My birthday is 3-21-45 and his is 9-13-52. We are best friends, but he has no appreciation of how other people think. What works for him should work for everyone—for instance anyone who doesn’t have a Mac is stupid or I am stubborn because I won’t go see Avatar. He told me, albeit when he was frazzled, that I have stupid ideas. I have tried to talk to him before and it does no good. He just says that’s the way he is and he is not going to even try to change. Well it happened again and we have parted ways. I KNOW it’s not personal. I know he doesn’t mean to be rude but I can only take so much. So should I let my best friend fire me or always be the one who compromises?
First of all you are not stupid. You’re an Aries and Aries is one of the brightest signs of the zodiac because Aries rules the head. Your friend is a Virgo and Virgo is ruled by Mercury—the planet of the mind. Virgos don’t have stupid friends. However people born under Virgo and Aries do tend to be headstrong—but in different ways. Virgos are unapologetic intellectuals. They pride themselves on their analytical abilities and their technical prowess. This is why your friend thinks you should be up-to-date on the latest technological wizardry like Macs and Avatar. He wants the best for you and this is his way of saying it. People born under Aries, however, are what I call “closet” intellectuals. For some reason they put themselves down when it comes to their book learning and will often play dumb. Your friend knows that you’re smarter than you let on and he probably gets impatient when you pretend otherwise. He may see himself as your self-appointed mentor, which might have been all right once, but not now.
You are in the process of changing as a person thanks to Jupiter, the planet of spiritual evolution, traveling through your zodiac sign. You aren’t going to suffer fools gladly—nor are you going to put up with intellectual bullies. I think you’re tired of your friend’s intolerance and given the ornery behavior you describe, it sounds like you’ve had enough of his take-it-or-leave-it attitude as well. Now relationships are all about give-and-take and compromises are a necessary fact of life. But there’s a difference between compromise and feeling compromised. A compromise involves two people working out their differences together by establishing common ground.
I think the best way to talk to your friend is to talk about yourself. Talk about how you need to be who you are in your friendship and not his idea of who you should be. Isn’t that the point of friendship? If you can’t be yourself with your best friend then who can you be yourself with? Being true to oneself should never come at the expense of someone else’s authenticity. This is something that I’m sure your best friend would understand. Have the conversation after August 21, 2010 and you’ll find that your friend is a lot more open-minded about these sorts of things then you might think.