Distanced friendships and people being mad for things they don’t say

In my country, people usually it’s not very direct and confrontational when things happen. We always avoid conflict, but people still expects things from you and gets mad.

I usually never ask my friends for help on anything, because I have a hard time doing that. Usually people expect something in return or think that the thing you asked is rude for reasons that sometimes you aren’t aware of but they think you should. This is why I avoid it, but I was desperate and was afraid that my paper wasn’t going to get published, and it was something important for the lab to get the manuscript published.

I asked help of a friend that also studied letters and works in a lot of editorials of the same subject I work for. We connected to zoom one day to comment my article and he told me how to fix some of the things they asked. He didn’t do them, but he pointed out the mistakes and his help was key for me to get things done fine, mostly in how to get the resolution of the images okay.

But… as I was working far away I didn’t kept comunnicating fluently with him. I think it felt maybe rude for him that I reached out for help, and then, I never asked him to go out to eat or something… we were already a bit distanced so before that interaction we only went out to eat a few times, and I really wanted to do it but with time and obligations o postponed it until I forgot. I was far away most of the year and until late April or May o returned, but usually I give importante to my family and doing things I wasn’t able to do before.

Now he tends not to reply to my messages and he told me happy birthday like a week later and didn’t replied when I asked how he was doing. He also sent the picture in a temporary way and said it was a mistake. I didn’t suspect anything back then even when he didn’t replied to my message because in that moment I didn’t realized it something was wrong. People sometimes forget to reply. But yesterday it was his birthday and I sent a picture and he didn’t respond. Now it’s obvious something is wrong.

And now that I am thinking about it when the article got published I never sent a message to him thanking him or anything that it luckily got published…. Sometimes I forget how obtuse I am, and after the pandemic I have become very detached from people.

Maybe he felt I forgot that he helped me to get it done and he obviously saw our papers published because it’s a national journal from our university.

I want to sent something now, but I don’t know if he will be more angry or if he will think I am stupid. Just looking for nice thoughts around here.

I have issues keeping in touch with all my friends in general….