Filling a cavity
If a tooth has a cavity, putting plastic on top of the cavity won’t fix the problem. The tooth will continue to ache and rot, and eventually the tooth will die.
To fix a cavity, you have to drill the hole until you’ve broken through all the decay, clean the hole thoroughly and only then fill it with plastic.
If you’re avoiding someone, or making someone wrong, consider that’s a cavity. To repair the relationship, don’t just plaster something nice on top of what’s already there. Get through all the decay and sort through all the guck- how you’ve been being a jerk, how you’ve been making them wrong, the stupid reason you’ve been harbouring about why you did what you did, etc. Be really straight with them, and create the space for a new friendship or the next stage in a friendship, with solid foundations.
March 20th, 2009 at 12:49 AM
What if they are the one who’s been acting like a jerk and making you wrong, but refuse to repair the friendship?
Dyou move on and let them rot that part of you?
March 20th, 2009 at 1:48 AM
Marita has it down. Forgiving someone without working through the problem just sets it up to happen again… I’ve experienced this enough times. If they won’t admit they’ve been wrong when they very clearly have, you need to maintain some distance until they realise that you’re really quite offended. I’m not saying you should ignore them until they make the effort, because there is a good chance they’ll never get back to you. You have to give them chances to apologise. But you need to make it very clear that it isn’t just ok as is.
March 20th, 2009 at 10:12 AM
I’ve seen a tooth
that cannot be broken
even with diamond drills.
Shame, it has one of the largest cavities I’ve ever witnessed too.
March 26th, 2009 at 1:47 AM
hey marita!! :) I didn’t know you had a blog :) didn’t know you were into writing stuff. how true, I agree for this cavity filling thing, for most cases anyway…
April 1st, 2009 at 10:00 PM
Hey!
@Liam: How I see it is, if I can completely act like myself around someone (so if I don’t feel weird around someone) then I’m complete with them. If something happened to change this, I would address it with the person and apologise. If they can’t forgive me for that, then that’s fine. I’ll let them know that if ever they did, I wouldn’t be holding any grudges. It takes two to tango and repair a friendship.
If they’re refusing to repair the friendship, as long as you’ve apologised for what you caused on your part, just be with it.
I’ve had people say to me, after I apologised for making them wrong, “Marita, I’m not sure if I’ll ever see you again… I’m really surprised by this conversation… but good luck with the future.” And that’s fine by me. I said what I had to say. If they never want to speak with me again, I’ll know that I did what I had to do on my part to be complete with whatever happens. I just had to move on.
If you still see that someone is rotting a part of you, there’s something there that’s still incomplete for you.
@Ashley: That doesn’t work for me either. I don’t like to maintain distances. I like to repair things as soon as possible. Maintaining a distance doesn’t make the problem go away, and the more you resist an issue, the more it persists. I think the best thing to do, is to give up that someone did anything wrong in the first place. For example, I made my friend really, really wrong for saying that they didn’t think another of my friends was smart. I thought to myself: “well, I don’t want to be part of that person’s life if that’s the kind of person they are.” But that just didn’t work for our friendship and what I wanted out friendship to be like. They didn’t know what they’d said had such an impact on me. And they wouldn’t have known what they’d said had such an impact on me if I hadn’t told them. I had to give up that my friend was wrong, and just accept that I’d taken something that was said, wayyyyy out of context. And I apologised for making them wrong. Friendship restored.
@Hok: Is that poetry???
@Winnie: Hey Winnie! Yes! I have a blog! Thanks for reading/ commenting! :)
Cheers and thanks for commenting.
Marita :)