Weakness

I have a friend that has an ultimate weakness. He has a different word for it. I know that, but using that word, I feel, will only confuse things more, so for now, I'm just going to call it a weakness, knowing that he would prefer to call it something else.

The weakness.

So his weakness is, that, a certain part of him needs be feel needed. In other words, he gravitates, somewhat subconsciously to people he knows needs his help. This doesn't always mean literally. It's not like "Hi, I need you to help me in chemistry." It's more in the sense of "I need you to support me, I need you to listen to me, I need you to be my mental and emotional base." Without meaning to, he finds these people.

I believe, I am one of those people.

But at the same time, I'm trying to graduate out of that.

Coming to college, I finally found what I'm comfortable with. People may say that I'm changing but I see it more as becoming - finally becoming who I was born to be.

I did some 'needing' early on. It was rare for a person to be able to sit across from me for three hours and let me talk about my problems. I thought it was out of the kindness of his caring heart. It was, for the most part. But the other 30 to 40% of him was doing it because he was feeling needed. If a person feels needed, he gravitates toward them.

This is not a bad thing. I know this because I'm a similar person. I gravitate towards people who have certain needs. It's not like we actively seek them, it just happens. But as I become more independent, I realize that this friend that I've known for a very, very long time has come to fall into a natural rhythm and habit of assuming that whenever I want to talk to him, it's to share some sort of neediness. So it seems that whenever I talk to him, he's assuming that some sort of needy, sad, frustrating, venting is going to occur, when really, all I want to talk to him is about the recent book that I read or the movie I saw.

SO how do I change this? How do I make him realize that at times I may need his insight and his willingness to listen, but at times, I just want to talk to him about life?

I could either just tell him that.

Or just change the nature of what I talk about.

I don't know. I'm working on it.