When Standing Up To The Bully Backfires

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When friends seem to stick up more for the bully than for the victim of the bully. I often find my bully is a good friend to my other friends, which makes it hard to the point of impossible for me to deal with the bully without alienaing myself from my friends. I get to see remarks on the lines of ‘He’s alright really once you get to know him. ... He can be a bit mean, but he doesn’t really mean anything by it. Though seeing the bully is only doing to me what he typically does to others they have effectively been giving him a mulligan (a free pass) for years and in trying to apply the brakes to his unprovoked rampage on me, I’m upsetting the generally accepted pattern because I’m not letting slide what others have let continue for some time. An actual quotation from a statement a friend sent to me. “What you described sounds like the kind of offhand acerbic comment that Bully is apt to make to absolutely anyone and is not out of character with his manner - it's the kind of thing he might well say to anyone.” and “Despite his gruff and offhand manner, Bully boy (name changed) is a reasonable guy," My own depression and mental health issues don’t help - if I get particularly distressed by the bully’s antics I’m told it is just my depression affecting me as others are better able to tolerate the acertics and offhand mannerisms, enabling many to turn a blind eye to the problem until it really escalates and gets too much for someone, but then it is that someone who is seen as weak and the real problem. To draw their attention to how he behaves to me, I recently directly challenged my main bully on his behaviour to me, though I was only able to get him aside after six months and still felt extremely angered and nervous by his behaviour towards me. He shut down the conversation by refusing to remember the incidents I presented to him, not denying or admitting, just conveniently failing to even remember them happening, which is a bit like not remembering if you took part in an armed robbery or not. What I didn’t tell him was that I was recording the confrontation, and I sent the recording to some of our mutual friends, not to general or public release (though I did consider that) The reaction was only to turn on me for daring to take action rather than recognition of the extreme provocation pushing me to it. One friend who is also a friend to the bully even sent me a patronising outline of what I should do next, indicating lack of understanding of both myself and the bully. It reads like something cribbed out of a corporate manual. I should apparently do the following. First, I should ask the bully to join me for a private chat, even though that is exactly what I did when challenging him in the recorded conversation. I should then apologise to him for aggressively cornering him and putting the charges to him as I did - the only way I was going to get my point across quickly to someone unwilling to let me finish a sentence in any conversation, and my emotional anger is a natural incandescent rage that declines to calm down six months on from when he finally pushed me to my limits. I am expected to be meek and do all the apologising. He just gets to sit there and watch me do all the work. I am then to take his lack of memory of his offences against me at face value, and tell him that I found his behaviour hurtful to me even though he can’t even be bothered remembering doing it. 'Oh diddums on me'. Finally I should ask him for a token gesture of apology to me for me being too easily offended by him and for my abject failure to roll with and tolerate what amounted in my friend’s perception to a bad taste joke that I just happened to take more personality than most people might have done on account of being depressed already. 2) I should say; "Sorry for aggressively cornering you." (set the tone of contrition – you made a bad choice in doing this in the way you did) (I have to be passive, meek and mild and apologetic for having the gall to still be angry six months on from the original offence in snubbing me. 3) "Although you don't remember it, this is what happened and what you said to me at (the party) and although you may not have meant it seriously, it really did hurt me and it has stuck with me ever since." (Be willing to believe the claim of 'not remembering' and take it at face value, and be willing to consider that it wasn't meant to be taken seriously when it clearly was directly intended to hurt my feelings.) 4) "Even if you don't remember it and didn't mean anything by it, an apology and your understanding would really be appreciated." In other words you should offer me an apology for me being offended by you because you obviously never went out of your way to offend me and it is my fault for not taking the joke in whatever context it was really intended) in the first place. So I do all the apologizing, and he gets a get out of jail free card while I throw myself at his feet requesting his mercy. He'd be laughing his socks off at me even attempting any of this. This is somehow seen as the ideal solution to the whole crisis. The other stance taken towards me amounts to trying to downgrade the behaviour towards me as something less than and other than bullying. I'm told it's a bit harsh to call him a bully for a few offensive comments, though they are just the tip of a very large iceberg with the individual concerned. The events peaked on New Year's Eve when despite my having just about survived bowel cancer and being stuck with a stoma bag for life, thus feeling very self-conscious, depressed and alienated already. Friends invited me to a house party, at which my bully was also present. On arriving he made a point of shaking hands with everyone, about twenty people in a room, but snubbed me twice before finally approaching me only to pull his hand back at the final second, going 'eew no, not you. Yeuch. I don't think so, wrinkling his nose in disgust and stomping from the room. "20 minutes later he returned, barked at me three times that it was just a joke and left again still without shaking hands with me. Friends now want to convince me that he would not have been thinking of my stoma condition, and even without that his behaviour was unacceptable. It was this that I challenged six months on, only to be regarded as the bad guy for daring to raise the issue, and told it's only because i'm already diagnosed as depressive that I let it all get to me at all. Seriously wondering what is wrong with the World. Is it really just me who is the problem in all this? There is a sequence in the Patrick Ness novel, and film of A Monster Calls when a boy, already depressed by events relating to his Mother's terminal illness (and I am seeing my mother sliding inexorably into dementia too) faces intense bullying, and finally gets angry enough to retaliate on the bully, attacking back with such ferocity that his few remaining friends are shocked by his behaviour and turn their sympathies on the real antagonist. This is pretty much the position I now find myself in too. Arthur Chappell