If a friend ever approaches you with serious concerns, it’s because he wants to communicate some understanding of what he’s been going through. And if your verbal response to that is: “It’s not my job to manage people’s feelings,” that’s not how friendships work.
Your friend isn’t looking for you to “manage his feelings”, or even “be responsible” for them. Nor would he ever ask you to. (That would be madness.) He’s most likely seeking some form of acknowledgement or sign of understanding. A simple statement like, “That sounds rough,” or “I’ll try and keep that in mind,” would’ve gone over a lot better than the gut-reaction statement mentioned earlier.
Friends don’t want to be treated like they’re being managed in a corporate environment. Now, if a few of your friends are actually being childish and need a good stern talking to, so be it. I’d have gladly taken a lecture or two on the chin if I left my buddies hanging. I’d have earned it. But in this case, it was completely unwarranted.
And you really can’t criticize the Boomer generation for treating their children like transactional relationships, only to turn around and treat your friends the same way.
In case it wasn’t painfully obvious, I had a falling out with a good friend recently, and that’s a pity. I tried to explain the high stress stuff I’ve been going through at work and at home, and how being micromanaged all day only to turn around and be micromanaged at night felt a little demeaning.
His response threw me for a loop. Instead of showing some understanding, he continued to treat me like an employee under contract rather than a friend, doing exactly what I asked him not to do just seconds before.
And when I had trouble communicating or finding a word specific to describe how he was behaving during one particular instance that night, I (perhaps foolishly) reached for a meme-ish term that he unfortunately took personally. His reaction surprised me. (Writers have thick skin, so I thought he would handle it better, or at least appreciate that I had been having trouble fishing for a better term.)
He continued to write off my concerns as “feelings”, all but brushed them off since “no one else complained”, and opted to try and slightly tweak the way he manages our group of friends rather than just talk to me about it one-on-one.
Same tactic corporate managers are trained on (confront the team, never the individual). Same way a Kindergarten teacher might manage her class (“Now class, we must all keep our hands to ourselves.”). Now that I think on it, it’s the same sub-human way the government manages us.
I just wanted to be treated like an adult, a human being. Not some cog in a machine. But in the end, with a heavy heart, I was left with no choice but to say I didn’t want to hang out with him and his friends anymore.
Thing is, at the beginning of our conversation I told him I had “mixed feelings” about our hangout on Friday. That is, overall, I had a good time. A great time, even. It was just this one problem, mixed with the fact that I had a rough last couple of weeks at work (and the fact that we were out until 4AM) that resulted in the bad part of those mixed feelings.
Sadly, he didn’t develop our conversation in that direction, and he stormed off before I could communicate the good things about that night, or much of anything else.
In brighter news, I’m almost finished with a ridiculously huge art project and am ready to jump back into writing.
Nick Enlowe 