You thanked this girl ("Next2Nothing") after she led this guy on and didn't have the heart to tell him. Do you serve cookies and milk to every letter-writer? She screwed with this poor guy, and you should have told her to stop it. You should have come down like a ton of bricks on this behavior, or at least said that if she is not old enough to tell someone she is not interested, then she is not old enough to date — whether she is 14 or 44. If you are going to be an enabler for poor behavior because some people just don't have the guts to face life, then you really should get out of the "helping" business — because you are not helping.
Helping or Hurting?
Dear Helping or Hurting,
If I knew you better I'd get some milk and cookies and have you sit down with the women who wrote the original letter. Then you two could both enjoy some delicious milk and cookies together. You could sit there and yell, shame her and make her feel terrible for being brutally honest with the world. And then, when you're finished, she can go back to her life having learned nothing other than why it's important to keep her feelings a secret. I, on the other hand, think it's helpful not to make people who share shameful secrets feel worse about themselves. In this case, I think it's really valuable that we know that rejection by silence is most often not about us being horrible or unattractive. It's about someone not knowing what he or she wants or not recognizing our value. I thanked her because the sooner we can embrace this simple fact, the more forgiving we can be of the world when things don't go our way.
No comments:
Post a Comment