Angry after being let down

IMO there is no reason to end friendships or to try and prove a point. Friendships change over time. They may have been close friends previously, but now the dynamic has obviously changed. I doubt your friends are intentionally trying to upset you. They probably don't even realize you are upset. Feeling ditched three or four times would be a clear sign to me the friendship had changed and I would just move forward.

Don't suggest weekend get togethers anymore. If you happen to be in the area of the university then look them up, grab dinner or if they happen to take a trip near you, then offer them to meet you for a drink. Start making new friends in your area.

mmacc2011 wrote:I saw a Facebook status from the guys who had suddenly booked to go away on the same date to see family and friends. I felt absolutely gutted and so angry.

I would, too. This is just plain rude, when you had checked with them and done the organising. They might at least have let you know personally!

Also this is the third or fourth time in about 18 months this has happened, and its make me feel angry and lonely.

I agree with Richard that the friendship has changed, and that you need to find friends where you live, but I wouldn't initiate any more meet-ups with these uni friends. I think they have been making a point, and unless an apology is forthcoming I wouldn't expect to see them again.

mmacc2011 wrote:Hi,

….so we proceeded to organise.

10 days or so has passed until today when I saw a Facebook status from the guys who had suddenly booked to go away on the same date to see family and friends. I felt absolutely gutted and so angry. I feel like I want to reorganise it so I can turn round and be doing something else, so they realise how much it hurt me. I keep asking myself why they would do this etc., and its driving me nuts. Also this is the third or fourth time in about 18 months this has happened, and its make me feel angry and lonely.

Is this time to call it an end to the friendship? I cant keep going on feeling angry for days at a time every time they ditch on me.

Any advice?

Dear Mac,

One should keep one’s friends because you never know when they might actually be of service. To cut friends is to make enemies and one never wants to make enemies, especially just because of our Pride. Have you ever noticed that Pride never seems to help with anything. Pride makes demands of us, but what does it ever give us in return?

But, you are right, this is a friend that one cannot plan with or coordinate events with. So don’t make any plans with this friend. This is the kind of friend that you can call and drop in on, or you can bump into him on the street and go have a drink with him. Whatever you do with this friend it has to be in the Spontaneous Here and Now.

I know of what I speak. Let me tell you a story. I once had a very unreliable friend. And not even a very high quality friend. But when we were children I remembered that he once helped me out with a hobby of mine (flying little gas motored airplanes), and I was not going to forget it. A favor is a favor. And so when my other Adult friends drifted off, well I still had this one friend, even allowing for his flightiness and unreliability.

Then, just in his 40ies he developed brain cancer and died off very quickly. I went to the Funeral and his family surrounded me and hugged me and exclaimed that I had been ‘Joe’s’ oldest and “most reliable” friend. Now, I could have given him up a hundred times for his forgetting meetings and wondering off during parties, but I always was able to say to myself, “Well, that is Joe for you, and remember, no one else wanted to help you fly your little airplanes when you were 12 years old.”

So, there, now I’m all teared up over some silly old story, but you got my point – keep your friend but put him in the slot of not really being able to count on him for anything, except for jolly company whenever you happen to accidentally get together… you know what I mean. Good luck with it.

Thank you. I won't cut them off or anything now I've read these replies, but I think its best to leave it to them to make the first move to organise next time.

Thank you

mmacc2011 wrote:Thank you. I won't cut them off or anything now I've read these replies, but I think its best to leave it to them to make the first move to organise next time.

Thank you

Oh, its wonderful that you are not going to cut them. But, well, these guys seem SO unreliable, that even if it is they that make the plans, I would make it my policy to be very skeptical about anything actually coming off, without you constantly following up with phone calls and making sure the 'plans are still on'. Now, with Normal People it would be something of an insult to always be asking 'if the plans are still on', because, you know, "Of Course! The Plans are Still On or certainly I would let you know", which is how normal people act. But with these friends of yours, well, I'm sure they have gotten used to "are the plans still on" and probably wouldn't think twice about hearing it from you. But if they do happen to be taken aback with the constant follow ups, well, just say in a pleasant voice, "You know, it never hurts to check"... and leave it up to them to remember how many times you've been burned.

Hi Mac,

I have had several types of friends over the years. Perhaps it helps for you to know that you’re not the only one who experiences this. When they say that in this life nothing is permanent, it in fact includes your friends. Yes, you have shared moments together and some of these people have helped you go through the changes that puberty and adulthood brought; but these friends are also people. In time, they change priorities, mindsets, decisions, and even life principles at times.

My advice is to play everything by ear and always have time to enjoy yourself. This is the only way your presence and friendship won’t be taken for granted. Sometimes when you give them time to miss you, they really do. Don’t limit yourself to your old friends. Keep them, but always open the door for new people to enter. I hope this can help you in any way.

