Every so often I go through little periods where I get very upset about the fact that people are not honest. Noah takes it a little further and says they all lie. I like to stick with not-honest… it’s giving a bit more credence to their not meaning to do it. What I mean in this case is: people who say, “Oh, let’s hang out some time!” But then when you ask, and ask, and ask when they never want to see you. People who will say they are your friend, but then won’t act like a friend. People who deny the consequences of their behavior and say that “It isn’t my fault” when actually… it is your fault.
I go through cycles where I try to ignore this sort of stuff, but then every so often I get so fucking angry about it I can barely see straight. Usually by the time I get this mad I want to write off everyone in the whole universe. I hate people. Because even the people who are overall pretty decent still do stuff like this sometimes. People just don’t honor their word. I’m sure I’m not perfect about following through on everything, but I try really hard. And if I am not going to be able to do what I say I try not to say it. I don’t get the impression other people care as much.
It’s kind of funny, but when I go through these periods and I start thinking about the behavior of the people in my life I find that the people who actually behave like my friends are not the people one would automatically pick out of a crowd as my friend. They are the ones who show up when I ask them to and actually honor exactly as much of a commitment as they are willing to make. (People who are honest and say, “I would like to, but I can’t” get a lot of points with me because they are telling me the truth.)
I’d rather be told that someone isn’t my friend and deal with the sadness that brings than be lied to. Maybe I’m unique because it doesn’t seem like other people want to operate that way.
Speaking of which…
Whats your thursday noonish look like? (the 6th) as I finally have time and don’t want to be one of the assholes that you’re talking about. 🙂
Hugs,
T.
Re: Speaking of which…
I have nada during the early part of the day. I have to leave the house at about 5:45 pm and that’s it. 🙂
Re: Speaking of which…
I sent an email that I thought was to you, but if not, could you send me an email with time that works for you (11am, noon?) and the house location again?
Hugs,
T.
Re: Speaking of which…
I would if I had an email address. Computer issues are annoying.
11 would be awesome. That will give me a chance to make food for you, oh Mr. Food Restrictions. 🙂
43167 Newport Dr.
Fremont, Ca. 94538
You are not totally unique for THAT reason….
“I’d rather be told that someone isn’t my friend and deal with the sadness that brings than be lied to. Maybe I’m unique because it doesn’t seem like other people want to operate that way.”
being THAT reason. But the people who are prepared to hear the unpleasant truths of others are rarer than those who would rather avoid the pain.
Having just had the stinging opportunity to go one round with an unpleasant truth and losing to the truth in a lovely KO, I can say that I agree: while it may suck flaming stubbly elephant scrotum to be smacked with the truth, it is far better than the insidious long-acting toxin that lies and deception and equivocation can engender.
love
Mo
my friends…are the ones who show up when I ask them to and actually honor exactly as much of a commitment as they are willing to make.
don’t know whether Pittsburg qualitfies, but Midwesterns are wonderfully reliable people and it’s one of the things I dislike about some people here and miss terribly from Chicago. Having said that, I’ve surrounded myself with people here now who are mostly reliable and honest.
I have some reliable people in my life–don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful to/for them. I just find that the flake factor is so high that sometimes I get really upset.
I’m hoping to find that you are right about Midwesterners. 🙂
I think you will find that true. The East Coast was more reliable, to be sure.
Californians are the flakiest fakest group of people I’ve ever met. I love them, but seriously. I upset me, then I got used to it, then I became it, and now I’m enjoying meeting people on time again.
It’s one of those things that’ll make or break a living area, for sure. And it’s cultural. I think in California people think that saying they’ll do something isn’t an indication that they really will, and shouldn’t be treated as such, or some shit.
One of the things I like about you is your honesty and punctuality!
I have March 11th through 15th off from school if you wanna hang out. Still can’t drive though, but you’re welcome to come up to hang out at my house! I would love to see you, I’ve just been crazy senior thesis busy, and thus neglecting everyone I know other than Nick (mostly because he lives with me).
I can do time in that period. Driving up there won’t be a problem. Yay! Call to arrange a specific time?
quote: “Oh, let’s hang out some time!” But then when you ask, and ask, and ask when they never want to see you.
Actually, sometimes I *do* want to see the person, but I realize that there are other things that have a higher priority and I don’t end up spending the time to get to know a potential friend better.
Or I meant it when I said it but we both took so long to act on the idea that things have shifted for me and I no longer feel that way. That is harder: “I used to want to hang with you but I don’t any more. Not because of anything you’ve done, but because of my current priorities.”
Need to work on saying that nicely. But saying that. So I don’t leave anyone hanging.
Oh, and I’m not talking about you.
