How do you cut/reduce contact?

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adgloriam

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My question is simple:

Context: A person/friend angers you, and has obviously done injustice without conscience.

If you talk with the person frequently, how do you cut/reduce contact in a timely manner when you know you’re about to say something that will harm your relationship? How do you best resist/resolve the habit/impulse/prompting of responding/contacting the person?

This requires a firm decision and a wise plan, I have a hard time sticking to a plan.
 
Bite my tongue, say something to the effect of “you done pissed me off with that comment”, and walk away. If my friendship with them is truly valuable, I’ll contact them at a later time to attempt to explain why their comment angered me.
 
Why do you want to keep contacting someone who does injustice with no conscience?
 
adgloriam said:
My question is simple:

Context: A person/friend angers you, and has obviously done injustice without conscience.
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Do you mean they have knowingly done you an injustice without remorse or do you mean they have unknowingly done you an injustice?
 
adgloriam said:
My question is simple:

Context: A person/friend angers you, and has obviously done injustice without conscience.

If you talk with the person frequently, how do you cut/reduce contact in a timely manner when you know you’re about to say something that will harm your relationship? How do you best resist/resolve the habit/impulse/prompting of responding/contacting the person?

This requires a firm decision and a wise plan, I have a hard time sticking to a plan.
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As a Christian you know you have to forgive this person in your own heart even though they didn’t apologize and are unaware of their injustice.

I have a similar thing with my sister. She will sometimes start crying when our parents are around causing them to turn against me as if I did something wrong. She will do this if we are arguing, if she disagrees with me or even if she is just sick of hearing me talk.

It causes division and an uneasy relationship. I know she does it on purpose which is the hardest part to accept. She acts like when we were kids, she would cry for nothing just to get me in trouble. When I’ve tried asking her why she cried she doesn’t know why. When I’ve tried to point it out to my parents and asked them why they over reacted they deny it.

I once asked her to help me explain my mental condition to my parents as I was afraid they would reject what the doctor had told me. But she turned it around on me, dismissing the doctors diagnosis. That along with her tears made my family reject me when I needed them most. Now I cannot be honest with my family on this issue as they don’t believe me.

I don’t think she understands the damage it creates within our family or maybe she is just happy that our parents have a better relationship with her than me. Either way I must avoid this happening at all costs.

So my solution is to minimize my contact with her. Any contact I do make with her is brief as anything I say might set her off.
 
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You pray that God will grant you wisdom and make you over in His image. You spend more time in prayer, more time in Scripture and reading Spiritual things. You pray “Forgive me my trespasses as I forgive XXX who has trespassed against me”.
 
TheLittleLady said:
You pray that God will grant you wisdom and make you over in His image. You spend more time in prayer, more time in Scripture and reading Spiritual things. You pray “Forgive me my trespasses as I forgive XXX who has trespassed against me”.
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The tough part is charity, mercy, and meekness prompt responding. A sort of Christian simplicity, which morally seems at odds, supersedes and undermines, the wisdom of keeping silence.

Thank you @TheLittleLady
Teaching About Retaliation.

Mt 5:41.Should anyone press you into service for one mile, go with him for two miles.
Mt 5:42. Give to the one who asks of you, and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow.
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Do you HAVE to see this person under any circumstance? If not, it’s pretty easy to taper off contact.

If you will inevitably have to run into or work with this person, or if this person if family or friends with your family, it’s not a matter of cutting off but of setting healthy boundaries.

For examples on that, I’d need more specifics. How has this friend angered you? What kind of injustice has s/he done?
 
@adgloriam

There was someone in my life who was similar in some ways to the person you had in mind in your first post. and which prompted you to start a thread.

For a long time I couldn’t understand wh,y to whatever I said this person took the opposite stance, almost as if they enjoyed provoking me to anger. The I realized that this person took the position of playing devils advocate - even when they agreed with me and could see the point I was making - and to which they admitted such was the case to me. But even ackowledging this and the unnecessary friction this caused, they wouldn’t stop this deliberately taking this opposing stance to everything in whatever conversation we had.

It severely strained the friendship to such a point where now we hardly contact each other. To be honest, apart from charity in that I would always answer or return their call - there is no reason to speak to this person and I have no reason to visit them.

So I guess you could say this constant playing devils advocate in speech and deliberate antagonistic attitude they took/had, killed the friendship. Which needn’t of happened as they could have simply said “I see the point you are making and yes I agree, but I also think …” . Some people are just this way and nothing you say or do is going to change them.

I hope that the difficulties you are experiencing do not end up in the same way.
 
adgloriam said:
My question is simple:

Context: A person/friend angers you, and has obviously done injustice without conscience.

If you talk with the person frequently, how do you cut/reduce contact in a timely manner when you know you’re about to say something that will harm your relationship? How do you best resist/resolve the habit/impulse/prompting of responding/contacting the person?

