Stomping on the Olive Branch

In the spirit of the olive branch I describe, please remember that I can only speak to my side of the conflict. I asked the person in question to self reflect on some issues about friendship, and so here I do the same.

I asked someone who used to be a friend if we could sit and talk things out. It didn't go over well, and he refused my request. He has his reasons, and because we've not had a chance to really talk about things in a constructive manner, I have no real understanding of why things are the way they are, so of course my understanding wears the costume of no communication and my perception. It's a very ugly costume.

I'm left wondering why it is so important to me to repair this friendship. The rift between us has had a negative impact on my social circle and my seat in the circle, I feel like I've failed at keeping up my end of the friendship, there's a mountain of misunderstanding on both sides that I'm afraid will never be fixed, and it's a kick to my pride.

It's not like I have never ended a friendship, or been dumped by a friend, albeit those dead friendships are few and far between. In those previous cases, the person in question and I didn't have enough personal ties to make it important or necessary to patch things up. This time, the ties run deep, we have many mutual friends, we're part of a mutual community. Because of this conflict, it feels to me like my access to and participation in the community is limited to a great extent. The way I phrased it to this person was that I felt like I was being shunned by him. I'm not invited to goings on, and our game group has pretty much crumbled. At Dreamation a couple of weeks ago, he avoided me. On the other hand, said person claims to want to support my creative endeavors. Because of the hurt and the perceived shunning, the support comes off as insincere, and on my end it's unwanted. I like it when my friends support me, not when the support comes from an empty shell of a former friendship.

Disappointingly, the rift came in the midst of olive branches passing back and forth, but we spent too much time trying to fix things with the internet--the singularly worse vehicle for communication. It's marginally better than morse code.

So what happens now? Well, I said I wouldn't make the offer again, and I don't think I will. Even if said person reads this, things will continue as they are. We won't speak to each other, our social circle will remain broken, and given that from where I sit, I lose the most support a whole social and creative circle provides, and I'll continue to think the worst of the situation. And that's the end of that. I tried, I give up.

If I say anything else, my hurt, pride, and misunderstanding will take over, but here are the morals of the story:
Internet communication is harmful to friendships. Let me clarify that! If you take nothing from my sad rant, take this: Internet communication is toxic to friendships.
And sad but true, olive branches do not recover well from stomping.