I didn’t think you were. You are still putting up with my obnoxious ass years after you could have successfully ditched me. 😉
It is hard to tell people that your priorities have changed, but I find that a little bit of tact (which you are much better at than I am) goes a long way. I have told people, “I met you when I was in a period of wanting to know more people and I find that at this point I am trying to get to know the people I already have in my life better and there isn’t enough time in the day for more. I’m sorry that you hit that transitional period.” I’ve had more than one person tell me they respect my honesty and the the next time I want to meet more people, look them up again. 🙂
First of all, I love you and I completely understand where you’re coming from with this insincere, flaky, fakey attitude that people can have. It sucks, and they’re lame.. and they suck.
Second, I talked to Mr. K today and I’m glad that you told him because that’s a really hard topic to bring up and I haven’t even talked to my therapist about it, so, it was nice to finally get all those feelings out in the open.. the bell rang though, so expect some kind of continuation follow-up on what else is going on.
So, thanks again, and I’ll try not to worry you so much..
Dudette–keep in mind that I *like* you. Not because I’m supposed to like my kidlets, naw–you are just an awesome person. If awesome people are really upset it worries me. You need to keep growing up so I can put you on filters and fully integrate you into my friends group. I think you will like my friends. 🙂
I’m so relieved that I didn’t overstep a boundary in talking to Mr. K. I was so worried about that. I felt like I needed to do something though and my options are pretty limited at this point.
SO THATS why you like me!
Yup! You complain about all the same people 😉
As I tell other people when they ask (and you know they ask): I like you because you mean well and you will give the shirt off your back to help me if I need it. You may drive me nuts, but you have my back in any and all serious situations. I value loyalty.
I do appreciate that you are dependable. 🙂
You know its true, its always the people who you “just know” that turn out to be the most supportive friends, and the ones you think of as “friends” who will slam the dagger in your back. I don’t understand why. But it just seems to be true.
Excuse me, it seems like we both have a subcription to the same “issues” 🙂
want to hang out some time?
Honestly, not really. A few things you have said/done have really made me angry and I don’t feel that it is a good idea for me to put time and energy into developing relationships with people where I have to work hard at them right now.
*extreme confused look*
Well at least you honest. I have no idea what your talking about but your honest. Are you sure you don’t have me confused with someone else? I think we’ve only met once face to face so I’m not sure what I could have “done”
And seeing as we had/have no relationship to preserve I never saw the need to actually take issue with you. I just smiled and nodded and let you go about your life.
Ok….. Well I’m sorry for what ever it was. I know sometimes my dry sence of humor gets taken wrong.
I’ve recently come out of a round of that with three people I considered not just friends, not just good friends, but best friends.
I realized with one, I had not only not seen him but in fact hadn’t hardly heard from him in over a year, even then only when I tracked him down, and I constantly heard how busy his life was, I finally said (in my head) “fuck off”. I called him on it, and I got a small riot act of how not-understanding I was.
It dawned on me that in his mind, we were still good friends. Only his idea of Being Friends is *entirely* different from mine. His does not require actually being in contact with the other person, apparently. Or maybe he’s just never sat and consciously thought about whether he still wants to be Friends with me, and keeps carrying the history forward on autopilot. I, OTOH, have been doing a big review of my life and nearly everything in it over the last five years, and I’m jettisoning just about all the baggage I can.
The people and things in my life right now, for the most part, are there because I’ve chosen them. Recently. There’s still things to review, I’m sure, but almost all of the people I spend any significant amount of time and energy on – which includes thinking about them – are there because I want them in my life.
Okay, not everyone has exactly the place in my life I’d like them to have. But they are there. For instance, I’d love to be able to spend more time getting to know you, even a little. That’s not much of a choice for me at the moment. But I do spend time reading your LJ and commenting in it. And hoping you’ll get out this way again some day soon.
I have a few friends where they kind of live on the back burner and we keep in touch but I don’t depend on them for anything. People I have known for ever and ever and ever and the history does float the relationship. (Like Brittney-we were born across the street from one another. We have not been best friends or even that good of friends since we were little, at this point she is more like a cousin I am fond of. But dude–we wore diapers together and she went through dealing with my family with me. I’m keeping her even though we aren’t close at this point.)
I hear you on cutting people though. I go through periods where I do the same thing. I think of them as retreats. And I make a lot of weird/fuzzy exceptions for the people who live far away as well. Not knowing you better isn’t really a conscious choice or about either of us flaking–it’s living a thousand miles apart. I figure that deserves some slack. Mostly when I come up there you make an effort to see me and that is what I look at. (Ok, when I show up and you are moving I don’t get pissy.)
