What's Next? 35

Gentle Reader, I am currently negotiating rather a difficult friendship.  I will display here my email to this individual, incriminating details will be omitted, of course.  It all comes down to respect.  Now, I would love to be friends with everyone, because I actually feel profoundly connected to others, even complete strangers.  But I am also having to accept the bitter reality that not everyone is ready or prepared or even interested in having someone like me for a friend.  This is understandable  Not everyone is going to get on well, unfortunately. 

Friendship, to work, has to be reciprocal, profoundly reciprocal.  This means mutual transparency.  This means mutual humility.  This also calls for mutual accountability.  That is how trust is built between people.  It just takes one person defaulting on these responsibilities to tilt the balance.  When the same person does this consistently, well,, you had might as well toss a hand grenade, because there goes anything resembling friendship.

This is really sad, given how much, in this particularly stressful, difficult and dangerous era we are living in, we really need one another, and especially to hang in together.  For this reason, I think it is essential that at least one party stay open to reconciliation.  It may never happen.  Sometimes reconciliation does occur, over time.  More often it doesn't.-  But this doesn't let us off the hook for not trying.

Now, my email to my friend:

By the way, I think you deserve an explanation of what I mean by disrespectful.  When you forgot our sessions at least three times, probably four, that left me feeling quite devalued by you.  It also made me less than likely to trust your commitment for future sessions.  You do not seem to have absorbed this, so here's your chance...okay?  Now absorb this fact please, and inwardly digest it.  Then, last Sunday, you did not give me a clear directive as to whether we would be on Skype that day or not.  All I got from you was a vague and ambiguous, "we'll talk later".  Nothing confirmed.  So I didn't know you would be calling, and for that reason I wasn't prepared for your cold call.  To be honest, when I saw that it was already ten, I did start to scramble to get ready for you just in case, but still wasn't ready for your call.  Under those circumstances, a warning text from you would have been perfectly appropriate.  Okay, ...a minute or two to absorb this...now digest it....Then, when I politely and gently asked you if you could text first, you rudely asserted that I had to be ready, even after you had stood me up at least three times.  Even after I explained some of this to you in an email  But either you didn't absorb it or you just chose to ignore it..Now, absorb...digest.

So, if this isn't disrespectful, then pray tell what do you call this kind of behaviour.

I am still willing to stay in contact, but be prepared to be questioned about this next Sunday, because I am not letting this go until I get an apology from you.  And if you do not apologize, then goodbye!

All for now

Aaron