like enough of a reason to be treated like a pariah?

 

And I can already feel it happening with my other roommates, who I previously had good relationships with. Like tonight when they were all hanging out together putting on makeup and I entered, I could tell the others were sort of uncomfortable and I think it was because of Olivia's presence.

 

I just texted the one roommate (let's call her Lucy) I've gotten "closest" to - I've given her a lot of professional help and talked her off the ledge once when she came to me in distress when she was having a severe panic attack - and asked if she knew of any parties happening tonight. She wrote back "I'm going to my friends place for a little thing and then a party in Brooklyn later but it's sold out (awkward emoji)." Maybe I'm just being paranoid because I'm feeling down, but do halloween parties even "sell out?" It irks me a little that I've done a lot to try to help Lucy when she's asked me advice, and even alluded to the fact that I want to be involved in more things, and she's never invited me anywhere. I've also extended an invite or two to her that she hasn't taken me up on. I was considering whether I should ask Lucy at some point what to do about Olivia, but not sure if that's a good idea.

 

It's stressing me out enough that I'm actually considering whether I should move, which sucks because I otherwise love my apartment and it was difficult to find. What should I do, and if nothing changes should I move or is there a way I can learn to not let it affect me so much?

 

Part of me is considering just like being unfriendly to Lucy and Olivia from this point on and not making such an effort, but that's kind of reactionary.

 

Btw, some positive things I'm doing for myself:

 

1) Joined a gym - have an personal training appointment on Sunday

2) Had a first session with a speech therapist who will be coaching me on how to present more confidently with people.

3) Joined tinder - will be going on dates next week.

Edited October 31, 2015 by tuxedo cat

[MissBee]

I'm so sorry your roommate is treating you this way. That's really shiiiitty of her!

 

I have no idea why someone would purposely make a living situation awkward. It doesn't seem like you've done anything wrong or that you can make Olivia like you, so I'd consider finding a more positive home environment. I've had roommates pretty much all my adult life, while I've not had situations where they didn't like me per se, I've definitely had unpleasant situations and it was SO uncomfortable and stressful. When you're out and about in the world and are stressed it's one thing but home should be your haven, not where you have to fight more battles and encounter more stress/mistreatment.

 

You could potentially invite Olivia out for drinks or dinner or something and see if one on one you could casually broach the subject that you wanted to make sure you guys were cool and have you done anything to offend her etc and see if there is some misunderstanding that you could smooth over and fix. If you have better relationships with the others I'd also focus on that and also trying to be more social with them like maybe making dinner one day or inviting them to go out for a drink or something. I've tended to make friends easily, so I won't lie and say that I know how hard it is, but making friends and acquaintances helps, as you have other people for support or to hang out with to balance things. I think you should definitely put yourself out there more so that you have a bigger social circle (and in case you want to move it just always helps to have friends who can either help you or just a network that may either know someone or have other resources you need).