Wouldn’t it be great if everyone in the world over would use their words to express their feelings? Alas, we don’t live in such a world. We live in a world where some people will be open, but most won’t. Many people will keep their feelings to themselves and only express them with a smile and passive-aggressive behavior.
The same goes for their feelings about you. Not everyone who dislikes you will be emotionally mature enough to tell you directly. As such, if you’re not sure how to spot these people, look out for the following. These are some subtle behaviors that may reveal a person’s true emotions and feelings toward you.
1. Your successes are met with neutrality instead of positivity.
A genuine friend, or even someone who feels neutral about you, will most likely greet your successes with cheer. They’ll be happy for you, proud of you, and want to give you a pat on the back. They want to be happy for you because it’s good to see someone you care about succeed. Right? If you have a good friend, you would be happy that they are successful.
However, someone who secretly dislikes you won’t be happy for you at all. They may not be openly hostile about it, but it likely won’t change their mood or demeanor for the better. Instead, they may seem cold, aloof, and uncaring. Others, however, may take it as an opportunity to put you down by nitpicking the success. They may say things like, “Oh, well that’s not that big of a deal,” or “Yeah, but…”
2. They are always correcting you or playing devil’s advocate.
A person who doesn’t have a problem with you isn’t going to be invested in countering your thoughts or challenging what you say all the time.
Of course, that’s not to say someone who likes you will always agree with you. You should be able to rely on a friend to tell you unpleasant, uncomfortable truths. Personally speaking, I can’t be friends with someone who won’t tell me when they know I’m wrong. It does me no favors to have someone constantly cheerleading when I’m doing something wrong.
However, a friend won’t go out of their way to disagree with you just for the sake of it. A person who doesn’t like you, however, will only rarely agree with you. They go out of their way to abstain from commenting, looking for things to nitpick, or calling your judgment into question. Their goal is to make you feel bad and take you down a notch because they don’t like it when you feel good.
3. They exclude you from social opportunities.
Consider a friend group. You find out that the friend group went out on a Friday night without you, and never bothered to tell you. Yes, a dinner together isn’t a huge deal in the major scheme of things, but it’s the intent that matters. No one bothered to reach out? Or was it one person who was supposed to and just “totally forgot!”
A person who dislikes you and doesn’t want to be around you will try to exclude you from things. It’s certainly not a fair or justifiable behavior, but a lot of people are conflict-avoidant. They don’t bring things up directly because they’re afraid of the repercussions. They are often too cowardly to want to be seen as the bad guy, so they’ll go for accidentally forgetting to include you as a convenient excuse instead.
4. Their conversations always feel transactional.
In typical socialization, a lot of people will spend time together or talk just for the sake of talking. It’s a bonding activity as they chit-chat about their day, their interests, ask about work, family, or what they’ve been up to. However, that’s usually not the way it works for a person who doesn’t like you.
They talk to you because they have to. They don’t have a choice in the matter, for whatever reason. Maybe it’s a coworker or a relative with whom you don’t have a good relationship. Either way, when you talk to them, it’s solely about things that serve a purpose. For example, “What do I need to get at the store for you?”
They don’t ask questions about your personal life, how you’re doing, or what you’re up to because they don’t care. And that’s okay. You don’t have to care either.
5. Their usual body language closes when you enter the area.
Many people reveal so much about what goes on in their heads through their general body language. A person who is in company they enjoy will often be open, gesturing, smiling, laughing, and engaged with the conversation.
That said, it’s important to remember that body language can be, and often is, misinterpreted. So it’s better to look at changes in an individual’s usual body language rather than assuming hard and fast rules apply to everyone.
For example, some people, such as those who are autistic, find eye contact uncomfortable, but that has nothing to do with how they feel about you. However, if someone who usually makes eye contact and faces toward people suddenly avoids it and turns away with you, they may be telling you how they feel.
If you suspect someone dislikes you, pay attention to how their energy changes as you enter the area. Do they fold their arms? Cross their legs? Look at you, but their facial expression falls? Alternatively, do they look at you but then glance away? That may be a sign that they don’t like you because their brain does not want them to appear open to connection. Instead, they’re closing off to subconsciously communicate that they don’t want to talk to you.
6. They practice selective effort.
A person who likes you is going to at least try to meet your expectations, if not exceed them. Those who don’t like you will do the very bare minimum they need to do, and nothing more. They may avoid doing small things like exhibiting common courtesy. They may not say please or thank you to you, yet they do to others, or if they do, it feels cold and distant.
They may offer a brusque “Thanks” without a smile or cheerful demeanor. Instead, they are flat and gray, trying to keep themselves from appearing too welcoming. They may even turn their head away quickly to hide an eye-roll at you for thinking you deserve something like their thanks.
Again, it’s important to look at differences in their behavior from their norm or from how they are with others. Some people simply have flat expressions or tone of voice, and that has little to do with their feelings toward you or anyone else.
Selective effort may also include responding to messages, but never initiating. Have you ever known anyone to run the test where they just stop reaching out to people to see who initiates? And then no one does? It’s much like that scenario.
7. Their humor toward you is biting.
Have you ever had someone make a joke about you, and your first thought was, “Was that a joke or an insult?” A person who doesn’t like you and wants to actively make your day worse may throw thinly veiled insults at you under the disguise of “it’s just a joke!” Unfortunately, it’s not just a joke.
Instead, it’s an act of maliciousness that is done with the intention of taking you down a notch. They deny it, of course, but it’s easy to see when you compare it to how they joke with others. The people they like and value, they won’t belittle or mock through their jokes. They act completely differently with them.
8. They do not advocate for you when you aren’t present.
In an environment like the workplace, coworkers tend to advocate for one another when they like each other. For example, maybe a mistake happens, someone suggests that you may be responsible for it, but you aren’t there to defend yourself. A person who genuinely likes you will either defend you or try to encourage people to double-check to make sure.
A person who doesn’t like you may stay silent or even agree. They want you to be inconvenienced or unhappy. What better way to do that than to get you blamed for doing something that you didn’t do? This is particularly common in highly competitive job environments or when a coworker is jealous of you. They may act friendly to your face, but then tear you down when you aren’t around.
Closing thoughts…
If this all sounds like incredibly juvenile behavior, that’s because it is. Far too many people stopped emotionally developing in high school and bring the cliques and social pettiness into adulthood. It’s annoying, especially if you happen to be a direct person.
Why bother playing games with people? If you don’t like someone, tell them and move on so they have no further expectations. If you’re at work, yeah, you have to suffer through it, but it’s better for everyone when you can just grin and bear it rather than pretending.
We don’t have to like everyone else in the world. We just need to be adults about it. And if someone is treating you this way, you may want to consider just how good of a friend they actually are.
