I needed to stop the hurt cycle but that would take apologizing.  And frankly I didn’t feel like it.  I felt the fractured relationship wasn’t all my fault.  I had acted in hurtful ways for sure.  But so had she.  We both needed to apologize.  Yet, that wasn’t happening.  So the hurting continued.

Photo by enggul

I was driving down from a weekend in the mountains on a Sunday evening listening to music.  The sky glowed with the sunset. Somewhere in the being caught up in my own thoughts about this exploded friendship and being in a tranquil state because of the scenery I began to pray. [Read more…]

After the friendship exploded, as we discussed in the previous post, I wondered, “How could something so positive turn so hurtful?”

She would unintentionally do something that hurt me and I would respond defensively and hurt her.  Neither of us intended the slights but the spiral continued into complete estrangement.

Photo by enggul

I was talking with mutual friend a few weeks ago, who truly is like a sister,   when she asked me what happened.  I described it briefly and she responded, “Doug, you hurt her.” [Read more…]

A personal friendship exploded.  What once had been closeness dissolved into contempt.

Misunderstandings started it followed by unintentional slights.  Then less than loving reactions which grew into a cycle of hurt and reactions causing more hurt.

Photo by enggul

It would have been easiest to simply walk away but we were forced together in an organization we were both actively involved in.  So the cycle spiraled down until we never spoke a word to each other unless forced to. [Read more…]