Oh my lanta where to start? Recently my poor friend has been going through it, and recently she told me about a man. This said "man" had genuinely been harping on her about all of her "faults, after basically being madly in love with her for two weeks.
Now the first problem is the fact that before his obvious interest in her they were friends. Their friendship was playful and a little flirty, but that's just how some things work. My friend and this man end up in a sort of love triangle with another one of their friends, and this is where the trouble all starts. Eventually my friend decides who she likes, and that's not this man. This man ends up having a conversation with my friend about their feelings, in which my friends seems to have miscommunicated. Long story short miscommunication and young adult feeling and drama ends up breaking their friendship for the time being.
From experience, after a situation like this, space is needed. It requires more space than what you may think. It took a little over a year for one of my coworkers to talk to me normally after we had gone on a couple dates with each other. This man took a week to "work through his feelings" and then continued their friendship the same exact way it had been before. Except now, he's a little more critical, a little more mean, a little more obvious and a little more weird about it.
My friend is immature, that's for sure, but she's also young. This man is about two years olde than her, and yet through this situation is proving to be less mature.
My assumption is his criticizing, unconstructive btw, are a deflection. Because of her allowance of the reignited friendship, he is trying to find comfort in the familiar while pushing away the feelings that he "worked through" -in all actuality he boxed it up and stored it away-
In this he claims innocence, almost saying it's payback for what she did, but anything she "did" to him was in ignorance and without malice. She was herself, and yes her actions may have been misleading, he is a grown man.
So this is what I told her, and this is what I'm telling you guys.
Never let a man to speak any kind of way.
If a man ever says a cross work, criticizes, or anything alone those lines without any uplifting intent, do not let him finish. I don't care how you stop him, smack him, block him, bark at him, cut him off, I don't care. If you let a man do that once, it opens the door and allows him to do it more. If a man uses past personal conversations agaisnt you, call him out, block him, or never speak to him personally again.
Growing up if my father ever even raised his voice at my mother, she was quick to call him out on it, and tell him to watch his tone. I learned this from my mother, and you learn this from me.
Never allow a man to say a cross word about you to your face.
