That morning meeting time came, and no call from Hakim. Odd thinks I.
After ten or fifteen minutes of no call or email, I call him. Nothing. I leave a message and let him know I'll be free for the next half hour or more.
No call comes.
I board my plane. I keep expecting a call, and still nothing.
It's when I land that I see Hakim has called. I listen to the message. He asks me to call him when I land. So I do. Nothing.
It's two days later that I hear from my friend who made the initial contact. He's asking me if I ever hooked up and got to talk to his recommended guy. I tell him no. Apparently, he had called his friend and asked his friend to try and help him set up another meeting. In my world, it's no longer on me to get this set up. I've tried enough times to meet Hakim, it's now Hakim's role to get this fixed if he wants my business. Hakim should have written and not tried the "phone call" to get his message across. He should have emailed, texted and then eventually tried to entice another call. But he had basically struck out at this point, he should have tried to get another turn at the bat.
This reminded me of my roommate in that once she hung up on me when she was too busy. I was furious. I kept expecting a call of apology. None came. The other day I wrote about emotion having a place in relationships (here), that was one day where emotion played a strong part in our relationship. In that instance, trust had been undermined. It took a while, but it was rebuilt.
It also reminded me of another old friend who had the tendency, in fact she was in the habit of blowing off dates, calls, . . . everything. At what point does one decide that common decency still play a part? At one point I wondered if the stressors and problems associated with the pandemic played a part in this tendency, but we shouldn't give up on common decency because of outside stressors. Like Hakim, there are ways to establish and build trust, he was undermining that effort with everything he was doing. Just like my friend, the trust was gone and despite my efforts, her habit of blowing off her commitments only made the chance to regain trust worse.
Trust is easy to build, but it takes time. Rules we have built-in society, common decency, those are all things that continue to build trust between individuals. Those simple calls that say, "Sorry, I couldn't make our call today," or even better getting in front of the problem and saying, "I overcommitted and won't be about to make our call." Naturally, actually making a call that you set up, these are all things that would build trust and are all things that are built into the common mores and social guidelines.
Where did it end with Hakim? My friend wrote to me again on his behalf. I told my friend that I was open for whenever Hakim wanted to try again. He still hasn't. Funny ole thing trust, hard to build, easy to lose.
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