Don't understand my friend's problem

[davo1224]

Rather than try to reiterate everything, here are two posts from my blog where I discuss the recent tension with my best friend. I'm just looking for any advice/comments on what I say below to try and help me out.

 

"So I think I've nailed Eric's problem down as him not liking me being judgmental. Now this spawns other ideas and this will generally just be a branching out and brainstorming sort of entry. He recently has taken *personal* offense to two of my comments. One was when we were watching the Rise and Fall of WCW DVD. One of the wrestlers mentioned how celebrities stole the spots of people like him. I noted that there was no way his "four foot ass wasn't getting that spot anyway". Eric said that it was a poor choice of words since he is 5'5. I'm sorry I crushed your dreams of one day main eventing a wrestling pay-per-view. Oh wait, you never wanted to. I'm 5'10. We're less than half a foot apart. Like the comment was very wrestler-specific. It was not a blanket statement about all short people. The other comment was in reference to the sales manager at work. He was making some lewd jokes as usual. He's like the spitting image of the Italian stereotype. When describing him to Eric I described him as acting very Italianly. He got offended because he is half Italian. Yes. You certainly let that heritage fly high when you only ever mention it in passing. Until you become a hot-tempered perv with slicked back hair, I *doubt* the joke will apply to you. I do have to admit my wrongdoing in actually using a blanket statement that time.

So now that we have actual instances, let's see if we can then derive the bigger issue. Does he feel that he is next on my "hit list" so to speak? Is he insecure in his new work ventures and very sensitive at the moment? Does he simply think I am a jerk? Why all of a sudden? Perhaps this has been ongoing and something was the trigger. I'm curious as to what the trigger was. Does the fact that I'm now openly gay give him a scapegoat? I'd like to think it isn't that because then that would give him summa cum laude in bachelor of hypocrisy. You can't equate gay with shallow although I certainly do. You just can't do it from a place of moral superiority.

Let's recap things I could have done that were about him and actually bothered him. I do admit that over the years we've been slacking on the phone call/text returns with each other. I have been a little selfish in terms of always wanting him to be around. He is more or less the only "normal" person in my life. By that, I mean he is plain. Is this a judgment against him or praise? I have joked about his OCD behaviors by calling him Willy Wonka. While true, it of course is doubly true of my behavior. Does he know I poke fun at others, usually at my expense sometimes just for a laugh? Shouldn't he already know? We have been friends for twelve years.

What have I done wrong? What does he think I've done wrong? I'm trying to see this from a non-biased point of view but I feel too "in it" at the moment. I'd like to think that I'm not doing the same thing to him that my mother does to me. The similarities in the generosity/judgment pairing are disturbing. I do hope whatever it is, it gets sorted out one way or another."

 

"So I've been doing more thinking to try and organize thoughts and still can't think of much. I'm trying to find a perceived or real problem. I'm not getting the problem with my judgments of others affecting him when he has judged me directly. He's told me which clothes I have that look bad or nice, my tastes in music, etc. Perhaps they're retaliatory judgments? For what though? Is this longstanding beef or something relatively new?

I know that if it's because I've been aloof, I can't really change how I've been but hopefully can change how I will be.

 

I don't know what competitive bull**** this is but I remember one story recently that pissed me off because of how Eric's been acting. I don't know how we started talking about running or Nigerians but I made a mistake of calling them top notch runners. Eric corrected me by saying it was actually Kenya. I stood corrected and laughed and apologized for my disrespect of Kenya. He actually went onto wikipedia and went on for a good five minutes about how Kenya has dominated running competitions for a long time running. Awesome. My *formal* letter of apology to Kenya is on its way. We're taking time to prove me wrong despite my admission of already being wrong without any sort of fight mind you. He could have told me it was Zaire and I would have believed him.

Then there's always the critique of me using ghetto slang. He calls it a deterioration of the English language and that it's stupid to use other terms in place of things that already have established words. Sounds like judgment to me, no? What if people using these slang words don't know the "established" words? Worse still, what if they're not in a position to learn them? If that's the jumping off point of the argument then why not simplify vocabulary down to the most essential words possible? Why use synonymous or analogous instead of like? Oh that's right because it makes you sound smart. If the argument is that it's leading to an unnecessarily changing in the meanings of words than let's not use "cool" instead of good. When I pushed the issue of how you can neither quantify "very" versus "dumb" he did admit he was wrong so then it merely becomes a pet peeve.

Don't get me wrong, it would be a terrible loss if we weren't friends any more. I'd probably give up wrestling. I'd also feel like I lost a part of myself since we've been friends for so long. I'm not going to act like I've committed some grievous error though until I actually know what it is or what it could be. For all I know, I could be completely off the mark and only dealing with manifestations. Maybe he thinks his life would be better off without me and doesn't know how to say that. Personally, I'm lost but whatever. All I know is that if **** doesn't change between us personally, I'm just cutting it off and taking back my line. Sucka can keep the phone I got for him. I just don't need a bill in my name that I don't keep track of. I'll just have to have a regular number and then follow through on my idea of a whore hotline. Obviously, I'd rather have a best friend over a useless cell phone line though. Something has to change. Whether it be me or him. I'd almost rather it be me because then I could succeed or fail based on my own merit. Maybe that's what bothers him. That I need to have control. Who knows."

[davo1224]

So yeah I think he doesn't want to be friends any more. Oh well. Twelve years since childhood isn't that big of a deal.