Things Fall Apart

It's finally happened that for the first time an intense friendship ended (or in this case, took a self-critical vacation) at the other person's suggestion, rather than my own. Given my history of leaving behind friends like mobile phones in the backseat of taxicabs, it's interesting to be on the other end. I wonder if the other person always felt what I feel now, which is that it's definitely for the best. I think when two highly-discussive people for some reason can't discuss the problems in their own relationship, that's basically when you have to make the choice to stop discussing. I'd felt for a long time -- a very long time -- that there may be this problem that we'd never be able to fix (a fundamental lack of respect on Desi's part for who I am as a person, and a failure on his part to understand me as, on the whole, a responsible and ethical person with a ton of integrity) and I knew it would only be a matter of time before I'd not be able to ignore it anymore. I knew that when that moment came it would likely mean the end of a friendship, because I didn't sense a lot of potential on our parts to work on it, and it appears I was right. It was a great friendship for a ton of reasons, which is why this underlying problem was always outweighed by all the other benefits of being friends, but I knew that the dynamic was deeply-flawed.

I think part of the utility we find in friendships -- what makes them productive and worthwhile, if you want to look at it that way -- is that friends encourage us to be self-critical and honest about who we are and how we function when we might otherwise be too close to perform that analysis on our own (or reluctant to do so without support). Where I think this dynamic sickened is that it became very much about why everything I say/do/think/am motivated by is wrong. One of our only discussions about his continued torment about being a slave to his perfectionism foreshadowed this a bit, but I don't think Desi agrees with me about what's even happening, let alone why. Knowing that I'm someone who is positively enthralled by the people who challenge me and make me uncomfortable (I've always sought a certain element of productive devastation, particularly at the intellectual level), I don't think that this is simple defensiveness on my part, or reluctance to face criticism. I got tired of SO much pessimism and negativity being projected onto me, and because I am a critical person who takes his friends concerns to heart, I was always made to feel "am I really on the verge of disaster like he says?" from the smallest projects ("should I really be studying for my exam tonight? should I not?") to the biggest ones ("am I really incapable of understanding what motivates me and why?"). I finally decided that I was not perpetually hanging off a cliff, and that I wanted to stop being made to feel that I was. What I learned is that Desi is incapable of reading anything I say or do to the contrary, and for some reason understanding me as always potentially-disastrous is something he needed (or something that our dynamic needed).

In any case, something that has been immensely positive for more than two years (and by positive I don't mean "lovey and supportive" but I mean "productive, useful, evolving") has turned overwhelmingly negative, and I think I was alone in sensing that until I expressed it in pretty direct terms (admittedly not as calmly as this) to Desi, at which point he recommended a six month break and I readily agreed. I decided against republishing the emails, here, but one of the kind of funny last things said was that I told him that he needed to think about why it was important for him to push my buttons like a cranky child does to a parent, and he told me he thought I had too many buttons. I found this a bit hilarious since I have never met ANYONE with as many buttons (of ALL shapes and sizes) as him.

Six months from now we'll both be engaged in our summer projects, so it will certainly be interesting to see where he's at. Even if I did become invested in the blow-by-blow progress of his various plans, and it will be odd to hear their resolution without knowing the intermediate stages, I am hopeful that things will turn out well for him.

VC