Her Resentment Towards Me Is an Important lesson about Relationships

At the beginning of 2022, what I struggled with the most was getting back out into the public. At that point, I had spent the last 7 or so months at home and I only went out about once every few months.

But at the beginning of 2022, I was forced to get back out. It was time to move into a new office space and my services were needed there.

Later after settling into the routine of the daily commute, I found so much relief in leaving home and getting a working area that I could go to every day and focus on my work.

It's been almost 5 months since moving into this office space as I’m writing this article. I’ve met many people, some of whom have become kind of friends while I haven’t spoken to others at all.

For those in the “kinda friends” group, one of them is our neighbor to the right.

Like very many extroverts she is generally free with almost everybody. She’s friends with everybody and she’s generally a free spirit, a skill that I think suits someone in the nature of her business.

Direct selling requires someone like her and I think that skill helps her navigate her social environments with ease.

lately, I’ve noticed that she was a bit distant from me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m mostly distant from almost everybody. It is one of my imperfections that I am in the process of shading off.

To me, being distant to a point of appearing aloof is normally my default mode of action. But when I see someone like her doing it, it feels nothing less than personal.

When she did it, therefore, it bothered me because this is out of her character. it’s not something she does. If she were to do it, you must have wronged her in some way, or if she wants nothing to do with you.

For someone that you’ll normally find in other people’s offices having fun, or always making conversations with just about everybody, it's very easy to know when she doesn’t approve of something that you do.

Of course, her distance from me didn’t go unnoticed. I may appear aloof but I’m really not. Those treatments bother me.

With all my seeming aloofness, I’m a little very involved and conscious about my relationships with people, how I treat them and how my actions make them feel.

Believe it or not, I could skip meals and not think about it, but I will remember and be bothered for months and years if I pass by a beggar on the street and I don’t show compassion for them.

So it is with every person I meet. My daily evening wind-down reflections are always about people and how I made them feel. People talk about using that time to plan out your next day, not me.

I’m always thinking about people. In many cases, each person can take anywhere from just one evening to a full week, just in my mind, depending on how my actions impacted them.

So recently, when she (my neighbor) came to the office, it was just one of the many times where she came by and ignored me. Although unlike in the past, this time I had the answer to this dilemma.

In the past, I almost always had to exert a lot of will in getting her attention when she came by our office.

The attention she gives to other people in the office when she comes by made me think about why she would do that while pushing me away from her social circles.

And for someone who doesn’t know her, it may not mean anything, but to me and to the person that I know, her attitude towards me is not her behavior.

For the first time, I think I see where she’s coming from and it has given me a very important lesson about relationships with people.

For the longest time, I used to think that relationships are about giving and taking. When I examine the nature of friendships that I’ve had over the years, I have noticed that all of them have been built on this kind of transactional nature.

I used to think that my validity in another person’s life is all about what I can do for them.

My thought was to contribute something that makes it worthwhile for them to stay around. For example, helping them out with money or favors and so on.

The relationship that I’ve had with this workmate these past months at the office has challenged these beliefs and how I think about relationships I have with people in general.

For the most part, relationships aren’t about what you’re giving or contributing to the person.

I think these things are important of course when someone is in need. Helping someone that needs your help when you have the means to do that is still a strong part of the social fabric. But I don’t think people care about that as much as we would like to think they do.

Of course, people might think that they need these things from each other. Most people do.

They may think that money is what they are chasing in a relationship, for instance.

But the nature of relationships with each other goes deeper than just these transactions.

These transactions are just parts and probably very insignificant parts of the relationship.

There are always much deeper connections than we think we need from each other.

My friend for example isn’t concerned about all the favors that I’ve done for her since I moved into that office. Even if she needed these things, she would easily get them from someone else she is more comfortable with than she is with me.

It also doesn’t matter how much I do these things for her, if she finds no comfort in being around me, my relationship with her (platonic or not) is just and will always be as shallow as that I have with a stranger on the other side of this continent.

In that sense, those things mean nothing to her.

They especially don’t mean anything to her in terms of having any form of meaningful relationship with me.

This is seen in the way she treats people other than me who have done “nothing” for her. On her birthday last week, she called everyone. Verbal, personal invitations. Everyone on the block but me.

In the past, I would think to myself that this is quite shitty for her to do. But it's not. Her decision is justified.

Thinking that relationships should be tied to some form of external value exchange is an erroneous mindset.

But you see it all the time in relationships. People think that as long as they can provide some form of external value to the relationship, that is all they need.

But more often than not, these relationships remain meaningless and unfulfilling because they lack the connection that needs to exist for them to be meaningful.

At the core of it all, relationships are about forming meaningful connections with each other. Yes, from time to time you will have to think about giving or taking from the person but this isn’t what the core of any human relationship should be about.

The core of relationships should not have these expectations of giving and taking. Stripping all these away leaves nothing but a meaningful relationship expressed through connection.

When I started going to the office, I thought that this was going to be just me being on my best behavior. I didn’t want to disturb people, I am very uncomfortable with pushing boundaries of people, so I let people have their own space but I think that sometimes this becomes too much to a point that it becomes really awkward and anti-social.

I should have introduced myself to her by now. Five months and we don’t even know each other’s first names? Really?

The distance that she gives me is the result of not being able to form even the simple connection that starts with knowing her first name. And she is right.

It’s not about the things that I’ve done for her. It’s not about the things that I can do for her or her for me.

The last time she came by the office, she came to greet someone in the office. she came specifically because this person had taken time to go to her office and make time to know about her and how she was doing.

My officemate’s action of talking to her and finding out how she was feeling was much more meaningful to her than anything transactional I kept thinking she needed. It's the little things.

I’ll have to do a lot better to shift the way I look at relationships with people that I have and hopefully, this will be a more meaningful way to connect with people, perhaps, this will get me a birthday invite next time.