If you decide I am your enemy....

[sibelian]

51. An excellent question! Yes, in your scenario, I am also responsible.

There follows the problem of who decides what the appropriate symbol or act of friendship might be. LOTS of relationships fall to bits through bargaining and pretending to agree so that you can get something else that you're not really talking about, (sometimes because you're hiding what you really want from yourself...) There has to be an "us". Much can be made of putting on faces and striking attitudes to coerce the pretense of respect instead of simply respecting one another. There has to be the thing we both want. If there's no "us" there's no friendship.

For me, the best gesture is one freely chosen and acceptable to both parties. It's very easy for one side to go off and choose what the friendship should look like without consulting the other.

TBH, I really was trying to avoid attributing the game I described in the OP to any one group as the game's kind of ubiquitous...