I have been thinking lately about the challenges of human relationships.

And marveling that I have contrived to reach 63 years of age still flummoxed about it all, and the crimson embarrassment my lack of wisdom in this area has caused me over the years.

So, you may be wondering what the heck I’m doing here flapping my gums about the subject. Doctoral dissertations could be written about it, so I’ll make only a few points from my own experience, and what I have come to learn just recently.

The catalyst for this leap forward in my personal knowledge was the conclusion I drew well after the fact of the years I worked alongside a person with whom I’d spent lot of time in and out of the office, and with whom I’d assumed had a friendship. I’ll call this person R.

Ultimately, I left that job and moved east of the mountains and did not see R for several years.

In the meantime, I got married.

Months in advance of my and Ann’s October 2015 wedding, R assured me, “I’ll be there.” R was the first person I invited, and I was counting on it. But on the big day, with no notice, R was a no-show.

Naturally, I wrote to ask why. I didn’t like the explanation I got, but I had faith in R, so I believed what I’d heard and got on with the business of living.

Yet after that, whenever I was in that city and notified my old workmate of my presence, R always had an excuse not to meet up.

What stuns me is that it took four repetitions of this for the truth to hit me: R just didn’t want to meet up, didn’t want to see me. What I failed to understand, appreciate and accept, however painful it was, is that some friendships and relationships are not made of the stuff that lasts a lifetime. They are only for a season.

There are no villains in my story. R did nothing wrong. The issue as so often happens was inside my head.

In the melancholy poem, “Broken Appointment,” the English poet Thomas Hardy writes of an old man who was stood up by the woman he loved, who did not love him back.

“You did not come,

And marching time drew on, and wore me numb,

Yet less for loss of your dear presence there

Than that I thus found lacking in your make

That high compassion which can overbear

Reluctance for pure loving kindness’ sake

Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,

You did not come.

You love not me,

And love alone can lend you loyalty;

I know, and knew it. But, unto the store

Of human deeds divine in all but name,

Was it not worth a little hour or more

To add yet this: Once you, a woman, came

To sooth a time-torn man; even though it be

You love not me?”

The speaker feels that the woman’s non-arrival breaks a sort of ethical code that says human beings (like her) ought to treat others (like him) with “loving kindness.”

Yet the speaker concedes that his position is a bit contradictory. He noted that people reserve this “high compassion” only for those they love most — and, for this woman, he’s not one of those people.

Finally, here are a few words about the married life.

Let me say first I adore Ann. Marrying her was the smartest thing I have ever done. Yet, as we have come to realize, while we are both ADHD, we are very different people: she, the practical one who carries designs in her head and gets things done, I the bookworm.

Disagreements all too often end in verbal flare-ups, mostly initiated by me, I’m sorry to say, when I rant and act like a jerk. They last only seconds, but the hurt in her eyes is a knife in my heart, and I quickly apologize. As I have learned, apologies for such transgressions matter a great deal in marriage

Does any of what I’ve written here resonate with your experience? Love to hear back from you. So, write.

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Robert Whale can be reached at robert.whale@soundpublishing.com.