A couple hours after Tuesday mornings feelings dump, S told me that she had crossed me off her Christmas card list and that she was incredibly incensed at the original posting, but that she wasn't going to bring it up to me until after the New Year. The course of the discussion took us all over the map, but the essence could be boiled down to 1) what exactly is the role of the holiday card and 2) how different life is between those who have children (especially newborns and toddlers) from there single friends.
The first issue is easier to address. To S, the card is simply wishes the receiver of the card well, the hope that things are well in their lives and to let the receiver know that the person is in the senders thoughts. To me, I've always expected more than that. It is my belief that because these people are an important person in the story of our lives that it's unfortunate that we can only see each other rarely and have this once a year communication. This communication to me deserves more than a cursory "throw something in the mail". I have friendships with different people from different points in my life so the type of communication I have with them is different and I try and reflect that in what I send, even if it is a couple sentences long, I feel I have given the relationship some respect. Simply stuffing the card in to the envelope to me feels like, as my colleague CD so eloquently put it, "relationship on resecitation (sp)".
This lead to the more critical discussion and that is that it is a luxury for those who have young children at home to take time to sit down and type out an email or write a letter or even make a phone call. Ok, point taken. Yes, when I come home, it's a place where I am not being pulled in 55 directions at once. So S told me that it is the job of the single person to change their strategies and instead of just relying on the other person to initiate contact, that I as the single person needed to reach out and often times more than once or twice. When it is me that is always calling or emailing it doesn't mean that the other person doesn't want to communicate, it is often they can't. Here comes the key issue and that is I always feel like it's a burden upon my friend with kid when I want to call. How many times have I called and gotten the friend/parent while they are trying to do three things at once, and I get about 50% of their attention. So, that makes me feel really good, or they say that they'll have to call back. That actaully makes me feel worse because I feel as though I'm another thing on their list of things to do.
This conversation had me in tears in the office and I don't even know why. Was it the friendship on rescicitaion realization? Was it that I was being insensitive into the demands of parenthood? Was it S's making these statements and me feeling like an insensitive prick? A combination of these or all? So, I'm still confused and baffled by lots of things here, but I know that I can try and make sure to make the effort to reach out to those friends of mind who have young kids and to be understanding about the constraints on their time and energies. As for the cards, well I can simply do what I think is right and model the behavior myself. As off today, I'm over this whole saga now. I'm putting it to bed.
1 comment:
Hmmm--I was obviously not in on the conversation you posted about but it seems the implication is that a childless person should have to work harder to keep a friendship going than the friend with children. I may have misunderstood--but that just doesn't seem right. We all have challenges in our lives, at different times. Any relationship is a give and take and in order for the relationship to work there must be some sort of balance. Our relationships evolve through these cycles and I think the trick is to balance our lives as a whole while balancing each relationship.
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