I lost one of my guy friends because of a misunderstanding. What can I do to repair our friendship?

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Oh man, just about all the grief I’ve ever had in my life, relationship-wise, has been due to misunderstandings. Misunderstandings are so ridiculously common that the old adage, “never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity” is mostly completely irrelevant, because literally everything that goes wrong can just about always be attributed to a misunderstanding, and relationships would go way way smoother if people could just assume misunderstanding first.

Fortunately, dealing with misunderstanding is way easier than dealing with malice or stupidity. Simply apologize for your role in it, particularly the overreaction, and ask if there’s anything you can do to fix it. Most people will appreciate the sincerity and a lot of times will just go back to the way things were.

What’s tricky here is the crossed boundaries. When boundaries are crossed, feelings get aroused that have to be dealt with if you want to get back to harmony. You want to figure out how he feels about you, how you feel about him, and if starting a relationship is appropriate. Talk about these things with him and come to an accord.

This is a much harder conversation to have. Vulnerability helps. The key to being vulnerable is to just share how you feel in a manner that doesn’t indicate that you expect him to respond a certain way about it. Most people will respond really well to this kind of approach, though if he’s stupid or malicious then it’s not the way to go. The malicious you need to avoid, the stupid you need to be abundantly clear about what you want.