queer advice #78: the worst grafts ⭐
"I really need to walk back this friendship — like many friendships in my life that don’t seem entirely reciprocated."
Welcome to queer advice, a column where I answer questions for anonymous queer people on the internet. Today’s question is about friendship—more specifically, ending a friendship with someone you feel a lot of solidarity and sympathy towards. The original draft of this column was a personal anecdote that I ended up deleting (too personal! too much of a chance that person would see!!), so I’m worried that what I wrote is too vague and unhelpful. As always, let me know in the comments.
In other news, Louis had knee surgery on Wednesday. They trimmed his torn meniscus and removed the metal implant from his last surgery. He’s not allowed to run, jump, or climb stairs for the next 6 weeks. I have to either watch or crate him 24/7 because all he wants to do is play and bounce on and off the bed like a puppy. I guess he was low-level sick for months and now he’s making up for lost time/feeling his oats/becoming UNGOVERNABLE. Thank you so much for all your kind wishes and words over the past few weeks. It means so much. I wrote a new Choose Your Own Dykeventure zine to cover the vet bills, which were almost $8,000 if you can believe that (I cannot). I’ll post more about the zine as soon as it’s ready to go <3
If you are queer and have a question for queer advice, send it on over :)
xoxo, Maddy
during covid i developed a friendly relationship with my neighbor next door. he runs the corner store and usually has dog treats. i have a dog. every day, once or twice a day, me and the dog would stop by and pick up a treat from him; over time we developed a banter. we have some small mutual interests; for the most part, i enjoy talking to him and hearing what he has to say; he’s lived in the area for a long time and has a lot of local knowledge that i appreciate. however, over the last year, he’s begun asking for more and more help. At first, it was just to get him snacks and food around the neighborhood. I was in the midst of a lonely period of my life so I obliged. Then he broke his leg, and seeing that he didn’t have family visit him very often (and lived with roommates) I would spend 2 hrs with him once a week, talking. The conversations weren’t riveting for me, but I have had grandparents, and I know how to listen. Then, I got into an accident, needed a lot of care, and some of my friends stepped up and others totally dropped me. I started reflecting on my friendships, and whether I was really asking enough from them. This neighbor helped me watch my dog a few times when I wasn’t able to move which I appreciate, but I guess during the course of my reflections (alone, immobilized), I realized that when he was ill, I offered him a lot of emotional support, and while it was helpful he watched my dog, he really wasn’t very….caring otherwise. He’s never really asked after me, or seem too interested in my life. He’s morbidly depressed, so I don’t blame him. But also I feel like, since my accident, that I need more from people I spend a lot of time with. Thus, I started distancing myself from him (not stopping by daily), which led to some passive aggressive comments from him and additional requests to get him food said in a more brusque tone. I actually fulfilled all of these requests, but the last time I did it in front of a third neighbor. This neighbor gave me a look like ‘what’s up with this’”, and I realized that I sometimes felt humiliated by his requests, that I was doing them out of a perverse sort of obligation. As a result I’ve stopped visiting him at all, to the extent that I now walk away from his store when I walk the dog. I know he’s looking for me because once in a while I see him standing outside my apartment, pretending to be waiting for the bus (the bus stop is at least 20 yards away away) or keeping the door to his corner store open (which he usually never does). I really need to walk back this friendship — like many friendships in my life that don’t seem entirely reciprocated. Unlike my younger friends tho, he’s taking this REALLY poorly. Which makes sense because they have other friends to turn to, but he doesn’t really.
One of the complicating issues is that he’s an older gay man (who has sometimes said he wishes he could transition but has resolutely also refused to take steps to do it despite the wide range of resources available in the major metropolitan city in which we both live), and I am a younger transman. This started out, as what I thought of as an act of mutual aid, or solidarity (not exactly friendship?), or queer kinship??(a term I learned in college but haven’t really practiced) but the lines have become blurred, and emotionally he’s just not there like most of my actual friends, again some of whom I am cutting out for being not available. (also he can be very negative, and argumentative, grumpy generally, and being at the receiving end of that makes me feel feminized in a way that I really don’t like). To add to this, realizing that I’ve cultivated a lot of relationships that feel borderline co-dependent, and need to set boundaries or cut out the worst grafts has left me feeling really lonely a lot of nights.
an (overly and not so) sweet boy, 34
I’m not sure you need to bring mutual aid and queer kinship into this because from everything you’ve written, it sounds like you just made a new friend and after getting to know him better, realized that you didn’t want to be friends anymore. That’s a totally reasonable and healthy thing to do. I would have done the same thing if I were you. Your neighbor sounds like this particular flavor of emotionally immature person who has a deep understanding of their own misery and complicated life circumstances, but doesn’t extend that interiority to other people (e.g. “I am the only person with real struggles“) and this can manifest in jealousy, entitlement, and generally treating others like trash garbage. I’m going to stop there because I don’t know your neighbor and it’s not helpful for me to speculate on his whole deal, but I will say that a lot of people only know how to maintain relationships through guilt tripping and coercion. It’s likely he felt you distancing yourself and instead of reflecting on his actions and talking to you about it, he went into jerk mode.