Dear Bee:

You are welcome and thank you for your kind words.

“But say that person 1 goes quiet, moody, and even grows sad when person 2 doesn’t want the sandwich, person 2 would of course feel pressure to eat the sandwich in the future because they don’t want to make person 1 upset…” – person 1’s behavior will damage person 2 if person 2 is a child and person 1 is their parent, because of the great power difference and the child’s real dependence on the parent. But if person 1 and person 2 are peers (that is, of about the same age) there is no significant power difference, no real dependence, and so person 1’s behavior is annoying but not damaging to person 2.

“They broke up with me a week or two after we had a fight on our last day of school. They were very anxious about us spending too much time together…. (being) unsustainable for their mental health. They even said their mental health was getting worse because of me” – If A was a child and you were A’s parent, no way A would have said what they said and assert themselves the way A did. A was able to end the relationship with you for the sake of their mental health, something a child is not able to do.

I want to read the rest of your post (so far, I read one part, responded to it, then read the next part, etc.) and reply in a few hours from now, possibly in about 14 hours for now. I will close this post with this thought: your guilt regarding A assumes that you have the power to damage A, but you never had that power. Annoying someone or inconveniencing someone is not the same as damaging the person, it’s a … mistake, a forgivable mistake when behavior is corrected (which you did).

anita