The Pause: 08

Not Everyone Relates the Way I Do.

The Reflection

One thing I’ve learned about relationships is that most people show you how they handle relationships by the way they show up in them.

It took me a long time to understand that.

I remember an old acquaintance reaching out to me after a mutual friend passed away. We started talking again, and eventually she added me to a group chat with some other people she knew.

At some point, one of the women in the group mentioned a fashion show—or some kind of fashion opportunity involving models.

I wasn’t doing anything else, so I reached out.

I was interested.

I went.

Nothing about the interaction seemed strange to me.

Until later, when I found out that this woman wasn’t actually an acquaintance of the person who had introduced me to her.

She was someone she considered an enemy.

Someone she was intentionally keeping close.

And the explanation was essentially:

“I keep my friends close and my enemies closer.”

I remember being genuinely bothered by that. Not because people can’t have complicated relationships. They obviously can. What bothered me was the introduction. Because I don’t operate that way.

If I introduce you to someone, there is a reason.

If I put you in someone’s space, I’m comfortable with you being there.

If I call you my friend, I actually consider you my friend.

And if I know someone isn’t someone I trust, I don’t casually connect them to you and let you walk into a relationship with them without knowing what you’re walking into.

Even if you see me speaking to that person or in same room with them…

If I haven’t directly introduced you, there may be a reason. And that reason may have nothing to do with drama. Sometimes I simply don’t want certain people to have access to certain parts of my life—or to the people I care about.

I’ve never really understood the art of pretending.

If I don’t like you, I don’t like you.

I’m not particularly interested in maintaining an elaborate friendship façade just so I can keep tabs on you.That kind of relationship is foreign to me.

But I’ve learned that it’s not foreign to everyone.

Some people can genuinely dislike someone and still call them a friend. And then have an entirely different relationship with them when they’re not around.

For years, I didn’t understand that people actually did this. I thought there had to be something I was missing. There wasn’t. We were simply operating from completely different definitions of relationship.

And I think that’s one of the most important things I’ve learned about people:

You can’t assume someone assigns the same meaning to a relationship that you do.

Friendship may mean trust to you and access to someone else.

Loyalty may mean honesty to you and proximity to someone else.

Being cordial may mean basic respect to you and strategic positioning to someone else.

And sometimes what you interpret as an introduction may be nothing more than an invitation into somebody else’s social chessboard. I don’t know how to play that game. And honestly, I don’t want to.

I’ve become much more intentional about who I connect, who I introduce, and who I allow into the spaces around me. Not because everyone is an enemy.

But because access means something to me.

And I’ve learned that not everyone treats it that way. Maybe that’s the real lesson. Not everyone relates the way I do. And I don’t need them to.

I just need to know the difference.

Pull Quote

“I spent years thinking people handled relationships the way I did. They don’t.”

Pause

What does friendship mean to you—and have you ever realized someone else was using the same word to describe something completely different?