A Minor Bump in the Road

This weekend I had my first snag in the fabric of this relatively newly constructed relationship.

Doc Harley invited Mr. Artsy Hotpants to go with us to the Guggenheim and then to lunch or brunch afterwards to celebrate his high LSAT scores. Doc Harley has a very short attention span and tends to race through museums as if he's being chased by rabid bears; MAH and I move at quite a slower pace. This is a trait Doc Harley shares with my father, so I am relatively used to someone running off ahead and leaving me to look at the art at my own pace; I much prefer this arrangement to a compromise wherein the person moving at a faster pace is antsy and miserable and I am forced to move faster than I care to. However MAH was rightfully offended by this behavior. He had been invited out to spend the day with us and there we were abandoned by DH, wandering the museum on our own. MAH's point was that he wasn't spending the day with us, he was spending the day with me.

To then add insult to injury, when we finally left the museum and met back up with DH, we were informed that he had a prior commitment he had forgotten about. One of his friends and neighbors died suddenly earlier this year, and he took the friend's 16 year old daughter under his wing, acting as a surrogate father figure. The friend's daughter had a softball game that day which he had completely forgotten about and he had promised he would go to, as her father used to attend all of her games. While I was already frustrated, I could hardly argue with this, nor did I want him to miss the game, so MAH and I went off to have brunch on our own.

So MAH's day with the two of us became essentially a day with me. While this wasn't by any means a horrible painful experience, he had been looking forward to spending time with DH, and felt insulted and highly uncomfortable.

I felt absolutely horrible and deeply embarassed.

I have yet to learn that I am not responsible for anyone else's behavior.

The worst thing was that it put a bit of a strain between MAH and myself, at least until halfway through the first bloody mary. MAH felt uncomfortable and offended and I felt indirectly responsible for him feeling this way. I couldn't stand that there was any awkwardness between MAH and myself; I couldn't stand that MAH was upset. I became more and more upset, escalating the event in my mind to monumental proportions.

When Doc Harley returned from the game and picked me up from brunch, we went to the park for a bit. (MAH left without saying goodbye, feeling rude behavior deserved a rude response) I somehow managed to be both timid and fierce all at once in a confusing jumbled attempt at articulating my feelings. I tried in vain to explain my own personal concept of politess, which is definitely not shared by Doc Harley; I tried to explain why I felt that his actions were rude, and to find a middle ground compromise that we could approach future situations with. I also blabbered on in halted confusing riddles, as I tend to do when trying to verbalize my feelings out loud and unprepared. DH was great about listening, and did apologize for having unintentionally insulted MAH; he had no clue he was being rude at all. He said that he gets very antsy in museums and can't sit still for long (I already knew this); he felt it was better and even nice to let us go at our own pace rather than stay behind and be pissy and antsy or rush us through. He said he did make effort at the very beginning to talk with MAH and that he thought it didn't matter because he thought we'd have brunch together. He and I talked about the whole concept of what I call politess, and he feels that people should be able to do whatever they want and that when it becomes a matter of obligation then its a completely false giving and an insult to all involved. In my French upbringing (I may have been raised mostly in the US, but many of the ways I was raised are very French), politess factors heavily into any behavior, especially with those you don't know very well.

Doc Harley did apologize and MAH said today that it wasn't really all that big of a deal, but to me offending someone is a big deal. I feel good that we talked it out, and I do feel like he heard me, but I wonder if our very different perspectives and approaches will be an ongoing challenge or if we will find some sort of middle ground on which to reside. My parents certainly haven't, and it was very hard not to suddenly become my mother in that altogether familiar dynamic. Then again, I don't think its in any way grievous enough to outweigh all of the many good things about him. He is definitely like a big child in many ways, but a wonderful man in many others. His heart was in the right place with inviting MAH out, but his behavior left something to be desired. I definitely think when we spend time with my friends we should do it in a very structured environment, such as over dinner or drinks or something.

So at the end of it all, I feel like its not that big of a deal. It was on Saturday, and I was definitely embarassed, but I wonder how much of that was also intensified by the similarity to my father. I also wonder if I made it into a bigger deal than I needed to. I am proud of myself for bringing it up, and very pleased by how he listened and wanted to work through anything I felt was a problem. Its hard; I'm learning as I go along and working through problems has never been my forte.

The next day, I went to the Met with my favorite gay couple, whom I simply call The Boys; one of them kept wandering off at his own pace, leaving the two of us remaining behind...and I felt a little silly for making mountains out of molehills.