“Whatever people I'll meet in my life has to do with my own perspective, how I see and trust myself somehow. It's like a mirror image of your inner self to find in people surrounding you…. It's easy to blame it on someone else it's much harder to confront yourself with your own fears…”

Right on baby. This makes sense and you're calling me out on my own BS too. Niiiiice.
I'm pretty good dancing with my own fears. Sometimes I grope my fears too and sometimes we make the love. I'm cool with fear for otherwise I'd not put myself out there as I do. Even still I am surely not blameless in this debacle. It's not 50-50 though. The P/A people are hogging up 80% of the blame.

“you'll see a lot of cool friendly people will find their way into your life and make your life happily and solemnly complete! “

Absolutely true, your truth is told. Thank you!

Strangers' advice can indeed by useful, in so many ways. Balance is most important, so why not balance advice from those you hold closest with those whom you've never met? I like.

I would dig meeting you in IRL too and we need to make plans for this to happen.
I'm not sure how I learned IRL “in real life” but I know I learned it while online. Go figure )

“I don't think of it as running away, but self-preservation.”
Perfection. I'm thinking on that.

Holy crap,
“I run into the passive aggressive problem most at work when people would rather complain about things that need to be fixed than go have a talk with upper management.”

The same could be said about politics! As you know one of my drunken rants has to do with politics, but it pops up for the above reasons and mostly due to Tequila. However it was in that realm I experience so much of what you speak above… I wiped my hands of that mess.

I haven't been in an office in ages. Had to become freelance because I'm too unruly. I can only imagine your reactions and interactions with the driftwood, knobs you describe.

“I've also noticed more passive aggressiveness on social networking sites. It's easier for people to get away with bad behavior online. & you're better off without these so called “friends” anyway”

Another topic for discussion… ah yes, all the fake bastards pretending to be something they are not and eventually being found out as charlatans so they lash out… or simply vanish. I prefer the vanishing act.

Hmmm… More HENRY less Passive/Aggressiveness, yes?

I enjoy all of the advice and have soaked it in. Thank you for stopping by and contributing your own wisdoms.

“Friendship is a difficult balance. From most comments above, I agree that true friends will hang around with you for better or for worse, through all kinds of disagreements and bad behaviours from both sides. Sometime it takes both sides to walk away to understand how important the other person is to each other. Sometime it takes compassion rather than judgement to smooth the friendship/ relationship. Sometime it is simply just the time to part and move on from each other. Nevertheless, life lessons have definitely transpired between both sides, whether each person knows it or not and/or whether the lesson is learnt or not. “

Lovely, truly lovely. I await a blog from you on a similar subject. I really like the head on your shoulders.

Ooooh, I like this. I have to use it very soon. Hello Joshua, it's cool and adventurous advice to push someone to the edge of honesty. I know quite a few who would just jump off the cliff. But the pushing is daring and worth doing.

Very well said! And I have way more words than that regarding your heart.

I sometimes wonder if the best advice is actually given by those who know very little at all about a person's life. Sometimes I feel it could be true. The less one knows, the less one will presume, assume, judge, nag…etc… The advice of a stranger could very well be the purist.

I know most of us have experienced the P/A types and many never noticed or had no 'name' for it at the time. High School, for one, was ripe with P/A behavior. Maybe that's just my High School (of which I attended many.) Hmmm… It's a muddy subject. Let's get the hose and spray it clean!