Should I delete my friend if he flees and is rude after I make a mistake?

I got a question here from a reader:

Friendly, I need your advice. I have a friend who isn't very nice. I help him with a Jade Oni fight (which I'm not even at yet). I use one spell he doesn't want me to use and he flees so I have to beat Jade Oni myself. I beat him but it still wasn't nice of him to flee. Should I delete him as a friend?
Plz answer

Hey, you know, this kind of stuff happens all the time. I’ll throw out a few traps and then someone will wand through them. No big deal, but only because of my attitude about it and because I've set up my deck to account for stuff like that happening.

I keep a deeper deck than some just to have a boy scout type of attitude toward it (be prepared). I don't have the most full deck in the game, yet I don't have my deck peeled back to bear-bones-exactly-what-I-need. And my attitude is that those traps are out there for anyone to use. True, a trap in the hands of a skilled player can make long battles short, but when you play this game with others, it’s cooperative play. You account for mistakes.

Now I can see being a little more than just "regular upset" if I had spent hours crafting a treasure card trap and someone came in and blew it, but if I was being really uptight about trap cards, I'd just turn my teleports off and not let anyone come to me.

But, to answer your question (sorry, I'm feeling long-winded), you know, it’s a little like when you go out to eat at Chuck E Cheese, right? They bring your party a big ol’ pitcher of soda for the whole family and a big pizza as well. Some may drink a lot of that soda, or some may hold off knowing they are going to be gaining 10 pounds of bubbling fat if they drink more than half a glass tonight, but by the end of the meal, hopefully everybody has had enough to eat.

Now, say I grabbed the piece of pizza that you really wanted (and you had told me you wanted it) and took a big bite. Would the other person run away crying about it? Maybe, but they’d probably hit me in the arm and say something like "HEY, I TOLD YOU I WANTED THAT PIECE OF PIZZA" and gave me a look of disgust, right? And you’d probably respond, “ah, dangit . . . MY BAD!” and you’d work it out. And really in the end, the person probably didn’t care so much about the piece of pizza, what they cared about was that you didn’t listen to them.

You see, there’s four ways people generally deal with problems in life: Positive active, Positive passive, Negative active, and Negative passive. (bear with me here . . . lemme 'splain.)

Positive Active reactions between people are when you have a discussion or talk about the problem and try to come to a resolution. Voices may be raised, but in the end both sides usually feel satisfied with the conclusion.

Positive Passive reactions are where you maintain your friendship by letting them basically have their way and not making waves because, hey, you like them and they'd probably do the same for you.

Negative Active reactions would be to do something that solves the problem in a way that could be perceived badly, like delete the friend in your friend list, leave the situation mad, or maybe even have a fight.

Negative Passive reactions would be to simply ignore the problem and hope it goes away, usually to the point where you feel “stepped on.”

So in the end, your friend had a Negative Active reaction. He left. Your initial reaction to the situation was Negative Passive. You ignored it.

Now, given all that preface, you might see that your question really is, should I also have a Negative Active reaction in response to his Negative Active response? Or as you say, delete them off my friends list.

The golden rule applies I think. Act toward others as you want them to act towards you. You probably wouldn't want them to delete you off their friends list if you fled a fight in anger. You'd probably want them to talk to you about it and try to make amends, right?

Unfortunately the situation is passed and that makes it very hard to go back and discuss what happened yesterday. BUT, if you come prepared (like a boy scout) so that the next time a problem happens you can take a positive active approach, things will be better.

It's hard though, right?

What's a cool positive active thing you could do?

How about buy your friend a rare trap treasure card to make up for it? Then the next time you see him, open up a trade window and say something along the lines of, "Hey, I wanted to make it up to you for blowing your trap the other day. Hope you like it and that you'll let me fight alongside you again sometime. peace. Sorry for the misunderstanding" I think you'll find him apologizing for fleeing and being mad . . . if not, just know that he should be . . . but, not everyone has class. If he keeps being unapologetic time and time again (if this kind of stuff reoccurs), *then* maybe it'd be time to remove him from your friends list.

Going back to the Chuck E. Cheese story, what could you do after stealing your friend's piece of pizza? How about give your friend some of your tokens and tell him sorry for not hearing him. Seriously, the hope is maybe in the process, you'd teach them how to act maturely when you come up against confrontation over a mistake you made.


What would Chuck E do?

In my opinion, yes, they were rude, but you should show class. Lead by example and all that.

And that's how I feel about it at 8:00 pm on 11 August 2009.

Happy Dueling!