A dear friend of mine says he needs time to assess our friendship, which he calls 'slippery'. In the meantime, he doesn't want to communicate with me. I wonder if he's aware of the fact that our friendship is our communication, mainly computer-mediated --take away email, and little is left, other than the good will and the good remembrances. What he must be assessing, I wonder as well. Our friendship is not very demanding, in the ordinary way: we don't see each other very much, we live very independent lives, and we seldom ask favours each other... It can't be that he thinks that by putting an end to our friendship he'll be liberated from many obligations he doesn't want to bear anymore. I might think that his main concern is about confidence. First: Am I worthwhile the trouble of speaking to me about him? And second: Am I trustworthy enough not to take advantage of whatever he tells me? Well, that could be. But I'm more inclined to locate the problem elsewhere: that he's fed up with me, actually, and has no interest whatsoever in keeping on knowing about me.

His last email was so astoundingly childlike and humourless that I think there's an underlying cause for his dislike about me he's not fully aware of, so that he needs a putative motive to refer his discontent to. What it is the real problem, I don't know. Why the hate element in the love-hate pair every friendship is inevitably made of has taken now the lead, I don't know. I feel that from some time now he's been a little uncomfortable with my being around (virtually). Well, it happens sometimes: you simply get tired of people you formerly liked. Perhaps that's what he needs time to discover: whether he's happier without my being around, virtually and eventually physically.

And that's very unfortunate for me. I miss him, already. Things which would go all the way from my mind to his and would come back enriched to me, must remain unsaid now. I lose, but does he gain?