ontheedgeofeverything

About a year ago, a couple of my good friends and I lost touch. There were multiple working components to the situation which complicated things when we initially lost contact, and over time, things became more obscure as a result of miscommunication and false narratives.

Recently, I was able to reconnect with both of them, separately, and I had the opportunity to chat with them about everything that initially occurred and continued to linger, awkwardly, long after the fact. We addressed the original issues and any that transpired over the duration of the time that passed during which communication was absent, and were able to hash things out and come to a clear understanding of what actually went wrong.

I can laugh at the situation now, because after I chatted with both of them, we all came to the same realization; all of us were feeling rather weird about what happened and wanted to confront each other to discuss things, but we were all unsure of how we would react to each other. What isn’t so funny, though, is acknowledging how much time was lost and essentially wasted as a result of mere miscommunication and obscure feelings.

Confrontation isn’t pleasant to begin with, but it can be very uncomfortable to practice in the context of friendships. We fear we will hurt someone’s feelings, or even jeopardize the entire friendship as a result of addressing an issue. However, refraining from confronting a friend over something could actually draw out the problem at hand and misconstrue things to a more severe degree, which is evidently what occurred in this particular situation.

If you are wanting to say something somewhat controversial or confrontational to a friend, I encourage you to do it. It is daunting, intimidating and uncomfortable, but it may just be the best thing you do for that friendship, and it’s a sure way to avoid wasting lost time over something as simple as miscommunication.