The importance of communication, follow through, and understanding that all people will come back into your life is increasingly important as I go through this semester. I am currently on my third run-in within the past 3 months with having to deal with previous mistakes I've made in relationship cultivation and maintenance. None are crazy bad, I don't actively ruin friendships etc but I have a bad reputation with responding. I have always had this issue, I don't know where it stems from. Whether it was before freshman year when trying to find a roommate ahead of move in, or back in high school when friends expected more effort on my end, "ghosting" my way through life has been easy. Now, that girl from before freshman year is the president of the business organization I am in and the friend from back in high school is a connection my current best friend is hoping I can make for an event she is hosting later in the month. Why am I so poor at responding? Sure, ending friendships is fine, but ending them poorly or with no reasoning/explanation is immature and ultimately bad for my adult self.
Improved response time has been my revolution every new years since 2015. Have I gotten better? Definitely, kinda. It really depends on the situation. Time sensitive? Absolutely. Not important in my book or theirs? Not so much. My biggest motivator is knowing the weight I feel on my shoulders knowing that I still need to respond to someone. Considering I am doing better, it is disappointing to now be dealing with previous poor performance in this category.
I have definitely grown apart from friends from high school as well as college and sometimes it is awkward to see them at events around campus. I used to have trouble responding to texts right away too. I started to put my read receipts on because if I opened their message it forced me to respond since it said when I read it. Maybe that could be helpful!
ReplyDeleteThats a good idea. I have a Samsung so read receipts aren't a thing for me. Though I find that since FB does them, I tend to not open messages if I can guess what they are or don't want to respond yet, so I don't think read receipts on texts would make much of a difference for me anyway. I'm glad it works for you, thanks for the suggestion!
DeleteI think we all do this from time to time. Sometimes we just want to avoid hard decisions.
ReplyDelete