With friends like you,

Ok, so I mentioned before about K’s good friend Dan who was selling his house and buying a new one, but didn’t want to use me because he wanted “to keep his friends friends and his business separate.” It seems he'd had a bad experience hiring a friend of his before.

Now I’ve been in the business long enough to know that it’s full of disappointment – next door neighbors, acquaintances, even people who ask you to help them sometimes let you down. So I try to be understanding – I know friends sometimes have prior relationships with Realtors, etc.

But this wasn’t like that. He didn’t know anyone already, and he went out and found strangers to help him. At one point, after K advised him not to talk to me about it, he decided that he’d let me help him look in one little area, but of course that didn’t work out.

The weekend after he sold his home in Palmdale, he made an offer in Burbank with another realtor that was ultimately accepted. And now he keeps insisting that they’re having us over soon so we can see their new place!

My sister says that it speaks to his paranoia more than to my abilities, but when I think about how much money it would have been, I just can't see a way to be OK with that. Yet.

My feelings about the subject are summed up by Dan’s former neighbor, who is also a Realtor and probably also pissed at Dan. At a party at his house, I was saying that I’d made friends and lost friends in this business, and she said, “If someone knows you work on commission, and they don’t use you? They’re not your friend.” They get downgraded to acquaintances – people I’ve known for awhile or even like, but they’re not really friends.

So it's sad. When they first told me they were moving closer to us, I was really happy and excited. We used to be close, but after he got married and moved farther away, we grew apart. Part of that was not being invited over or his wife coming over our house for at least 5-8 years. But this was a chance to put ALL THAT (and more) behind us.

And now he thinks we're coming over all the time? I feel like he's insisting that I tell him its all OK, like the time he made me hug him through the car window. All I will think about when I see his house now is how nice it would have been if we could ALL be happy about it. About all the presents I would have bought them and how happy we'd all be. About how he says they moved here to be closer to us, but then did the one thing that would really piss me off.

Personally, I wonder if it isn't a Freudian thing where part of him doesn't really want to be friends with us at all. But when I talk about Freudian things, the Girl says I'm taking things too literally.

K is such a good person, so much better than me. He'll be able to go over there and act somewhat happy for them. This is the most angry I've ever seen him get towards a friend, though, and I see him making moves to cut down on the amount of Dan in our lives. I've told him not to, that he's usually so forgiving, but even he is having trouble this time.

I guess I am happy for them, but I'm more personally and professionally disappointed. And I don't think it's my job to make him feel better about the choices he's made by forcing myself to go over there and make it all better for him before I actually feel any better.

I think that we're in this world to practice forgiveness, and that's why I'm getting so many opportunities to practice. I'm sure in time I'll see that this was the best thing, but right now it's hard to see.

This is me, complaining and trying to move on.