I am liked but not respected

LegacyUser

I am a normal twenty-two year old man. I am in college, I work part-time (albeit a big amount of hours) and quite frankly have little time for anything else. I play the Xbox or surf the internet when I get time.
To get down to business, in every aspect of my life, I am quite well liked. People see me as a friendly (perhaps too friendly - naive?), decent person. A 'nice guy'. The problem is that I am not respected too much. For example, in work I give and take banter with the lads but sometimes I feel as if they are getting one up on me so to speak. I would get witty comments that other people wouldn't get. I take it in good faith, and don't want to confront anyone about it, yet I feel as if I can't determine if my colleagues respect me. Perhaps there is an underlying respect because they wouldn't give me that banter if they meant it...right?

Is there anyway that I could become more assertive/confident without becoming an ar$€hol€?

ongarboy

when you say you get witty comments the others don't get, are you referring to friendly slagging type comments? If so, I wouldn't worry too much. If you are not actually offended by those comments and they are meant in good faith, it's just their way of engaging with you. Like you said, if they didn't like you, they wouldn't have banter at all with you. Each person is different so the group will engage differently with the different personalities in the group (ie the tall guy might get height jokes, the guy who scores every Friday night at the work drinks will get the legend/stud comments/slagging, the guy who dresses flashy might get the comments about his clothes and so on).

On the otherhand if you are particularly bothered by some comments, maybe if there is one of the lads you think you could confide in alone and run it by him in a casual way as to how you think he or the others perceive you. Just be careful you don't over question or over analyse it with him as he may think you have a serious issue over it and relay it back to the lads which I'm guessing you don't want to happen.

As regards your last question on assertiveness and confidence, there are a wealth of online and hard copy resources that help with this. There is one book, Dale Carnegies, how to win friends and influence people which is a multimillion best seller that addresses what you asked. Try picking up a copy or scanning it next time you are in a bookstore to see it it's worth buying and you might get some good tips from it. Good luck!

happyfeet2010

Feel like I could have written this myself..

I'm female.. early 20s, I have been told that I'm a friendly, bubbly person... yet so many people have hurt me...

I've had a so called friend blatently ignore me after being away for a while.. when I questioned her about it.. she came back attacking me... she more or less said that i was the worst person in the world.. surely any decent person could have said.."sorry, i was having a bad day"... doesnt take much..

It just showed me that she wasn't much of a friend in the first place if she was able to be so aggressive to me..

I asked her coz it was bothering me.. I wanted to know what I did wrong.. did I do/say something to upset her.. and I still don't know whether I did or not..

That's just one example..
I just can't understand why people have to be mean/rude/lie to anyone else..