Communication in Writing

When I headed home that February, I tried to arrange to get together with P again.  She once again avoided that, in a slightly less indirect way, prompting me to send her a message that directly addressed how I felt and what I was looking for.  It was a much more direct than I had originally intended for our online conversation to become, but we hadn’t had a chance to talk together in person since the previous November, and I didn’t foresee that happening anytime soon.  In certain ways, it is easier to do that type of thing in writing, but must people seem to frown upon that approach as lacking courage.  I just didn’t see any other good options at the time.  And I am one who appreciates the opportunity to choose my words carefully and deliberately.

The fact that we hadn’t been spending any time together in person recently meant that I wasn’t really risking harming those situations.  But it is still hard to find the balance between taking risks to develop a closer relationship, while protecting the existing connection.  Based on our recent interactions, I didn’t necessarily expect a positive response; I just needed to get a clear understanding of her perspective on our relationship.  But taking those kinds of decisive steps are usually hard, because they are guaranteed to change a relationship, one way or another.  And sharing feelings always puts one in a vulnerable position.  I try to act in such a way that stating those things only confirms what should have already been apparent based on my actions.  But verbalizing things make them much more discrete, because actions can be interpreted in many ways.

I spent two long days waiting for a response, wondering if that message had been the right thing to do.  I still believe it was, but I didn’t get the answer I was hoping for.  But in declining me for the time being, P clearly left the door open for the future, and communicated that she valued our existing relationship.  While disappointing, that was not unexpected, and I didn’t think either of us would have been ready for a really serious relationship immediately anyway.  The issue had just needed to be discussed directly, because the ambiguity of the situation had begun to hinder our existing relationship.

We were both openly concerned about avoiding our relationship turning into an awkward mess.  But after a few messages back and forth to sort those things out, and make sure that we understood each other, we were able to continue our online dialog, pretty much the same as it had been.  I hadn’t really anticipated that going so smoothly, but once I got over the initial disappointment, it did make things easier to not be constantly wondering how she might be interpreting the things I was doing.  Instead of being concerned about how frequently I should respond, and deliberately trying to keep the conversation going, I just wrote whenever I had something worth saying.

Among other topics, we had the quite dialog about our similar feelings about, and approaches to, unstructured social situations.  I don’t know if I had ever really talked about that with anyone before, especially someone with such a similar perspective.  One of those C.S. Lewis: “What, you too?” moments.  We had different strengths in dealing with those issues, but I could definitely relate to her position, as usual.