Diana Marlowe's response put me in mind of something I had thought a while back, and that is that a great many of our 'friends' are acquired by mere accidents of time and place, and if we are 'friendly' people and don't shun their advances, we end up spending time with these people, that its, our 'friends'. But how much do we really have in common with them? We can look at Levels of Education, Income, Ethnic and Class Backgrounds, hobbies and interests. When one really looks at Everything, then we might begin to think that if we were suddenly thrown together with Hundreds of people that are Compatible with us in nearly all of these Ways, well, we would soon meet Really Good Friends, and we would probably forget about those old Accidental Friends soon enough, as though they had been Characters in a Dream.

Oh, and that reminds me of some Vision of Heaven I had read of once.... I don't think it is on line anymore, but I think it was written by a Phillip Cohen from South Africa. He had Seen the Day of Judgment and then an Angel took him on a tour of Heaven. Well, it turns out that Souls that go to Heaven are not all tossed into the same uniform Mix. If one feels incompatible with the company one is with, well, that wouldn't be much like Heaven, would it? So Each Particular Character Type had their own Heavenly Planet. What about old Friends and Loved Ones from one's Life Time. Well, Heaven had taken care of that too, by providing 'annual' Holidays, where the Souls would be allowed to Mix and Travel and see old acquaintance. Humans could even visit Pet Heaven for the day and look up old dog, cat, or horse friends. I wish I could find that Story. One thinks things will be on line forever, until one looks and they are gone.

Leo Volont wrote:a great many of our 'friends' are acquired by mere accidents of time and place, and if we are 'friendly' people and don't shun their advances, we end up spending time with these people, that its, our 'friends'.

These are superficial relationships, based on time and space. It's impossible to know at the time, but a lot of them end when we move on. The only thing that will keep it going is when at least one of the parties makes the effort to maintain contact. People of low confidence simply won't, and when these people like each other at a particular time and in a particular setting, it soon folds.

My dearest friends now are former neighbours and former colleagues. At school I was not in a space where I could make lifelong connections, and I've found reconnecting with the ones I liked (the magic of the internet!) is awkward because too much time has passed... to say nothing of geographical and ideological divergence. I'm still meeting people and forming connections, and I can't know which of these people will be in my life 10 years from now.

I wish I could find that Story. One thinks things will be on line forever, until one looks and they are gone.

I googled "Phillip Cohen" AND "day of judgment" and drew a blank.My own vision of heaven more closely corresponds to the parable of the long spoons, https://bolstablog.wordpress.com/2009/0 ... ng-spoons/

Dear Candid,

Yes, I enjoyed “the Parable of the Long Spoons”.

You know, that Parable worked out almost in the exact same way as a Study I had read, concerning Western Culture and Competiveness vs. Non-Western Cultural Values.

The Study involved a Game for Children that could come with a Reward. The Game was relatively simple – a Checker or Chess Board and a number of pieces. Every time one of your pieces crossed the board you would get an American Dollar. You could use your moves to advance, or to block the other player.

Well, guess what happened. The Americans and a great many Europeans played on the defensive and nobody won any great deal of money. But off in the Islands and in remote Africa, well, the little kids wondered what challenge of this ‘Game’ was supposed to be, and the children simply gravitated in time to one side of the board or the other, moving their pieces in for cash, while staying out of the other child’s way so that they could cash in too.

Then Peer Review got a hold of the Study and decided to tweak it a bit by refining the Game… changing it and then see if the results followed the same trend. The New Game used only One Piece which would start in the center of the board, and each player would have a turn to move it, and like in the previous game, you would win money if you got the piece all the way across to the other side. Well, the Americans were very frustrated as they could not imagine any possible way to Win the game. But the little kids in Oceania, and remotest Africa, well, they simply took turns pushing the piece first one way, where one child would cash in, and then the other way for the other child to cash in. And just the same way as the Americans, but oppositely, they wondered what the point of the game was, but in their own case they were glad to keep the money.

Well, what is the Moral of this Story… or I mean the meaning of this Study? Well, when we juxtapose this Study against what we know of Heaven and Hell from “The Parable of the Long Spoons”, well, we come away a bit shocked to find that Western Culture is virtually training us to go to Hell (we are all Living an Apprenticeship for the Damned) – it is like Life in the West is a huge Conveyer Belt to Blazes – we live our entirely Lives doing what everyone expects of us, and in the end our reward for it all is to be dropped in the Pit. We are all fighting each other. We waste half our energies getting in the ways of others. Competition is trumpeted to one and all of us as some Great Virtue – the Mainspring of Capitalism. But nobody wonders or even cares to imagine how Cooperation might actually work out better for us all.

Leo Volont wrote:Western Culture is virtually training us to go to Hell (we are all Living an Apprenticeship for the Damned) – it is like Life in the West is a huge Conveyer Belt to Blazes – we live our entirely Lives doing what everyone expects of us, and in the end our reward for it all is to be dropped in the Pit. We are all fighting each other. We waste half our energies getting in the ways of others. Competition is trumpeted to one and all of us as some Great Virtue – the Mainspring of Capitalism. But nobody wonders or even cares to imagine how Cooperation might actually work out better for us all.

