February 4th, 2012
Open Question: Strange interactions between friends?
Sorry this is so long. However, I need some opinions:
David met Diana and her family. He just moved in her area to manage a volunteer group. David has a wonderful wife. They start to make good progress with the group. David is friend with Diana’s aunt and sister. David and his wife compliment Diana on her good conduct and cheerful personality. David sometimes tries to offer assistance to Diana. Diana accepted at first. However, as time goes by, Diana declines offers, not wanting to seem needy and be a burden on David and wife. Later, Diana lives alone. As times goes by, David starts to draw away in his communication with Diana. David starts to seem sad around Diana and ignores her. Then later, new member, Melane, join the group. New member likes a lot of attention. And soon enough makes friendship with David and wife. David feels he has good friendships. David starts to cause division in the group. David keeps close friendship with new member and returning members that is friends with new member. David tries to exclude Diana from group activities and giving her a hard time, while showing favor to his friends alone. David’s personality starts to show strange to some group member. Diana starts to keep a low profile. David seems confused why young woman is so quiet.
Recently, David has been forming friendships with all her close friends, especially the ones that are always talking about her. He use to shun these people, but has been assigning them certain privileged projects that he use to want Diana to be involved in. Several other friends are surprised and wondering why he is suddenly getting familiar with them. In one situation, Diana and Melane are sitting behind David. But Melane sits in another isle of chairs to the right of them. David usually chats a lot with Melane. However, some people have been saying that it seems he uses her to supply materials for projects. She seems desperate for his attention at times. On this occasion, they are all sitting in a meeting listening to someone giving a presentation. Rather than sitting forward as everyone else, David is turned sideways with his elbow/arm on top of the empty chair next to him. This chair is directly in front of Diana, whom he was not aware was behind him at first. She came late to the meeting. His body is slanted towards the chair beside him; Melane is able to see his face, but not Diana. His back is now turned towards her. The strange thing is that, when he is aware of Diana’s presence, he suddenly straightens up and keeps turning to look sideways in her direction. His countenance changed as if he is sad about something. Rather than paying attention ahead, he keeps turning his head to the side where Diana could see his face. For several minutes he does this back and forth. Sorry if this sounds minute, but I would like your opinion. {Melane is way older than Diana, who seemed obsessed with Diana (acting too close to her. Diana broke friendship with her. She even seemed flirty with David at times}. There has been something strange happening now. David seems to be working his way around Diana. He has been volunteering to work with her in the group activities. Just recently, when his plan got ruined, he seemed very uneasy around her. Then later he arranged to work with her alone. Whenever others were trying to get her to work with them, he made sure they found someone else. During the time he was with her, he kept asking her about her family, ‘friends’, and her life. But throughout that time, there was a great deal of silence between them. And he would try to break it by showing her with compliments about what he admired about her. It was strange because he had made sure that he did not work with her for so long, that now it’s a bit awkward to talk between them. That day, they had to walk a ways to get to their destination. Throughout that time, David keeps asking the same questions he always asks her when he speaks to her: “how are you and family?” “how is your health?” etc. seems it’s the only thing he says to her whenever they talk. It never goes beyond an introduction conversation after so many years. At the day end of the day that they worked together, she walked off from to catch up with his wife. Apparently she forgot to tell him goodbye. Later, the wife brought up the point that Diana had forgot to say goodbye and had suddenly left him stranded, thinking he agreed to let her leave. Diana texted him to apologize. However, he never replied or say anything to her after seeing her again. What could be going on with these interactions?
