@turbomoist @awg Resentment is one of the greatest emotional indicators of where you are in life. Resentment towards a person usually stems from having a dialogue with that person then suddenly realizing that said person isn't entertaining any of your ideas and really doesn't give a shit about what you have to say. Or more specifically, it's when your expectations for that person are completely incongruous with the person's actions. Then you feel contempt for that person if you have any backbone. Both emotions tell you that there's something deeply and fundamentally wrong with the social interaction at hand. So you have to adjust for that.

I had this epiphany more than a year ago now, and it completely flipped my social interactions upside down. I realized that I resented most of the "friends" I had in my life, and I figured that I had to adjust my expectations and actions accordingly. From then on, I only ever opened myself up when a conversation involved mutual respect. Boom, I lost a lot of "friends" but the ones I kept remain rock-solid to this day simply because every single one of our conversations were dialogues (not debates or monologues) and were grounded in mutually-acknowledged and mutually-given respect.

Now, there's an issue with that sort of approach. Respect is a two-way road, and it's also earned (not given). So how can you really respect someone you don't know? You just give them that baseline of being polite and socially-adjusted, and you simply don't disrespect someone until they disrespect you. You don't have to respect someone new, you just have to not outright disrespect them until reason is given. It's a stupidly convoluted way of saying "do unto others etc etc" but it's usually better to lay it out in actual terms instead of aphorisms and platitudes.