Posted by Kristi on August 5, 2001, at 15:12:15
In reply to A friend pulls away, posted by AKC on August 4, 2001, at 15:22:49
I know what your going thru. I have problems on two counts.
Would I love to hear people's responses to this one! I am the type of person.. that has a lot of friends(probably too many) that come to me with their problems, I listen , give advice, and keep it to myself. If I ever have a problem I'd like to talk about.... they may listen for a minute.... but it then pretty quickly turns to them.
And I also am interuppted all the time... from another set of friends, and most of my family... like what I say doesn't matter... and if I say anything(point it out) I'm the bad guy. I get walked over no matter where I go. Oh well, I'll accept it.... cuz I love my friends....
frustrating.
> I'm feeling somewhat alone this afternoon. Has to do with hurting a friend's feelings this past week. We were out to dinner on Tuesday, and I was being interrupted in conversation for the I don't know how many time. So I interrupted back and asked if I could finish my story. She had a look of shock on her face. Then, as we stood outside, I was stretching my calf muscle, and she started giving me stretching advice. Now realize, I am severely over-weight. You would no more realize that once I use to be a very athletic person. And this friend started giving me unwanted, unasked for advice. And I cut her off. Again, a look of shock on her face -- like how dare I. Since then, she has not returned my emails, nor my phone calls. So it has saddened me. I was not rude in how I did this. In fact, I was quite polite. But it makes me feel lonely, because I don't have many friends, and I can't believe that something like this would hurt our friendship. I was just trying to keep good boundaries. To know me is to know that I haven't had many close friends the past decade or so, because I have had such brick walls that I would not let anyone near. But in learning how to have new friendships, I also know that I don't want to go to the other extreme and just let people get away with anything -- like rudely interrupting my telling of a story, or always feeling like they can tell me how to do something -- like they know more than I do. I am torn on what to do now. I am pretty certain that I did not do anything wrong, so I don't want to give an impropery apology. But she may think I did, especially given her expressions when I behaved at the time as I did - and given her response since.
>
> Any thoughts?
>
> A confused hounddog.
poster:Kristi
thread:8681
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20010731/msgs/8732.html