What I have trouble understanding or relating to is the user-friendly mentality that seems to flourish nowadays. I mean between people. I know this because it has been so hard for me to develop and establish the few friendships that I am now privileged to enjoy since my life stopped falling apart and things began coming together for me. Full disclosure here. When it comes to friendship I have always been, you could say, embarrassingly loyal.
I have never been able to get why some people I know, almost everyone actually, seem to think that just because someone doesn't fit all the criteria that I would expect in a friend that I should get rid of them, or walk away, or become unavailable. I have difficulty with this way of thinking for a number of reasons.
Ever since I was a child I have always had trouble making and keeping friends. Well, maybe not making friends, but keeping them, yes. Now one might assume that this is something I've brought on myself because I must be an absolute horror to know for people not to want to stick around. And maybe I am. I have always been on the sensitive side which means I can get very irritable. I also tend to be very straightforward about things. I speak my mind, and yes I can see why others would have trouble with this even if I put up from similar or worse from them. I can also be very sarcastic and ironical. I know these are faults of mine. I do my best to keep them under control. But people can be very unforgiving and intolerant, I guess. And so can I.
But really I am writing here about the user-friendly mentality. I am part of a language exchange network and online I have met a number of different people with whom to practice Spanish while I help them with English. The results are often mixed but usually no one seems to want to speak to me again after one or two meetings. I am never told why. As far as I know I'm always on my best behaviour with them and I don't think that I have said or inferred anything offensive. But people are very judgemental. Every single person I have met with to do language exchange save for two particularly difficult individuals I have hoped to continue meeting with and that friendship could evolve. As I already mentioned there are two I did not maintain contact with, one because I found his Spanish impossible to understand and his English was so limited that we couldn't communicate. I also found him incredibly zealous to correct my ever error making it impossible for me to keep my thread any thread of conversation with him. The other struck me as hostile and uninterested in forming healthy mature friendships. Everyone else I have liked. I don't know why they have all given up on me so soon and of course if you ask no one will tell you.
The most recent one has taken the usual pattern: two enjoyable visits, then suddenly he is unavailable after asking if we could meet again the following day. I was not able to, being very tired and drained from work and asked about the day after, or Sunday or next week. Now he is busy. This always happens. I have just sent him a reply to his second polite refusal telling him that it seems that he might want to stop meeting with me and that this has become a pattern for me on the conversation page and I wonder what I am doing that offends people and if he could at least tell me. I don't expect to hear from him again.
In the meantime, although my ability to trust others has been compromised, I still try to reach out to people and I have just contacted another member of the conversation page. I am not trying to develop deep friendships as those things are best to be left to happen on their own, but to at least develop a rapport and be open to friendship. But really, in my case, it isn't simply friendship that I want but community. I am not getting younger and it seems that once you are in your fifties people, not even people your own age, are going to be that interested. This is why the suicide rate among single older men is so high.
We have a lot to give if any one has the patience to find out who we are. This process is so full of catch-22's though that even in the church one is likely to see more doors slammed shut than opened. I do have some, perhaps a half dozen people whom I consider good friends even if I find their availability limited. I am thankful for this and very grateful to each of these people for including me in their lives. I only hope that something more solid and concrete can grow and develop with us, perhaps a kind of intentional community? Or perhaps I'm too old? I am not going to close the door.
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