This requires a firm decision and a wise plan, I have a hard time sticking to a plan.
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Wait a minute…are you concerned about harming your relationship with someone who literally does not have a conscience? Or are you talking about someone who has wronged you out of the kind of moral cowardice that a typical person might fall into? In the second case, you reconcile. (In the first case, you recognize that this is not a person who can be put into a position of trust, and you stay off their radar.)

People who operate without a moral conscience aren’t really rare, but they’re not typical, either. These are spiteful people who would not amend their lives if they were given a chance, who fake their moral lives, and who look at people who unmask their manipulations as enemies who have to be gotten out of the way. You need a really good reason to hazard crossing paths with these people. Don’t engage with them and stay out of their way unless honest-to-goodness you are sent with certainty that you have a mission in their regard that requires that you do so.

More common is the person who out of moral cowardice has failed you and doesn’t want to admit it. This is a person who does actually have an emotional conscience, even if it is badly formed. They are people whose amendment doesn’t require some sort of a miracle. OK, well, a place to start with this type, to be frank, may be to come before God and admit that you are someone who has failed Him in some way, probably out of some flavor of moral cowardice, and then pretended before everyone else that you haven’t. What I’m suggesting is to reflect on this parable: Matt 18:21-35.

After that, follow this rule: If you are wrong, apologize, even if you are not the most wrong. Why? Because when someone has wronged someone and the person they have wronged apologizes to them, it lowers their defenses. It makes it easier for them to apologize. More to the point, it makes the whole question of who is the most wrong entirely moot.

OK, so what if you don’t have anything to apologize for? In that case, sit down with the person, tell them what it looks like from your perspective, say “I have to admit that even though I haven’t let you explain your side, I feel hurt. I apologize for that. Could you explain your side, because I don’t want this to come between us.” At that point, they either explain in a way that satisfies you, or they don’t. If they do, you can forgive them. If they give you a BS explanation, you can say, “I need to think about this, because that really didn’t make me feel better” or some other response like that. At least you will have been direct with them and given them a way to make it right with you without putting them on the defensive.
 
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CONT…
If you want to give an effective apology, it goes reasons first, apology second, NOT the other way around.
NOT: I’m sorry I yelled at you, but what you did would make anybody mad. (That is an excuse)
BUT RATHER: I got mad over what you did, but that wasn’t an excuse for yelling at you (or avoiding or whatever unhelpful or wrong-headed way you reacted with your friend). I’m sorry.
 
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CRV said:
So I guess you could say this constant playing devils advocate in speech and deliberate antagonistic attitude they took/had, killed the friendship. Which needn’t of happened as they could have simply said “I see the point you are making and yes I agree, but I also think …” . Some people are just this way and nothing you say or do is going to change them.
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There is a third way (other than reconciling or else avoiding someone as objectively toxic in the sense of recognizing they are literally a sociopath) which is to admit that some people have interpersonal styles that don’t work well together–they always have miscommunications, they both want the same place in a group and only one can have it, or what have you. In other words, we’re not going to like everybody and not everybody is going to like us, even if no one is much better or worse than anyone else. There is a continuum between the problems that even take place between near-saints on one hand and on the other the problems that make some relationships here on Earth seem very close to a pilot program for Hell.

It is OK to concede some of your social “field of play” for the sake of making the world a more peaceful place. If you can let go without malice, that is the best. That can be really hard and take a long time, though, because you could be making a pretty big social sacrifice for someone who doesn’t “deserve” it. Chalk that up to your mercy bank account. Most of us will want a lot of that on the positive side of our ledger when the bananas are all tallied up. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy and Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Those who choose this way–do yourself a favor and do the inner work of letting go! Carrying around secret grudges about the works of mercy that you did not actually summon enough mercy to perform is too much baggage to carry in this life.
 
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Bearing injustice with patience is a spiritual work of mercy. Combine that with prudence in future dealings and the best response may be to suffer in silence. This person is not a finished product yet and clearly needs a strong Christian example.

Don’t be a door mat, but you need not demand eye for eye.
 
PetraG said:
It is OK to concede some of your social “field of play” for the sake of making the world a more peaceful place. If you can let go without malice, that is the best. That can be really hard and take a long time, though, because you could be making a pretty big social sacrifice for someone who doesn’t “deserve” it. Chalk that up to your mercy bank account. Most of us will want a lot of that on the positive side of our ledger when the bananas are all tallied up. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy and Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
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Would you consider 9 years sufficient time to my effort of turning the other cheek, constantly letting things go, biting my tongue, saying “I don’t think we should discuss this” as this same topic caused an argument/disagreement/friction in the past so by refusing to discuss it I was trying to avoid the topic and another incident of tension etc., of trying to be their friend because they literally had no friends.

