Quote from: Val on September 08, 2008, 07:57:48 PM
Quote from: Liann on September 08, 2008, 03:19:04 AM
Why is it people want to preserve every single relationship from their past?
The guy was 3 hours away, obviously didn't see the physical changes of hormone therapy, other changes in facial grooming (eyebrows, beard removal, makeup). He was effectively out of the picture until brought in by a phone call he didn't want to get in the first place.
Why was it even necessary to call this dude? Once the phone call progressed to the point where he became bizarre in his bigotry, why was the conversation prolonged?
Why was it necessary to call him? Well, he was my best friend. We had been friends for 14 years and had been there for each other in some tough times. We talked on the phone a fair amount (weekly? every other week?) even though he moved away. He was still a large part of my life. I wasn't about to just disappear on him. It's not like he was somebody who was a friend of a friend from 8 years prior.
Why did the phone call continue? Partially because I couldn't get a word in edgewise. Partially because I wanted to try to reach him, this person who had been a friend for over a third of my life. Partially because he was one of the first non-family I had come out to, and he had been a good friend, so I thought this might be about as good as it gets so I better try to hold on.
Val
Sorry, Val, honey. Now I'm as insensitive as your friend. Let's resolve together to give better advice so that people stop repeating bad moves. Write up your experience in detail, including the no-word-in-edgewise part and post it on a blog somewhere. Tell other girls thinking of outing themselves where the link is so they can read it themselves and pass it on to the hard-of-hearing too. Let's try to get some lemonade out of these lemons, or lemon meringue pie, or lemon ice, or lemon cake, heck, let's have a lemon party, girl.
Your friend needs a serious 2008 educational upgrade, as he is a walking encyclopedia of outmoded, obsolete and discredited theories.
Unfortunately mental health professionals are the most resistant to change bad data in their databanks -- it's called "denial" when non-professionals do it.
Send him my email and I'll re-educate him in his language. PM me or email me for my email address. I'm not going to make it easy for spam harvesters to glean my email by posting it in a public place.
Anyway, your other experiences will probably go smoother, because that is as bad as it can possibly get.
I lost a friend of 30 years once -- where do you go to replace a 30-year friendship?
He was once your best friend, and best friends have an open door to hurt you the worst. We don't keep up a wall of defenses against best friends, do we Val? As a professional in the field he had a special duty to curb his tongue. He didn't Val. He hurt you, and some of it was deliberate. Some was pure inner mean streak. He hasn't kept up with findings in his own professional field, and you put him on the spot about that. You didn't do it to embarrass him -- you had your own reasons to tell him what's important in your life which had nothing to do with is profession. He let you down as a friend and God only knows how much malpractice he does professionally with his misunderstandings.
You may never heal fully in a hundred years, but you can move on with your own dignity and wear your scars as marks of experience. Life is real, sometimes pain and scars are real which never go away fully.
You can't save every relationship. Your shouldn't have to. There's 6 billion people out there and even if only one in a thousand are worth knowing, that's still 6 million great people that you have yet to meet. One of them is going to be your next best friend.