We are going to make a trip through Portland on the way to Pittsburgh this summer. Dad wants to be able to meet his first grandchild. 🙂
I try to be honest with others, but at times I admit I haven’t been. When I don’t it’s usually because:
a) there’s something else going on in my life that’s affecting my relationship with others but I’m not prepared to share it and explain myself, or
b) I realize later my intentions were greater than my ability to follow through and I’m embarrassed to say so (road to hell paved with good intentions and all that).
Communication is a two way street, though. I think it’s as important in a friendship/relationship to point out a hurtful behavior as it is to avoid hurtful behaviors to begin with.
You are right, communication is a two way street. But I find that sometimes when I directly challenge a behavior the person in question denies what they are doing and then continue to behave the same way. So I feel ultra paranoid that I am misunderstanding and yet… they are still doing the hurtful behavior. Is not fun.
In terms of a) it’s usually ok to say to someone “I have stuff going on that I am not ready to talk about yet and it is impacting this situation. I am sorry about that.” I’ve had people respond well.
It is interesting to me that you can explain situations in which you know your behavior isn’t necessarily great and yet you still put it as the other person should be the one to address that behavior.
Um, that’s not quite what I meant. I should address the behavior when I think I’m behaving badly. The other person has the responsibility to address the behavior when they think I’m behaving badly towards them. The two are not always the same.
Inconsiderate people bother me a great deal. And I consider saying you’re going to do something and then not doing it to be terribly inconsiderate, especially when it involves group plans so you waste everybody’s time waiting around for you.
So, of course, I make plans and then forget about them.
Not to offer it as an excuse, but it’s not because I don’t love the people I have plans with, it’s because I forget shit. I’ve got the Yahoo! calendar thing scheduled to give me daily reminders, and I try to make sure everything gets put on the calendar, and I try to write notes to myself, which all help. But I still forget lots of stuff. And that bothers me a great deal too.
I went through a period in the past few years where I kept forgetting things. Big things. Like, uhm, weddings. I wrote them down in a bunch of places, but I just couldn’t meet the commitments. For me I think that some of the ‘forgetting’ was my subconscious watching my back. Emotionally I was having a lot of trouble dealing with the fact that my friends had large extended loving families and I feel terribly alone in the world sometimes. I’m not always honest about how upset I am about my family and I think that ‘forgetting’ about situations where I would feel more hurt is something my brain does to protect me.
That said–I felt/feel shitty that I did that to my friends. I’m really grateful that I have an overall good track record and they decided to forgive me. It’s terribly embarrassing.
What do you think your brain might be protecting you from?
Hunh. I hadn’t ever thought of that angle. Honestly, I’d pretty much assumed that it was chemical rather than psychological.
….Some of it may just be me avoiding resposibility–I forget to pay bills, I forget to do my taxes, I forget to turn the alarm back on after the weekend, that sort of thing.
But forgetting that I want to bring in an armful of CDs from the car, or forgetting that my groceries need to be moved from my backpack to the fridge before they go bad, forgetting that I still need to put the sheets on my bed, that sort of stuff doesn’t seem to fit a theme.
It fits more of a theme than you recognize. It all fits together to give you the protective shell of “being forgetful” which allows you to ‘forget’ things that are fairly important. If you only forgot the ‘important’ things then you would have to face them more directly. Instead you have a shell that insulates you from dealing with the disappointment/consequences of being forgetful to a large degree.
Now, see, this is why it’s good to have somebody standing outside the forest, so they can say something besides “Nice trees.”
So possibly I’m forgetting things to arrange a cover for the things I want to forget? That’s an awful lot of work, and I’m still very disappointed and there are still consequences. But socially, saying “I forgot again because I forget things” could be a damper.
Humans are complicated creatures. We often build up layers of defenses because that is necessary to let us feel safe. One layer just wouldn’t cut it. 🙂 (Onions man. Totally onions.)
I’m not saying I’m right. But it could be worth looking at how being forgetful in general protects you.
And I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m all curious about this possibility because (a) it scares me a lot less than figuring my family history of Alzheimer’s is coming to roost and (b) I might be able to fix it.
This is the sort of thing that a good therapist would be useful for.
I don’t hear you mention it, but I’m curious. Do you also leave room for people to change their commitments later?
Like, it took me a long time to learn that having made a commitment, there were two honorable choices available. The first honorable choice was to do whatever I’d said I was going to do. That’s always the best choice. But second best is to let the person know that I can’t. And the sooner I know about that, the sooner I can let them know, which gives them more time to make alternate arrangements.
The soonest I can let them know is before I make the commitment, which is really just a special case of declining.
The dishonorable alternative is to make a commitment, fail to say anything, and also fail to live into it. I still do it on occasion, but I work pretty hard to stay within the first two alternatives instead.
If someone lets me know that they can’t follow through I’m generally quite happy with that resolution.