Amen, brother. I wonder whether you've seen the Working Too Hard thread? viewtopic.php?t=92204

Dear Candid,

Oh, that Thread… that’s from … I forget his name… but it seems that he is only imagining that Life is Good – Pretending to Himself, so that he can be content and complacent. But we really can’t change anything by pretending that Reality doesn’t really exist, can we? The Most Enlightening Dream Vision I ever had was when the Goddess told me “The One Faculty most worth cultivating is the Faculty of True Discernment”, and there we have a man who does his utmost to trade True Discernment for a hedonistic life of pure escapist fantasy.


Anyway, in regards to how hard we all Work, well, The Big Game is in play and we all know the rules – the TV, the Media, the News, the Movies, even the Music hits us with Indoctrinational Propaganda… you would have to be from Mars (or from some very small and neglected Island in Oceana or choked off in some deep and dark jungle in Remotest Africa) to not be thoroughly brainwashed on what the Globalized Economy expects of us, and what our effective Punishment will be if we don’t perform up to a ‘competitive’ level. We are in a Rat Race, and if we don’t perform better than, well, a Higher Percentage of the Other Rats every year (we can tell by the length the Unemployment Lines grow) then we are simply shoved out of the Mainstream Economy and made to fend for ourselves.

What’s left to us then? We can turn to a life of Crime, and, yes, Crime does pay. They only people who go to jail are just too stingy to pay off the Crime Bosses who pay off the Police. Or we can go into Business for ourselves and sell people what they don’t need. Some of us become Happiness Instructors and train people to ignore what is wrong with the World and imagine that everything is Gold and Roses, so that while all the rest of the World might be suffering, they themselves can wall all of that off from their Perfect Isolated Nirvana of pure Imagination. Well, it doesn’t seem right somehow, but it pays the bills. Oh, there is the other option available – move in with a ‘girl friend’ and let her pay the bills. It reminds me of the Musician’s Joke – “What do you call a guitar player who gets dumped by his Girl Friend?” Answer (punch line): “Homeless”. It’s really not funny, is it? But that doesn’t keep people from laughing.

So what I am essentially saying is that I really don’t believe any of us have any real free will in regards to whether or not we ‘Work Too Hard’. They don’t give us a choice. The Only People who can decide not to Work Hard anymore, are those people who have Worked Hard Enough to get ahead of the Game and cash in some of their Chips. Those Early Retirement People who were able to successfully loot and pillage the World for a tidy enough sum so that they could ‘Relax and Enjoy It’… but to do all of that, well, they had to first Play the Game and play it really well.

Oh, and the System has learned how to shut that down too – Early Retirements that is. The way retirement used to work was that a person would save up a fund of Capital which he would use as Principal to invest in bonds or equities, and then he would live on the Interest from those Investments for the rest of his life… not touching the Principal Capital which would only eat away at the Interest Returns. But, Now, the Whole World is involved in various means of easing Credit, effectively feeding the Banks with fresh printed money that they don’t have to actually borrow from anybody. If the Banks and Corporations can Borrow Free Money from the Government Banks and Agencies, then they don’t have to really return anything on the Investments in Stock Equities or Bonds or Savings Accounts. In effect they are forcing people to Keep Working.

They are just too big, too consolidated and too powerful… and that is my “True Discernment” speaking. The only thing that will change it is when the whole overly complex and fragile mess hits a bump and totally collapses. And then it will only get worse…much worse.

I can relate to how you feel, situations like this make me very angry as well. Tonight I was supposed to go out with some friends. I get off work and give them a call, no answer. I go by their house, no one is there. WTF. I started to feel like maybe they are mad at me or I did something wrong to make them not like me. After pondering it for an hour I realized, their loss and you should feel the same. Its nice to have acquaintances, but sometimes you need to take a step back and ask yourself if they are really your friends. I do believe mine are my friends and we just couldn't connect tonight, maybe you feel the same as I do, maybe not.
Keep your chin up and smile, you have a lot to offer to world. Instead go out and try to meet some new people, they might end up becoming your new best friend.

Icculus wrote:I can relate to how you feel, situations like this make me very angry as well. Tonight I was supposed to go out with some friends. I get off work and give them a call, no answer. I go by their house, no one is there. WTF.... I do believe (they) mine are my friends and we just couldn't connect tonight..

well, no... I'm afraid that you've been 'cut', 'ditched', 'tossed aside', 'vacated without notice', etc, ad infinitum...

My experience has been that men usually confront 'friends' before they make a 'cut'. it is more in the style of women to just make the 'cut' and allow the person being cut to 'take the hint' when they are left standing all alone. it avoids a 'scene'. Well, maybe men are beginning to use the same Game Plan for cuts. There is a lot to be said for 'not making a scene'.