The Frustration is...Mutual
(Considering the recent emergent/pomo discussions about men and women lately... see here or here to read the conversations...)

Friendship and freedom imply a concern for the belonging needs of a person as well as for his or her need to be separate but related individual. The practice of hospitality is demanding because it involves a constant going out to the other without possessing him or her and demanding a return in kind. [p. 116]

What values and attitudes and ways of seeing must permeate my perception, not just of you, but of the whole of reality, so as to transmit acceptance and valuing? Affirmation does not mean pushing the affirmation button and producing a kind or praising statement, though a kind and praising statement that issues from a genuinely appreciative person has a dimension of credibility that distinguishes it in quality from a more superficial and tritely bland "charity". Affirmation never merely pats people on the head for a job well done. Affirmation is deeply about the worth of the person, and the worth of a person does not rely solely on deeds and performance. [p. 125]

...we shall not be healed by having affirmation practiced upon us. That is condescension, which exacerbates the inner loneliness. The healing, the unlearning and new learning, indeed the conversion required to change our unaffirmed emptiness is a long-term drinking-in of the spirit of affirming others. They offer us much more than the pseudo-affirmation of do-gooders, who must walk softly around our propensity for hurt, so as not to offend or challenge us. Affirmation is not about avoidance of hurt. It is about loving. Love gets to know us, to know what we can and cannot bear, risks stretching our capacity for relationship, challenges us to enlarged being. It loves, but is not soft. [p. 129, bold emphasis mine]

--from Poets, Prophets and Pragmatists: A New Challenge to Religious Life
by Evelyn Woodward