Mbmdp said:
I can but hope! I hate it. I'm only here because I have responsibilities but I honestly think although it sounds silly they don't want me here :-(
No, that's not it. They need you there because your presence there means they can ignore their own differences. If you left, they'd start on each other. The stronger ones want everything to revolve around them, the weaker ones will do what it takes to feel part of the group. It's real monkey behaviour. I had a spell of about three years evesdropping on conversations between women in groups in a pub on a Friday night. All I can say is if the men spoke to each other like that, there'd be a lot of trouble. Some would go out of their way to make others feel small. The rest would comply because they hoped to avoid that sort of attention. Desmond Morris wrote a popular book about group behaviour over 40 years ago called The Human Zoo. We christened our favourite pub The Playground because the groups that formed and the places they stood, week in week out, reminded us of the groups of kids in the school playground.
The psychologist Paul Hauck writes many books and one you may find interesting is entitled How to Cope With People Who Drive You Crazy. The main theme in his books are that the reader should not talk themselves into an emotional state. He like to point out,
"Only two kinds of person can cope with neurotics. 1. Saints. 2. Other neurotics. Most people are not saints. If you are not neurotic, you soon will be." They are enjoyable reads full of examples of essentially, observations on how bad some people's behaviour can be. He suggests coping strategies for those who have to put up with them.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=sr_pg_2?r ... 1363363560