Hi, James!  Awhile ago you wrote in a message to Ardith Hinton:

JB>  Sure, there are friends and relatives that you can tell
JB>  how you feel, but mostly decorum has one keeping it to
JB>  ones self.


           Uh-huh.  And one of the purposes of this echo is to be a place
where you can let it all hang out, if that's what you need to do....  :-)



JB>  If a friend is one of the later, they can be bad for
JB>  your own blood pressure, so you have to evaluate the
JB>  worth of their friendship.


           I hear what you're saying, but I'd put it a bit differently. 
That's because my reasoning style is different... not because I think you
should do it my way!  Please bear with me if I engage in
"psychobabble" here....  :-))

           I'm an only child & a divergent thinker.  This means I've
learned to look inward for guidance.  I often find myself having to
"translate" when other people say things like "Only children
are spoiled brats," for example.  I don't think I'm a spoiled brat. 
By the time I was in grade five & one of my teachers said this in front
of the whole class, I was able to say to myself "Oh, I guess you come
from a large family!"  Later on I noticed that a lot of people seem to
believe others have easier lives than they do.  And several weeks ago I
finally managed to get a certain individual to show me that... although she
repeats the same sentence in knee-jerk fashion, as others do with verses
memorized from the Bible... what she means is that she still feels
resentful about something which happened in her home town thirty years ago
& which has *nothing to do with me*. I can usually figure out what's
really going on in such situations when I'm not under too much stress, but
when I'm struggling just to keep my head above water I can't deal with it
& it's not my nature to grade things unless I have to.  So I'd be more
inclined to say "This relationship isn't working for me right
now."

           The advantage of saying the relationship isn't working for you
right now is twofold.  First, you're acknowledging & accepting
responsibility for the way you feel & recognizing that it's trying to
tell you something.  Second, you don't have to make any irrevocable
decisions at the present time.  These people must be able to relate to you
in some ways & vice versa, otherwise you wouldn't have been friends in
the first place!  I see that the above individual tends to look outward
where I would look inward, for example, but she also seems to have
difficulty putting her feelings into words at times.  The latter is
something I can relate to.  One way & another I've been feeling I'm
constantly under attack from her... with some justification, I believe.  I
don't think she's seeing me. OTOH, she's just begun to tell me what's
really bugging her & I missed a chance to be supportive because I was
upset about her inability to clue in to what I'd been trying to say
earlier.  Perhaps we both have some changes to make....  :-)



JB>  Shoot... Nobody wants to walk on egg shells, just
JB>  because some sorry sod can't take a hint.


           I'm very interested in your choice of metaphor there because
some of our other friends have used it too.  Looking at the situation from
the point of view of the eggshell, I'm tired of being stomped on!  I guess
they've made some progress if they can say "I don't like walking on
eggshells" instead of telling me I (should) feel a certain way.  Maybe
what they're trying to tell me is that I take offence easily, but they
don't seem to realize I feel the same way about them.  I don't like having
to weigh every word any more than they do... (sigh).



JB>  I can be a handful too, so I don't expect everyone to
JB>  have a halo, just an openness to their own failings.


           Same here!  Your comments about egg shells & about the
importance of what a person does following Another D*mn Learning Experience
reminded me of an incident from my teens.  Our next door neighbour had
hired somebody to bulldoze the area where he wanted to put a septic tank,
and my father was fit to be tied because the man had taken out a surveyor's
bench mark.  I wasn't present during the ensuing conversation.  However,
the thought strikes me that all of us screw up sometimes & the
bulldozer operator could have reacted in either of two ways:

 1)  He could have asked what a surveyor's bench mark was, if he didn't already
 know, and why it was important to my father.  He could have apologized for his
 ignorance and/or carelessness & resolved not to make the same error again.  He
 could have offered to make amends as best he could.  Or...

 2)  He could have pooled his own ignorance with that of his buddies, who would
 no doubt agree with him that the old geezer who got so uptight over a piece of
 rusty iron must be totally off his rocker, and then he needn't learn anything.


           I can forgive a lot when I don't have to be "wrong" so
that somebody else can be "right", and when other folks show me
they care how I feel....  :-)




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+