soliciting social advice.

[tla]

I had an argument yesterday with one of my friends, which is still unresolved. We were talking over instant messaging, and he brought up the idea of visiting me, and (having kind of skirted the issue for a while now) I told him why I would be uncomfortable with him visiting me at the moment. His reaction was to go fairly ballistic, twist my words into something much worse, and log out in a huff before I could elaborate, or indeed get another word in edgewise.

Since then, I have not tried to speak with him, and my instinct tells me I am not welcome to speak with him unless I am going to retract/apologize. I think that what I said was true (though probably out of the blue, from his perspective, but I couldn't skirt the issue anymore) and as such have no intention of retracting, or apologizing for what I said.

I learned today through a third party that he thinks there's nothing more to say on the subject, and that the ball is essentially in my court to initiate contact. My feeling is that since he's the one who cut off the conversation, he's the one who has to start it again, because my invitation to speak was cut off when he logged out.

Since I found out his perspective on the current standoff, I've been wondering what others would do. I know that I am socialized differently from most of my friends; in a world of geeks this makes me both better and worse at interacting with other people. I'm trying to figure out when I'm worse, and how I should be acting differently. So I ask my adoring (hah) public: what would you do?

Comments

[dolohov.livejournal.com]

If you want to talk to him, talk to him. If you feel the need to apologise or retract, then do so. Otherwise, don't -- playing games about who's supposed to talk first is the surest way to frustrate yourself.

That said, his reaction seems a bit overblown, and would make me wonder what else is going on. He didn't go ahead and buy tickets, did he?

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Well, I would probably be all bitter and self-righteous at him and write him off, but my response wouldn't actually be adaptive.

I gather that, if one has retaining friendships as a priority, one needs to not be like that, and simply prioritize communicating above who "should" be doing what. Which means that, if you do want to keep in touch with him, you should contact him. That said, I wouldn't think it necessary to, well, lie to him; you can apologize for hurting him, but that doesn't mean you have to apologize for believing what you do, or that you have to change your mind if you have good reasons for believing it (though it's good to be open to his reasons why you might be wrong).

You also be able to gain additional useful information and mediation from the third party, but I personally really abhor using third parties to run messages (ie gathering info is OK, but making them do the contact and reconciliation work, not OK).

All of this was written assuming that you do want to maintain a friendship with him, seeing as you referred to him as "friend" in the first sentence. If you don't, then you really don't have to do anything, except try to mitigate possible effects on mutual friends.

Well, in the non-geek world...

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

Often, it is considered helpful for the putative "offender" to make the conciliatory move toward the one taking offense. :-) "I'm sorry that what I said hurt your feelings" is different from "I repent of saying X", and the former can often be said truthfully (and usefully) when the latter cannot. You (rightfully) may not feel you have anything to actually apologize for, since it's your friend who unreasonably flew off the handle. But if you wish to smoothe things over and reopen the discussion, it's probably expedient for you to take it on yourself to be the bigger person and do the reaching out.

Just my $0.02. :-}

My $0.02

[wanderingpixie.livejournal.com]

I've had both good and bad luck with my usual response. It depends a lot on how the other person reacts. But, here ya go.

I'd get in touch, probably via e-mail where I can think I what I want to say and he can think things through before responding. I'd explain that I didn't mean to upset him and wasn't expecting such a harsh response. Here are the reasons for how I feel and that I hope he can understand. Maybe apologize for not communicating things better earlier so that it wouldn't have been such a surprise.

Oh, and as everyone else seems to have said, this is assuming you want to get back to a nice friendly place.