Sometimes the people who are closest to each other can do the most harm. When we let the petty anger stand in the way of the easy apology it can turn into burning resentment and from there it is a downward spiral. You have to be very careful with the ones you love.
Strange that we are so much better with those we do not know. We manage ourselves better around them. We pay attention to being polite. We pay strict attention to the laws of basic behavior - even managing the basic concept of "I'm sorry" when we know we are clearly in the wrong.
Why is this so hard to do when we are with our loved ones? Why do we find it so easy to dig in our heels and act like fools? And why is it necessary for outside parties to slap us upside the head to point out that we are treating each other so horrible for us to see the damage we are doing?
When will we learn to be as considerate to each other at home as we would to the strangers on the street?
I watched last night as two people I love more than the universe and those that extend beyond it hit logger-heads. Both stubbornly sticking with their anger. Both drilling the holes so deep I thought our overly American dinner of mac'n'cheese would soon turn to a China buffet.
In the end the only thing that broke the silence was their mutual tears. They had made themselves miserable by making each other miserable. They were not hurting because of their own anger. They were hurting because they had hurt each other. Yet neither knew how to start repairing the damage that their arugment had caused.
What is was so confounding is that the argurment could easily have been avoided by a few simple sentences. If one had simply explained why they were delaying the requested action or the other had asked why the delay was occuring - it would all have been diffused.
Why was the delay in action happening you might ask? Because one was taking time to let a friend know that they would be delayed in getting back to them because they had family things they needed to tend to.
Really - it was that simple. I suspect had the person requesting the action known that this was what was occuring they would have been happy to wait the additional five minutes for the internet connection to be established and the message to be sent.
They are, afterall, sticklers for politeness. Which is why they got upset in the first place.
Such is life. We take for granted that those we love will give us the most latitude and in doing so we tend to lose the most connection - in that we forget to actually make the connections to begin with.
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