Why Do I Feel Like an Asshole?

The reason I ask this question is based on an event from the past week. What happened was that one of my American Football officiating colleagues phoned me up and asked if we could swap games. Normally, I would have genuinely done so until he told me where his game was at. This made me hesitate because going to the new venue would have added about 60 miles round trip to my journey. Furthermore, I officiated a game there a few years earlier and it was the journey from hell. Therefore, I told him I would think about it.

Well, I did think about it and though he tried to give me alternatives that would make swapping seem attractive, I declined to swap and cited other reasons. Most important, I would have been given up the opportunity to officiate two games to travel further to do one. Because of work, I only get to officiate games every three to four weeks so for me, the more games I can get, the better. Second, the second game of the double header starts at the same time as the single game, so I would have been home later. Neither I or my wife want me being out too late, although the flip side is now I have to leave an hour and a half earlier but that's not so bad. In the end, my colleague seemed to accept my reasons and was quite gracious about it.

In spite of all of the above, part of me feels like I am being a complete asshole towards this other guy. These thoughts arise from my past, when I did say no, there was someone out there to make me out to be the bad guy because I did. Furthermore, some of these were the same people who used to manipulate me because I was easy to do so. They didn't get their way this time, so they made it all my fault, like I was being unreasonable. The problem was that with my Asperger's and DAMP, I believed they were right and I was being some unreasonable asshole, when in reality, I wasn't.

This feeling has plagued me throughout my life and is born of the belief that I am always wrong and combined with self doubt, for most of my life, I have thought that whatever I do, whichever decision I make, it's going  to be wrong! If I stand up for myself and say no, in spite of having good reasons for doing so, I am wrong and if I give in and say yes, then I allow myself to be taken advantage of. The result has been not good for my mental well being and led for my feelings of self victimization for many years.

So, not that I need reassurances although it is good to get them, am I being an asshole for refusing to swap games? I don't think so. I could go as far as to say the only reason he wanted to swap was that he wanted to officiate two games himself without having to travel. However, while that might be the case, I won't question anyone's motives if I don't need to. I know what it's like to have that happen. All I'm saying is that after giving it thought, I decided not to swap games and stay on the game I was assigned to. If people think I'm being an asshole on account of that, then that's their problem.

I can't say if I touch on the subject in "He Was Weird" but the bullying in it was so bad, it wouldn't have mattered. To buy the book, go to: https://www.amazon.co.uk/He-Was-Weird-Michael-Lefevre/dp/1909740942/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1527526540&sr=1-1&keywords=he+was+weird