Hi anita,

Re: you feeling pressured

Please understand, I do not want to exchange emails with you.  I revisited the dialogues to see what I did and I posted them below so I could learn from them(and you could see clearly what I did) because I didn’t remember insisting on anything.  I apologized because I didn’t want you to be upset and I thought I must have pressured you… but I am not the kind of person who insists on things, so I wanted to revisit for the purpose of understanding, not for changing your mind.

You said:  it was you who initiated the idea of exchanging emails and insisted on it.  You also said in your previous thread, Being pressured to exchange emails with you, (2) Giving in to your pressure, (3) followed by 6 days of technical (and whatever other) problems with the email exchange, (4) The Lose-Lose aspect of this: you felt nervous and uncomfortable after you got what you wanted — has resulted in me feeling stupid and quite angry for having given in to your pressure.

-has resulted in me feeling stupid and quite angry for having given in to your pressure.– It must have been really uncomfortable for you feeling like I was playing games, maybe?  I don’t  think you have anything to feel stupid about.  You were trying to respond to me and work with me, and it did not work out how you or I would have hoped.  I wish your anger was directed at Hotmail and not me (but coupled with my curt responses on Monday, I guess it did feel like I was taking you for a roller coaster ride? Playing hot and cold?) .

To be honest, I felt angry too because you just shut it down, not even wanting to hear anything I might have had to say on the subject. You said you won’t respond to emails, your thread is closed cause you don’t want to respond to it anymore and basically you were done with the whole email thing(which is fine)—and all because I said I was nervous. All my worry and struggle when I hadn’t heard from you that week,  all the work I put it, and was putting it even as you posted (googling how to fix Hotmail issues and then trying to type it so you could understand-i even created a alternate email in my yahoo account) didn’t matter one bit.-I am not angry anymore but we did say that we should tell the other if they did something to hurt(I assume anger is included).  You told me why you were angry and I’m telling you why I was…

This was the dialogue we had about emails. I printed the thread. I wanted to see how I was pressuring you so I typed it here.

Me:  “I tend to be private.  After the initial burst of energy, it does feel uncomfortable talking about deeply personal stuff on an open forum.  On the site I mentioned where the lady had given me advice, each member had their own personal inbox and we could communicate outside the forums  if we wanted to do so without giving out any personal info.”

Anita;  I exchanged email information with 6 or 7 tiny Buddha members over the years, talked on the phone several times with two members, but overall, the communication with each and every member was way more productive on this public forum than it was privately.  And so I learned my lesson

Me:  Point taken.  I didn’t think you would have exchanged e-mails with me although I hoped we would long before I posted on this site.  (I’ve read on Tiny Buddha for awhile).  My thought was that I had the privilege of knowing you are a decent person just from reading your posts but you knew nothing about me, so I didn’t think it would be fair to ask, after all, I could be anyone.  I see you know what works for you by way of communication and I get it.  As for the phone, I rarely talk on the phone.  I see how that would be uncomfortable.  Writing is so much easier.

Anita: Again thank you!  I am having a bigger smile reading the decent person part.  I didn’t know anything about you before, it is exciting to get to know you!  It is possible that in the future we will both believe that it is a good idea to exchange emails.  Also, like you, I much prefer writing and avoid the phone.

Me: I like that there is a possibility.  I hate posting personal things on a forum.

Anita:  I felt recently that I want to exchange emails with you, being that I feel closer to you, two things get in the way of this ….(I simplified, long exchange)1) slow forums 2)you explained some of what happened with other members you emailed.

On January 5^th

Anita: Please respond to any part of my posts whenever you feel like responding, there is no requirement in my mind, that you respond to everything I write in a timely fashion.  You can go back to any part of any post at any time and respond when it suits you.

Me: I appreciate that you take the time to respond…I was trying to give the same courtesy… Plus, I wanted a pen pal so I guess I am treating our interaction like one

Anita:  You have me as a pen pal.  I still prefer to communicate here but I am so tempted to offer you to be my penpals via email if it would make you feel better….

Me:  You have me as a penpal(anita)-This means something to me .  So simple but not really.I really hope you would but I respect your wishes.  I just don’t understand why it’s less likely to be productive if we are the same people (here and on email)…

At this point we talked about your interaction with the lady who wouldn’t leave her abusive situation, courage, emails are too personal, etc., (I skimmed this part)

Anita:  Here is what I can offer you in case the website shuts down and we can no longer access each other…(here you said you would take my email and only use it if the site closes down).

Me:  No, thank you.  I’ve accepted we won’t be emailing and the site isn’t going anywhere…not emailing is best. (For me it went from a possibility to a no, so why give my email just in case the site shuts down?).

Anita:  okay.  Thank you for being open and upfront me and for your appreciation.  I am a bit sad though…

This is when I wrote a whole email asking you to reconsider and addressing some of the above points including previous people you emailed and how I would be different (this was where I pressured you, I think) –  At the end of the post, I said,

Me: “If you decide your answer is still a forever no, I understand.  You have to do what’s right for you based on your experiences.  As I said, I won’t bring it up again, I just think I owed it to myself to try…Thank you for reading”

Anita:  …If you are saying you do want to exchange emails with me after all, that you want to leave this public forum and communicate with me privately, on email, then I say okay it’s fine with me (you did say you were really tired, so maybe that influenced your decision-that doesn’t mean I didn’t pressure you in that last post).

I honestly expected you to say no…

Then we exchanged emails…and all the drama started with my blocked email.

You see, I thought we were dialoguing.   However, I can see that I did not respect your boundary when I asked you to reconsider way at the end.  Because we were talking about it, and you expressed sadness at saying goodbye, I thought I could change your mind. Before that, I kept saying…okay, I get it in one way or the other.  It reads to me like you kind of wanted to exchange emails too-at least a little. Anyway, I’m sorry for making you feel any kind of pressure.  I hate that I did and I hate how it all turned out.  But it’s likely for the best.

 m