Have you ever sat down and thought about 'One-Way Call' friends? These are the friends you have who you only see when you give them a call. Maybe they do call you once in a while, but the odds are that for every ten or fifteen times you call them, you're lucky if they call you even once, if at all.
How are you supposed to read this sort of person? I have about as many of these as I do fingers, and I'd be lying if I said it didn't bother me. Most of them are not people who I have a close connection with, but in at least two cases, they are people that I consider fairly close friends of mine.
What does it say about a friendship when only one of the two ever initiates anything? Is it possible to have a very strong friendship under those circumstances? Can people simply claim that they aren't pro-active as an excuse?
Good questions, though I'm afraid that none of the answers are what I would hope for.
3 comments:
I totally know what you mean! I was thinking this EXACT SAME THING all last week when I kept expecting a friend to call who never called.
Women are even worse. They never come to you you always have to go to them. Then they claim to be equal to men. Yeah right. I'm all for womens rights, but a woman who truly understands womans rights knows better than to wait for others to come to her. Really, why are women so passive all the time?
But back to the main topic, I don't really know what it means about friendship if one guy is constantly being the initiator and the other doesn't do a thing. I have churned this one over quite a lot. Some possibilties that I have come up with:
1. I'm a boring nerd and no one cares about hanging out with me, they'd rather hang out with someone else.
2. I trust people and am quick to consider them my friend, but others don't trust me as easily so they wait until they get to know me better before trying to call more often, and getting to know me better only happens if I call them first.
3. The majority of all people are lazy.
4. People don't like to hang out one-on-one. They would rather be in groups of 5 or 10 people so they don't bother calling anyone who isn't in their circle of friends who they always see every day.
5. Most people are mindless followers, but there always needs to be at least one intelligent leader for anything to ever happen, and I instinctively take the leader position.
I don't know if any of that is true, but they are all possibilities.
Of course men and women aren't equal. Not to say one gender is better than the other, but they are very different, and each have their strengths. A woman could never be a Navy SEAL, but I sure as hell can't juggle 15 fucking things at once either, but a woman could. I have never been big about that 'double-standard' bullshit argument because it is much more helpful for everyone to just accept the differences and use them to our advantage, instead of acting out some leftist-feminist fantasy of female SEALS and uni-sex bathrooms.
Your explanations are all viable, and the truth would likely vary from person to person. I've done a lot of thinking about it since the post, and I can usually think of something different in each case. I'll give some real-life examples without using names (though I think if these people read this, they'd recognize themselves in a heartbeat)
1. One of my better 'One-Way' friends is fun to hang out with, but he is used to hanging out with people who accept a lot of his stupider, half-baked rants at face value. I've had several people tell me that I'm one of the only people who can effectively counter-point him, and if that is true, I think I pose a threat to his rather large ego. Plus, he smokes a lot of pot, which I may do once a year if I'm REALLY drunk, and lots of pot-heads really only value other people that share their morbid addiction.
2. This guy and I get along pretty well on some issues. Romance-wise, we were often on the same boat. Politically we are very different, and though it doesn't matter to me, it is very important to him, and we don't agree on much. Plus, he has a fairly regimented lifestyle with several close friends, work, etc, so a minor friend like me would be lucky to get any time.
3. Another comes from a much different social group than me. Tons of other friends, completely different way of approaching people in general. I think I might be a tricky friend for him to have, because I'm so different from his friends that they would probably get mad at him just for having me around. It isn't something I would blame him for, because I've been in that boat, too.
Those are the three most prominent examples. I should note that even though those may not have been flattering descriptions, they each have a myriad of good qualities, otherwards they wouldn't even be worth the time to write about. It does, however, hurt at times to think about their apparent lack of interest. In turn, I question whether or not they really even like me, or if I should bother considering them friends of mine.
Like so many life problems, I can only think about it and wish I had the right answers.
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