Surviving The Fall, 14

One of my friendships has just hit a bump. This is a Latin American individual who seems to think that they can cancel on me whenever they like (we had been meeting for this individual`s English practice, and not going at all well, by the way) So, this same person, instead of reasonably respecting my boundaries and accepting the responsibility of giving me three days notice before cancelling, after being warned a few times, given how tedious it was getting trying to come up with a plan B every time they cancelled on me, decided to play brinkmanship with me. I reminded them several times that they cancel often and that this is inconvenient for both of us given that this person's English has not been improving, and I called them on their game of chicken, offering next week to meet up instead since they wanted me to wait till the last day again for them to make up their mind, and instead of having a respectful and adult conversation, hung up the phone on me. Likely this individual wasn`t particularly happy that after texting each other briefly on Skype, and phoning me while I was at work, I was not going to give them time to stage a little drama with me. I politely cut them short, repeated what I wrote on Skype (simply that waiting till the last day, I can't guarantee being available, so could we try next week instead?) and this person suddenly hung up on me, likely signalling their desire to end for ever our four year friendship. So it goes. The stress from these kinds of drama queens does impact me, and in my profession as a mental health worker, this kind of drama can also wreck my sleep for the next night or two, and if I am going to work well with my clients, I need a decent night`s sleep. It seems that my friendships with Latinos are usually less stable and more fragile than with Canadians. This I can understand. There are cultural differences that really grate on each other's nerves and both parties have to be very committed to the friendship for these things to be overcome. My experience suggests that Canadians tend to be by far the more generous party here. Latinos have a lot of racism in their culture and many particularly dislike white North Americans and Europeans. Fortunately, this isn't always the case, but it is an elephant in the room. They will cut slack for one another and respect one another in ways they would never imagine doing with non-Latinos. It appears that for them North Americans exist primarily to facilitate the upward mobility of Latinos, and there are many who never appear to abandon this kind of mentality. Which makes friendship a rather flawed and difficult adventure, but still worth it. It becomes particularly complicated if there is romantic or sexual attraction, or if we find that we simply really like each other, because we still have to get through the racism and the cultural barriers. I find that when Latino friends are particularly attracted to me that things can get really complicated, because there are unwritten expectations, and whether it`s from a woman or from a man, there are going to be set but largely unconscious or unsaid cultural expectations that come from a culture that is very hierarchical, very gender binary, homophobic, macho, and very patriarchal. This isn't to say that I don't find some of them attractive, at least at first. But as an asexual I never want to go to bed with anyone (and I know that some of them will find this annoying), and as a mature person with a lot of common sense, I also know better than to let this cross any boundaries. It is often even more tricky if there is a same-sex attraction, given that a lot of Latino men are highly closeted, given the homophobia of their cultures, and the shadow boxing can get very weird at times. But I am also willing to work through this for the sake of preserving and fostering friendship. It is only too bad that very few of the Latinos that I know could be bothered. But I'm not Latino, and therefore, unless I am helping them improve their English, or become successful in my country, I am not going to rate. It is also onerous trying to talk openly and clearly with a lot of Latinos about these things. Most of them are just cowards and will run away and find another sandbox to do their business in. Others will get emotional, nasty, upset and ugly. Real drama queens. But to get any of those people to own up, to admit that they are wrong, or to apologize? I really like Canadians better. A lot better, and no I am not a racist, regardless of what all the angry people from the Black Lives Matter movement would like to scream in our faces, about being Caucasian making us genetically flawed hating mouth breathers. Here in Canada, a lot of us anyway, are owning up to our racism and prejudice. We are not perfect. We still make mistakes, and we own up to them and try to do and be better. Unfortunately we also have the naïve expectation that everyone else in the world, especially those whom we welcome into our country are going to be every bit as generous, benevolent and tolerant and accepting of diversity as we are. And, very rightly, we still welcome the rest of the world to share with us our blessings and our largess. But getting others to clue in that it's a two way street? We have our work cut out for us.