How to Not Manage Other People's Emotions

[NotDarkYet]

I have a problem:

 

I've been playing with this musician for about 2 months (short amount of time!).

 

There were a number of red flags that (should have) bothered from at the beginning.

 

- He has a daughter he's not allowed to see (he's 33 years old)

- Would get so drunk that I worried about the safety of my house (he opened a window in a rainstorm and left it there in middle of the night)

- Stole pain medication (my girlfriends) from the house.  (apologized profusely later)

- Intensely interested in music, yet has never written a single song. 

- Very critical of past bandmates ( a big big red flag for me, usually)

- Claims to have nearly died in a drug overdose

 

Stupidly, I was hoping that everything would just "work out" with our partnership.

 

Well.  I sent a message to the band (+him) giving some critiques of our last jam recording.  Normal stuff, I've been doing this for a decade.  Most of the critiques this time around his tom drum EQ and vocal effects.   He flipped out, sending everybody an aggressively rude email implying that I was out to get him basically, and I just don't care...it was very aggressive.

 

After that he's not replying to my emails trying apologize (for what, I'm not sure), or to my phone calls.

 

I KNOW I'm not in the wrong.  But why do I feel so bad?  It bothers me that he doesn't reply. 

 

I feel like a stronger/better person would say "good riddance".  But I seem to have a problem letting go.

 

 

 

 

 

[dsayers]

I remember how hard it was for me to accept the proposition that a person's emotions were their own to manage when I first heard it. I think this is because I was raised by abusers who very much wanted to be able to use my empathy to manipulate me with big, emotional shows.

 

I think if you find yourself with such a vulnerability, chances are that during your formative years, your caregivers or people they exposed you to planted that seed in you. Have you been able to identify this in your own history?

[Matthew Ed Moran]

For you to be able to let go would mean he never would have entered your life in a way that could harm you so easily in the first place. I think I know why you feel bad: maybe it is the regret you feel for enabling him to enter your life and verbally abuse you in front of your peers. It sounds like you could have seen this coming, and hoping that everything would "work out" does not sound like the most conscious plan. I don't know if you expect to feel good after realizing you made a significant mistake in your personal judgment, but if you're trying to move past the regret by forcing yourself to have unrealistic expectations of an abusive lunatic, you're not going to feel fulfilled - just frustrated and depressed.