I completely screwed up. Do you think this person will forgive me?!


Question: I completely screwed up. Do you think this person will forgive me?
I promised someone I would not reveal details of my helping this person, but I'm not going to reveal their identity, nor will I reveal the nature of my assistance to them during this post, therefore keeping my word. I will not even use gender-specific words to refer to this person I tried to assist (but like I said, screwed up.) Not long ago, said person made a post on Y! Answers and did not sound happy with things in their life. Being the nice person I am, my heart went out to them. I used the e-mail system to contact them and say that I saw their post, and said that while I was by no means a professional and therefore couldn't promise results whether they be negative or positive, I would at least like to try to help them. We started talking back and forth and I got a little background information, but it wasn't really enough to help this person, so I asked for more, and that's when I made the above promise not to reveal to anyone that I was helping them, or how - I would keep anything said to me completely confidential, and I have. I told this person what other information I needed and that if I had any kind of a chance to help this person, they had to tell me the whole story and be honest. It won't do either of us any good to lie - we'll both be wasting our time otherwise. I also said that when I gave an "assignment" it would be like school, in that there would be a due date. I also explained (in a "round about sort of way" without using the actual terminology, that I was going to use a tough love sort of approach because from the information gathered at that point, that's what IMO anyway, was needed. I said assignments could not be late unless there was an emergency or ISP outage or some other "good" excuse. Said person's first "assignment" which was to give me further pertinent details needed to help was due this morning at 3:30 am in my time zone (much later in the day for them). When I had yet to receive it by 5 am, I sent an email trying to use tough love and enforce the rules, but I think I came off too hard and could have made a long-experienced Military Drill Sergeant cry like a baby! I later got a reply from this person I was attempting to help saying they were no longer wanting my assistance because I'm too frightening. I emailed back and profusely apologized and fully admitted that I went overboard, being unable to blame this person for wanting to stop talking to me, let alone not wanting my so-called "help". I am posting this here on Y! Answers in hopes that the person I keep making vague references to reads this as they do frequent Y! Answers and sees that not only did I apologize via email but in front of an untold number of people on Yahoo, and I'd do it on any other site(s) too. I don't care - I just hope said person forgives me. To make this an official question, do any of you think this person will forgive me? Should said person forgive me? Or should said person tell me to go to hell and I should just be prepared to move on? (Even if this person doesn't want me to restart my "help", I do like this person and would hate myself if they broke off communication.)

Answers:

It sounds like you need more help than the other person does. Tough love never involves berating the other person, or trying to control their lives. I doubt the person had enough feeling for you one way or another to be 'hurt' by you. And so forgiveness probably isn't really an issue. You were creepy, abusive and weird, so it is very unlikely they will want further communication with you. If their self esteem is low they may contact you back. Personally, I would not.




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