I left a partnership early this year and looking back, i was glad i did as it spiraled towards dictatorship towards the end. No one is to be blamed as communication is a two way street. Perhaps i am a poor partner as well.

Been going through the toughest 6 months i ever had. Lots of turbulence, from simple misunderstandings to even having someone saying i insult people with money when they are just assuming without even knowing what i was going through at that time. I knew what was happening behind my back but i choose to keep quiet out of respect, gratitude and friendship. Instead still offered opportunities to work together but it was refused outright.

Perhaps it was not meant to be given my lack of social skills and every time i thought to introduce a deal, someone will remind me of how it was refused and discouraged me from continuing to offer. Still i did twice more but there was just no response. I even went to his place a couple of times but though the car was there, perhaps the person wasn't.

I am still very full of gratitude towards the person even though business did not proceed as planned. I guess my idea of a partnership back in November last year was very different, to me a partner represent making a decision and then moving forward together once agreement is reached. It should not be dictated by just one party but through consensus. Both himself and myself rejected quite a few potential partners who have offered us at different times but i guess it was not meant to be.

Worse case is to point out things (both good or bad) to people which i have a bad habit of doing. Towards the end, my folks told me to just move on. It was indeed a learning experience for me. It was also funny that the people so cordial and nice to him today were the very people who kept asking me to break off contact with him as soon as the deal was over. It was easy to say but very hard as we were also living near to each other.

I really enjoyed the good chats we had as we learned from each other, it was probably one of the best times i had.

Then some folks went behind my back and contacted some of my friends for deals. I understand, just because i don't try to contact their doesn't mean that others can't but if forces my friends to have to choose and sometimes the length of time the choice did take some time. I just kept quiet and pretended not to know but sometimes its better not to know than to know. I choose to ignore for the first 2-3 folks he approached until it became a litle sneaky. All this while i offered to work with that person or introduce my friends to him.

Even my friends offered him to do joint deals but in front of me, the deals was refused outright, only to continue behind my back and when he refused to do joint deals with me, my friends were forced to choose, to repay them, i informed my staff not to charge them anything at all. Perhaps because some deals went to my firm, he thought i must have gotten commissions but truth be told i didn't. The stakeholders will know the truth.

Didn't know how i made it back then. There was a lot of uncertainty with my work then and it was a real challenge trying to balance life, work and business. Especially with work as together with all the commitments and last minute changes to both work and business, i really got tired.

To a point that i was barely hanging on every day but i still put on a brave front and worked straight day and nights just to get things done.

In the end, communication was kept to a minimum between us and i must say i must have offended him with my choice of words or communication medium. I blamed myself for the longest time and even changed settings to stop updates and to restrict access to my postings on Facebook just in case he thought i was showing off.

I really thought highly of our friendship, i still think highly of him and his family no matter what happened. Still remember the silly me, giving radio control cars to his kids and playing with them with my kids after what i thought was the end of their school day. But the anger his wife showed that time when calling them back really was a bit sad.

It really deterred me from talking to him and going over for a long time as i felt very unwelcomed.