Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board

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Anonymous:
Jazz, that's me above, Jacmac.  I didn't realize I wasn't logged in.  8)

Anonymous:
"I don't agree that I shouldn't expect for others to acknowledge my birthday"

Then you will have problems because your friends don't agree with your expectations.

Anonymous:
Jazz,

There are two issues going on: one, the "special connection" that should trump all realistic expectation, demand, or pressure on the friendship; and two; you gave him an ultimatum whether or not you intended to, and he did not fight it.

Issue one: special connections are unrealistic. Real life intrudes on the specialness, and you start wanting a person to show up on time, behave respectfully, and so on. You think that your requests should have been inconsequential for him. Maybe he thought his lateness and other behaviors should have been trivial for you, because of the special connection. It works both ways.

Issue two: you gave him an ultimatum even if you didn't mean to. You might consider acknowledging responsibility for this. After you take responsibility for your own contribution to the problem, you will be far better able to deal with the consequences that occurred.

Portia:
ed

Jazz:
Thanks. To answer your question, I am a woman. I will look back and answer your other questions Portia, but would like to do so when I have a little more time and can do proper justice to them.
In regard to the 'ultimatum':he could have construed it as this, although I certainly did not say to him,'If you don't do X, then I will do Y.' Is it still my responsibility if someone reacts in a particular way to what they PERCEIVE me to have said or done, even if this was not my intention?They react according to their own filter of the events. I felt actually that by making my needs explicit, for once, that I was actually at last taking responsibility. The previous pattern in the friendship had been for me to REACT to what he did most of the time, because he was so volatile, and because he tended to express his own needs as though they were more urgent than mine. As regards the fact that he might have thought his own lateness, etc. were trivial matters and not that important in the light of the 'special connection,' I never made a big issue of these when we were together. In fact it is only now, through taking a step back because we are not in touch, that I can see for the first timehow many of his actions could be seen as being disrespectful.

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