At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)
Withdraw thy foot from thy neighbour’s house; Lest he be weary of thee, and so hate thee.
Proverbs 25:17
One of the things that friends do is wreck their friendships. This is not what is intended, but that doesn’t keep it from happening.
This proverb says that it happens by means of wearing out your welcome. It is always a good idea to leave while everybody is still having fun. If you have overstayed your welcome, and then finally say something like “well, I guess we ought to think about going, and your host is immediately standing right by the door, holding your coat and hat, then this should be your indication that you have done a Prov. 25:17 blooper.
Always leave when people are sorry to see you go. And this is because the alternative is staying until they are exasperated by the shape of your head. If you believe that your hosts would be happy to have you stay until 9 pm, then you should make a point of being done by 8:45. Every five minutes before 9 is the equivalent of ten minutes, and every five minutes after 9 is the equivalent of half an hour.
Once you have overstayed your welcome, and your host notices it, he goes through two stages. The first is that he grows weary. And when he grows weary of you it becomes easy to find fault—first with this particular tedious situation, but then the exasperation can grow and expand, with the end result is that he hates you. Once the fault finding begins, it can be difficult to stop.
The sin here is that of taking a friendship for granted. You start to believe that because you “are friends” you are somehow entitled to take presumptive advantage of him. And that is way to lose friends. We sometimes think that when we have close friends, they are supposed to cover our little discourtesies. And even though they might do so, the discourtesy of taking advantage this way can grow to the point where it is hard to overlook.
