I have long found myself having awkward relationships with other people in my life. While it might be an easy thing to consider one or two awkward relationships to be the fault of other people–if fault is to be laid on others for something like awkwardness–when one has awkwardness with others being a consistent part of one’s relationships with others, at some point one has to examine what it is about oneself that makes communication a challenge. When I write about the problems I have had with people who have wanted to talk to me where I did not wish to communicate with them, or, more commonly, with those who have been reluctant to talk to me when I wanted to communicate with them, I do not wish to assign blame in the matter. Sometimes people just do not understand each other and do not relate to each other, and may not even want to relate to each other.

I have always felt uncomfortable when others have said to me that we need to talk. Almost never–I cannot think of an example offhand but it may have happened at least once–have I actually wanted or needed to talk with such people. On the other hand, they felt a great deal of pressure that motivated them to want to talk to me, and what they wanted to tell me were things that I have seldom wanted to hear. I consider it some mark of credit to me that I generally took such unwanted and unwelcome interactions in stride and held my temper, but I have seldom enjoyed or appreciated the experience and do not expect to in the future if and when such conversations occur. The same is true in reverse, though. If I feel a great deal of pressure in wanting to resolve what I view to be lamentable misunderstandings or make myself feel at ease by pressuring someone else into interaction with me, I cannot expect that they will feel any better about it than I would if the roles were reversed.

I simply do not want others to feel any pressure when it comes to me. I do not think of myself as a hard person to communicate with. I may be mistaken about that, but if so, it is an honest mistake. There are many ways that one can communicate with me if one wants–either face to face, by phone (although I am by no means very fond of phone calls), or by e-mails or various social media accounts where I can be found extremely easily under my full name. There is little I wish to demand or even request of others at this present time, no secrets I need to unburden that I do not feel comfortable writing about, and so I have no reason to put anyone else under any pressure when it comes to talking to me. I enjoy conversation with the people who want to talk to me, have no problem chatting with current friends, catching up with people I have not spoken to in a while, or making new friends. If I do not enjoy someone’s company, I feel no need to force myself to endure it more than necessary. If others do not enjoy my company, I do not wish to force them to endure mine. I have zero interest in being a cross that someone else must bear, or a burden that they dread dealing with. I have no interest in controlling or dominating others–nor any particular interest in being around others who are demanding or controlling, for that matter.

One of the disadvantages of being a writer is that there is a great asymmetry in one’s knowledge and one’s perspectives of what are going on with others. I share my opinions perhaps a bit too freely, and if my emotions are typically complicated and not well understood or openly expressed, it does not require a huge amount of effort for others to know what I think about a given situation. They need only ask me–and sometimes even that minimal step is not necessary. But the reverse is not often true. Much to my chagrin, I have found that other people have had extremely different thoughts and feelings and opinions about matters of common interest than I did, and thought things of me that never even crossed my mind to ponder about or consider. I suspect the reverse has often been true as well. One of the benefits of communication is that it provides good data to all parties involved so that we have less that we need to guess at concerning the intentions or wishes of others. When that data is missing, we must construct that which is missing out of our own reasonings or imagination, and that can often make a mess of things. When we feel ourselves, for whatever reason, dreading interactions with others, it is good to know why, even if we don’t want to tell others why because we do not feel they will understand or respect their sensitivities. With that in mind, I will do my best to respect such sensitivities as other people have about me. God knows I have enough sensitivities myself that it would be unjust to unreasonably dismiss the sensitivities of others. Simple justice demands that we treat others not as we have been treated, but as we would wish to be treated, and to see other beings and their thoughts and feelings–however inconvenient–as being worthy of respect if we wish for our own to be respected in turn.