I have no malice towards this person - just sadness which I expressed to them because I honestly did like them and wanted to be friends but their consistent polarising opposition made it almost impossible to find any common ground regardless of what topic was being discussed. Simply because they in their eyes if they openly agreed with me, then they were a ‘yes’ man. And because they didn’t want to be thought of in that way, they deliberate took the position of devils advocate - which they admitted frankly.

And even after discussing this attitude, things didn’t really change. They made an effort for a time, but I think it was too much and it went back to “devils advocate” again. I’d tried everything I could possibly think of, but in the end, the reality was it was never going to work. So whilst we are not enemies, we are not active friends for a lack of a better way of putting it.
 
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CRV said:
Would you consider 9 years sufficient time to my effort of turning the other cheek, constantly letting things go, trying to be their friend because they literally had no friends.
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This reminds me of someone who asked his mom why they kept inviting someone for Thanksgiving. She said that they have nowhere else to go. The son replied, “Mom, sometimes there is a reason for that.”

Of course it is OK to just let somebody go. We don’t have to rationalize why it was OK. You don’t have to choose “turn the other cheek” friends. Relatively few people are going to be our close friends. That’s OK. We cannot have everybody as close friends and we aren’t responsible for teaching people who aren’t working out as our friends to socialize to suit social circles that don’t have us in them. Wish them good luck to find friends who suit their style. If their style doesn’t work out for them, it is OK to leave it up to them to change it.
 
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CRV said:
…And because they didn’t want to be thought of in that way, they deliberate took the position of devils advocate - which they admitted frankly.

And even after discussing this attitude, things didn’t really change. They made an effort for a time, but I think it was too much and it went back to “devils advocate” again. I’d tried everything I could possibly think of, but in the end, the reality was it was never going to work. So whilst we are not enemies, we are not active friends for a lack of a better way of putting it.
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I think you did more than your share, particularly since you gave them honest feedback about why their style was off-putting to you. If this person has no friends because of having a conversational habits that are too combative for every prospective friend they ever had and because the person simply avoids happy agreement at all costs, at least because of you that failure won’t be because no one would tell them why they weren’t satisfying to have as a friend.

In other words, you tried, and that was commendable! You did a good thing! You eventually gave up, and you certainly earned that, too. You gave that friendship ever chance it had, but it just didn’t work out.

It is kind of sad when someone you like for some reasons drives you off for other reasons, but sometimes it just can’t be helped. As the saying goes: Don’t try to teach a pig to sing. You just frustrate yourself and annoy the pig. There is some truth in that, and no sin in admitting that you’ve found yourself in that kind of a relationship. (And, hey, the Good Lord didn’t put pigs on earth to be singers, and that is OK.)
 
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PetraG said:
As the saying goes: Don’t try to teach a pig to sing. You just frustrate yourself and annoy the pig.
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There is another old saying - A leopard can’t change its’ spots.

I thank you for your thoughtful responses, and yes I know that it was best for God (I wasn’t sinning and therefore offending Him), this person also no longer felt the need to play devils advocate with me, and I didn’t have to try and navigate it all and still keep composed and conversational - the strain for both of us ended.

On the seldom occasions we do talk, it is usually to ask for prayers for others - that type of thing and the conversation is short, just enough to give enough info as to why we were calling, so it resembles two acquaintances conversing. But these calls are few and far between. The last two times I have called, it was blatantly obvious they were not interested in speaking, and out of charity were simply being polite. Almost like, listen, say the bare minimum. So I’ve made the decision to end even that small amount of contact and will no longer be calling that person, though they are in my daily prayers.
 
The tough part is charity, mercy, and meekness prompt responding. A sort of Christian simplicity, which morally seems at odds, supersedes and undermines, the wisdom of keeping silence.
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Seems you’re saying that silence (and avoidance) are unchristian strategies in dealing with a problematic person or relationship, and that it is Christianity (or even general humaneness) that obliges you to remain in touch with him/her to some extent, no matter how problematic or tortuous the relationship is. I believe that this is a mistake – one I’ve certainly made myself.

And I don’t say that because you’re “entitled to your peace of mind” or some such pragmatic reason. Rather I say it because exposing yourself to people and situations that severely disturb or upset you, is actually harmful to you Christian Walk, not helpful. God does not ask us to continue in relations that experience has shown us do not work – regardless of the reason. Rather God asks us to read the signs as they come to us in the form of encounters with others (among other things), and act on those signs. To act against them is to act against your intuition, which is to act against God’s Living Presence in you. Get rid of a false sense of guilt or obligation to stay in touch.

PS. I know how painful it is to cut contact with someone, and how one can be tormented by a sense of guilt or obligation. But as my experience goes, if you don’t overcome those feelings and act on what you know about the person and the relationship, the bad encounters are just going to continue to get worse until you are left with no choice but to end them altogether. If you need life to push you that hard (like I did) before you make a clean break, then go for it. It’s a tortuous path though.
 
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