Posted by Hal on December 28, 1998 at 18:14:42:
In Reply to: something occurred to me later on... posted by Derf on December 27, 1998 at 17:11:08:
: As usual, I my replies came too quickly off my head, and I didn't take much time to consider them. Please forgive me.
: I probably would not have done it any differently than you. And that's *not* just a speculation.
: I also failed to consider one of the merits for the "give it time" argument (which, I believe, Hal first suggested).
: For much of my life, old quibbles between me and my loved ones have lost significance when we have advanced to a stage of maturity. There is a mutual understanding that the past "problems" were caused by less experienced, even "entranced" people, and that since we had "woken up," there was no sense in holding out past mistakes against each other.
I had been looking at the "give it time" idea in a slightly different way, but some of your ideas work in there too, Derf. I didn't mean to imply that the situation will just fix itself with time, or that things should just be forgotten and ignored--nothing ever gets resolved this way. But growth is a part of it. So is forgiveness, both for yourself and the other person, and this is an inevitable part of the growth process.
What I mostly meant was to take the time to collect your thoughts and see the situation more objectively. I hate to see friendships disappear from what ammounts to a misunderstanding. I like to believe that good relationships are worth saving and working for. The problem is that in the heat of the moment, we don't see things clearly. We end up acting out of our instincts and repeating the same patterns that have failed for us before--as you've said, we don't do what would really be best. It may seem now that the friendship has been destroyed, but I like to believe that it can be rebuilt. It just can't be rebuilt before you've cleared out the rubble, and clearing the emotional rubble takes time.
- Hal -