Let me break this to you gently and slowly:  YOU GET ON PEOPLE’S NERVES.

We all do.  We get on the nerves of people who love us, work with us, go to church with us. Truth be known, if we have even an ounce of self awareness we should get on our own nerves.  So unless we live alone on an island, we will experience the tension of strained and/or broken relationships.

The danger for any person and any community is to live in illusions.  There is no growth when we live in falsehood and illusion, and cover up tension.   (Jean Vanier, Community and Growth, pp. 134-135)

Communities need tensions if they are to grow and deepen.  Tensions can break people or bring them back to essentials.

When everything is going well, when the community feels it is living successfully, its members tend to let their energies dissipate, and to listen less carefully to each other.  Tensions bring people back to the reality of their helplessness; obliging them to spend more time in prayer and dialogue, to work patiently to overcome the crisis and refind lost unity, making them understand that the community is more than just a human reality, that is also needs the spirit of God if it is to live and deepen.  (pp. 120-121)

May God’s spirit infuse our relationships and communities.