It is now the next morning. Sunday; June 17, 2012. For some
off reason, sleep has allowed me to see this incident more objectively and less
emotionally. What do I want to go from here? I would like to repair my
relationship with him. I laid in bed this morning, thinking about the potential
end of this relationship. It scared me. I’m a person who highly values quality,
one on one conversations. Because of my communication style and introverted
tendencies, this does not allow me to have a wide variety of actual friends-
those who I would feel comfortable reaching out to and talking with.
Potentially losing two friends this summer is too large a price to pay. One may
get the feeling, it sounds like you want to get back together with your friend
because you don’t have many to start with, and not because you are out of
victim mode and self-righteousness. It’s true. People get into relationships
for selfish reasons. People desire connection, so they look for it in people.
If you had more than enough friends for your social needs, would you still be
talking and meeting as many people? No, you wouldn’t. This is what I wrote to
him this morning:
(My Friend's Name),
Yesterday night, I was definitely feeling self-righteous as I
ignored your text. Writing this now after having time to ruminate, I felt like
my action of ignoring your text was rude, disrespectful, and a bit hurtful as
well. I apologize for my immature action. Prior to yesterday, I used to think
we had a fun, bantering friendship. I felt like we joked around more with each
other than you did with most of the other guys we’d play football with. I
really enjoyed bantering with you as a whole, except for yesterday. The truth
from my perspective is that your jokes and indirect insults went too far. I
feel like after you noticed I wasn’t saying anything to anybody (not just you),
it would have been smart to ignore me as well and walk away. I assume you felt
it was fun to keep badgering me even after you could tell I was getting annoyed
and angry. Your motivation for doing that was more out of fun than trying to be
hurtful. I get that. But it went too far. I think I reacted appropriately by
leaving the moment I peered up at your face and saw you smiling because my
brother was obviously not happy and could sense my annoyance.
All this aside, I believe you do feel bad about what
happened, as I infer from your text. Deep down, I don’t think you intend to
hurt people so I don’t think you’re a bad person. I just hope you can
understand how I felt yesterday. Tell me how you viewed what happened yesterday.
Perhaps I did something that you didn’t like either. I know you may feel like
being self-righteous and ignoring me as I did to you, but I hope you still have
interest in repairing our relationship.
Michael ”
Later today around 6:30, I received a message back from him
which solves this misunderstanding we had. Here was his response:
“Damn dude,
My bad! I seriously
didn't intend to be rude/mean in any way possible. You know how I am always
joking around. I was treating yesterday's situation just like I always do. I
did see your irritation but I honestly thought it was just an act. If i knew
you were actually pissed off, I definitely would not have bugged you so much. I
am genuinely sorry bro. There is no way i want our friendship to end. I feel
like we've had a fuckin AWESOME time over the past few years. I would
definitely agree that we have a (no homo) stronger relationship than any other
two people in our friend circle. I guarantee I wont bug you....as much haha.
Please tell your brother the same. I feel like my time here in the bay would
suck without you guys around. Let's agree to leave this instance in the past
and carry on as if it never happened. Down to play football/bball/swim soon?
it's fine if you need a break though man. I understand.”
I feel it’s safe to say that it won’t be the end of our
friendship. In most cases, repairing an old relationship is easier than starting
a new one.
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