My [31M] boss [35M] just made me aware I’m not well liked at work - specifically stating because of my personality, not work reasons. How do I move past this?

Hey guys,

I have always been somewhat of a loner and genuinely always believed no-one liked me. My family are very sarcastic and so my sense of humour tends to be sarcastic and dry. I always got on much better with older people (even as like a 10 year old) who could get my jokes and understood me much better.

I have worked very hard my whole life to dumb myself down and to try and conform to what people expected/wanted from me. I got married to an abusive horrible person who made my insecurities worse and I got to a point where I only believed my mum liked me. We broke up nearly 3 years ago after she had an affair.

I went to therapy and spent a lot of time trying to rethink things and part of that has been to try and be myself, be nice and pleasant to people and whilst it’s been a hard road, I thought things were good and I was doing well.

However, yesterday at work, we were talking about new staff and how they were settling in, and I said it was weird to think how we were sat talking about some colleagues (not in a bad way) and how people must of done that about us separately. He then said ‘yeah, they have about you and I get the impression they don’t like you and it’s definitely personality based, not work’. I just nodded and smiled (I know I’m a bit of an acquired taste) but it really floored me. The way he said it implied it was a lot of people and now I’ve been thinking about it for the past 24 hours.

I thought I was really close to him and his girlfriend who also works at the company. They helped me a lot when my marriage broke down and I thought of them like family. But the way he said it and seemed happy to be telling me has made me rethink some things they’ve said or done in the past.

It really hurt me because I try so hard not to be someone that offends people and I always do whatever I can to help, from covering shifts to staying on later to help people out. I am aware of 2 people who don’t like me but I know why they don’t. I didn’t realise there were others that dislike or hate me just because I’m me.

How do you move past things like this? I now don’t really want to go back to work. Should I just swap jobs? When I joined the company I was in a bad place in life (still with abusive wife) and I made a terrible impression. Would a fresh start be an idea? I wonder if I’m just one of life’s hated guys. Any advice on what to do to move through this would be great.

TL;DR - boss (who I thought was a good friend) told me I’m not well liked at work. Not sure how to proceed.

Submitted November 16, 2018 at 08:36AM by RockTheRed17 https://ift.tt/2K7EO7T