Ex employee opening a store a mile away

[Ami]

I think that my new lesson applies to your situation,Kelly. We can't control the other person,just OUR responses. It helps ,very much. to see this,IMO.            Love   Ami

[Certain Hope]

Yes indeed.  But I told her yesterday-If we do not start running this store differently you might as well get your checkbook out and keep writing checks.

Kelly, if she has some sort of magical belief that she'll always come out on top - simply because of her persona - then she's really in a trap... and so is anyone who's intimately involved with her.
Have you seen similar situations? ... where the prideful one is so determined to prove that she/he was never wrong in the first place, that she'll go down with the ship rather than change her ways?  When it hurts more to admit that you're wrong than it does to go under (in which case, someone else can always be conveniently blamed)...  pathological N will go under every time. In fact, that's one of the main differences I've noted between my N-ex and those I've known with N'ish traits (including myself).  He didn't care if it cost him his last cent and he wound up sleeping in an old bus. He would not relent. The rest of us have the potential - and will - to wake up and smell the coffee.

Carolyn

[Overcomer]

Both great posts.  You really cannot do anything to change the other guy-you just have to do your best.  And it is true with my mom.  She will keep putting money in just to be perceived as successful.

[Ami]

Dear Kelly,
 IF I could really learn the lesson that I can ONLY control myself, I would  be in much better shape.. It  is a good route to go on, IMO, for myself.           Love   Ami

[Overcomer]

I learned this very lesson this week.  We cannot control what he does only what we do in response to him.  We worry about being our best and let him try to figure out how to run a store in this economy.

[Ami]

This lesson is so big, Kelly. I am, now , trying to apply it to more and more parts of my life.                   

[Overcomer]

Well, one thing I have learned through out this whole thing is YOU REAP WHAT YOU SOW.  But I also feel that Ns (like my mom) do not for a moment think that it is something THEY did to create a particular outcome that is not favorable.  My mom's behavior kind of forced this guy to retaliate.  She chose a drunken loser over this other man to run the business and I can tell you.....No Christian business should have a drunken loser in charge.

And my mom could have nipped some of the behavior in the bud.....but she is noncongrontational until she is angry then she grits her teeth and is very mean..  She also harbors grudges.  But the man who is opening the store is Italian and I joked with him about breaking our legs.......he is definitely mad at mom and trying to stick it to her.  But because of that he is jeoparizing his own business and I cannot believe his investors would sacrifice their money for a business so close to the biggest store in the state.  Oh, well, maybe he has been honest about what a horrible person my mom is and they are all about putting her in her place.  But you know?  Christians are supposed to be loving and forgiving.  I have seen so many Christians that do not act that way at all!

[Certain Hope]

Kelly,

Your mom didn't really force him to do anything, though... other than to go out on his own, rather than as a part of her business. She didn't force him to try to un-do her or put her into his place. If that's really his game, then it's coming from something inside him... you know?  Maybe she even saw that in him before... a co -N'ish-ness... and maybe that's why she didn't want him in the business?

I dunno...