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Friday, June 16th, 2006 08:42 am
Ever get to the point when you really want to talk to a person about something and you realize he doesn't want to hear about it? Ever want support from someone and realize that he's got faaaaaaar more important things on his mind than hearing about YOUR life and what's going on with YOU? That point where you suddenly wake up and see something you later feel like you should have known for years?

I have some stress about the whole interview/job-offer situation, and I am realizing that one person I really thought I could talk to about it is in this category. There is absolutely no way he wants to hear about this right now. It's the last thing he'd care about. Oh, he might be polite and hear me out before changing the subject -- or he might not. But he wouldn't ask questions or offer advice or basically care.

This is the second realization in, oh, a few months. I clued in about another long-time friend a while back. This one is situational, temporary; the previous one is less striking but chronic.

They hurt, in the moment; I'm stung, and I feel angry. But then I start to wonder about all sorts of related things. Can anything give me the "right" to a particular person's friendship or support? Am I simply expecting too much? If not, am I a bad judge of people? Do I do for others the things I wished others would do for me? Am I seeing things that aren't there, and would these folks happily be supportive?

I honestly don't know. Maybe I'm going insane. But maybe it's the other way round: could be I was delusional before and now I'm more aware. I can't tell.
Saturday, June 17th, 2006 02:51 pm (UTC)
The acute one has indeed been supportive in the past, and yeah, he's going through (I could be uncharitable and say he has created, it would be spot-on but unkind) some drama of his own right now. Needing/wanting support of his own, of course. That's pretty much the entirety of my whiney-feeling in this post: I want support right now and the timing's bad. Poor Me.

The long-term one... I'm realizing, the more I read these comments and think about what friendship means to me, that I want to remain friends with this person but at a less close level. It's simply been imbalanced for a long time. So I'll reach out a little less, instigate getting together a little less, and leave it at that.

I'm also seeing places where the imbalance might be going the other way. I'll make an effort to call or e-mail those people to set up a lunch or ask how they're doing.