i think you are right. He had an infinite ability to over look my shortcomings.Originally Posted by rodeosweetheart
i think you are right. He had an infinite ability to over look my shortcomings.
xmac so I wrote the letter. Now what is the next step?
Now read it from them to you.
Let me know when you're ready for the last step.
Last edited by Xmac; 11-12-15 at 10:44pm.
well this took a while but I did the second step. Now whats the third step?
Read it to you from you.
Bless your heart, Williamsmith. Be at peace about this.
For myself, I have been dumbstruck and shocked at how I can dismiss people from my life and simply move on. It's been easier than it should have been. It's something I am ashamed of, really.
I know people who have hundreds of friends from high school and relationships from former jobs, social groups. I can't seem to keep any. And I'm a nice person; I don't know....it kind of stymies me to think about it.
My therapist told me the way to achieve true inner peace is to finish what I start. So far today, I have finished two bags of M&Ms and a chocolate cake. I feel better already!
Maybe it's not "easier than it should have been" but it's easier for you and it has served you to do so.
When I was a kid, my family moved around a lot. As a capital-I introvert, it was never easy for me to make friends. Keeping them across the miles was even more challenging. I went to college around 1200 miles away from home, so it's not like I could pal around with high-school chums because we were still close to home. I made new friends, sure, but after graduation we scattered to our new careers and families. I don't keep up with anyone from high school or college anymore. I moved on -- and so did they.
Sometimes you have to move on. I've moved on from friends I've had for years because we just took different roads -- new interests, other values. Whatever held us together earlier was no longer there. The same applied to my first marriage (14 years). It did not serve me (or them, really) to pursue whatever relationship could exist. None of us really wanted that relationship. We moved on. Yes, I missed the fun and companionship we had. But that was harder and harder to find. On balance, I'm better off without them. And so are they.
I'm not so sure you should beat yourself up about this, Kay. Maybe it's just the way it's supposed to be.
Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome. - Booker T. Washington
No one has hundreds of friends, unless you mean
Facebook friends. Those are all acquaintances, not friends, but you know that.
Perhaps you miss people in your life. Or perhaps what's operating in your mind is a "should" as in: nice people keep up their friendships with other nice people. Therefore
you "should " do that. I dont buy into that "should."
Some years ago I read, maybe it was here, there are friends of the heart and friends of place.
People who are our friends now are almost all " friends of place" because they are here in our region and are easy to keep up with. We play cards, work in the gardens around here, have dinner parties, work on neighborhood and plant projects, etc. And because we've lived here a long time we've got many friends like these and many of those bonds are decades old.
But if we moved across country how much would we keep up with them? Not much, and only with a few of them. A few of these close friends have moved, and we've not gone to visit the California bunch. We do visit the Midwestern bunch.
Friends of the heart are very few and far between. Those are the people who can always make me laugh. I guess we share the same sense of humor.
It takes much work to maintain long distance friendships & I only do that for "friends of the heart." About every 10 years I organize a get together of my closet 4 HS friends that live all over the country. It is always like it was just yesterday although we rarely keep in touch in between. I still have my friend from first grade although we live in opposite ends of the country & Had a 30 year friendship that was long distance until she died. Locally of the friends that live here only 1 is a friend of the heart that I would keep up with if I moved.
I agree you shouldn't beat yourself up, but I also think there is some middle ground.
As Steve has mentioned in other posts, when that marriage broke up, he did some introspection and figured out what he wanted. Guilt can help direct your attention. to something your not comfortable with, or don't want to do again. But realize the experience that you feel guilty about, made you what you are today, and if you choose to act on its lesson, can make you the better person in the future.
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