Yesterday I hung out with Lawrence for the first time in a month. As I've said before, Lawrence is really smart, and he gives me really good advice. Except yesterday.
First of all, he assumed that I have low self esteem because I get so sad when people are hurtful. Um, I do not have low self esteem. If I did have low self esteem, do you think I would have been strong enough to stand up for myself in the Mara situation? Probably not. And he's implying that losing a friend should not be sad. I should not feel any sort of loss when somebody that I care about walks out of my life. Get real.
Then he went on to say that you're never supposed to tell anyone that you're mad at them. If someone makes you mad, you stop talking to them and move on. They have to disprove whatever it is that made you mad, without knowing why you are mad at them, if they want to remain in your life.
What kind of nonsense is this? This goes against everything I have been taught, and everything I have learned. Is this what most people think? Is this the method that most people use??
His example was actually with John. I thought that he and John were still friends, but apparently not. Lawrence says he stopped talking to John because John made some comment that Condoleezza Rice was way less successful than his parents. Lawrence was offended because John's parents are not rich and nobody has heard of them. He deduced that either John is too liberal for his own good, and is unable to see that Republicans can be successful, or he's a racist, thinking that black people cannot be successful. So he has stopped talking to John, simple as that.
If John was a racist, Lawrence, then why would he even talk to you in the first place? This is ridiculous. I told him that if it were me, I would have said something like, "Your comment about Condoleezza Rice bothered me because ....." or "What was with that comment?" Maybe the whole thing is a misunderstanding, and you're throwing away a friendship because of it.
Misunderstandings happen all the time because 1) people are not good communicators, and 2) people lie. You're supposed to tell someone that something that they did made you upset, in the hope that it was a misunderstanding and that they take steps to explain to you what they actually meant by it.
That was what I did with Mara. I hadn't heard from her in 3 weeks, so I sent her a message that outlined why I was upset with her. Since I wasn't sure when I would hear back from her, and I wanted to move on with my life, I told her what I would need from her if we were to be friends.
There was indeed one misunderstanding, about the visit of "her Danielles." Since they were only coming for a weekend, they would not be alone in her apartment, and her quiet roommate wouldn't be freaked out.
Everything else was not a misunderstanding. She does not care about me anymore and she thinks that mental abuse is ok.
Anyway, I believe that you're supposed to give someone the benefit of the doubt. You're supposed to hope that whatever it was, was a misunderstanding. You're supposed to give them the opportunity to explain it before throwing away a friendship.
Lawrence also asked me why I thought I had to work so hard for friends. You work hard if you care about someone. If someone means a lot to you, you're supposed to try to make it work before you cut them out of your life. If you're willing to just cut them off without any effort to make it work, then you didn't care about them that much to begin with.
Another thing that Lawrence said was that you're not supposed to care about the reasons for why people suddenly don't like you anymore. You don't need to hear their reasons, because you don't need to listen to their negativity. He says the only reason you need to know is that people change all the time, and they changed their mind about you. That's it.
I get where he's coming from on this one. But at the same time, for them to not tell you anything and just cut you off, going from best friend to enemy and not explaining why... that sucks too. They are not giving me the benefit of the doubt that there was a misunderstanding. They're just assuming that I'm a horrible person, when the day before everything was fine and we were best friends, and I don't know why.
Is there a happy medium somewhere? Does anyone have any ideas?
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