I don’t quite understand the need to maintain a friendship at the expense of one’s sanity. Don’t work at friendships. They either exist or they don’t. It’s a very black or white situation. Take them for what they are, and not what you want them to be. Having said that, I think I may be in the extreme minority with this opinion.<\/p>\n
I’m not quite sure why that is.<\/p>\n
Take for example the fact that Dudum and I went to the baseball game last night, and had 3 separate conversations composed of facial expressions, eye signals and fragments of sentences. And yet, there was no question in my mind that the two of us completely understood one another. It was phenomenal.<\/p>\n
Or, as another example, how we have a group at work who make fun of each other with a real zest for finding a solid zinger. There’s no malice. There are few hurt feelings, and when feelings get hurt the right actions are taken. The hurt individual runs away to the library, while the hurting individual apologizes a few days later<\/em>. It’s only possible though because there’s an appreciation for the opposite party and what they bring to the table, both good and bad. You have to respect someone to be able to laugh at who they are without meaning to hurt them, and simultaneously have them realize that your jest comes from a place of mutual respect.<\/p>\n So why is it then that people work so hard to maintain friendships that are fictional in entirety or belong to a different time in our lives? The friendship lacks connection, mutual respect or even basic decency. It’s a lot easier to just be honest.<\/p>\n The culprit here is twofold.<\/p>\n One, the past has an incredible hold on us. We feel as if our past owes us the decency of shaping our future. In no way does that take into account how in the present we may have changed who we are.<\/p>\n Two, interpersonal inertia. People build groups, and within the group come the dynamics of the best friend, the social butterfly, the one who makes us laugh, the drama queen\/king, and so on. To be honest is to break this inertia. Because we owe the others the peace and calm of a steady state we are unable to push the rock down the mountain face lest we be deemed selfish or self-serving.<\/p>\n And so we torment ourselves, and convince ourselves that the truth is that somehow, someway this friendship will return to what it was even though we are now who we have become.<\/p>\n This week’s lesson: honesty in friendships is to lie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I don’t quite understand the need to maintain a friendship at the expense of one’s sanity. Don’t work at friendships. They either exist or they don’t. It’s a very black or white situation. Take them for what they are, and not what you want them to be. Having said that, I think I may be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQyAq-5L","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1652,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2015\/12\/13\/self-worth-a-toddlers-point-of-view\/","url_meta":{"origin":357,"position":0},"title":"Self-worth - a toddler's point of view","date":"December 13, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"It's fascinating how much of the reflection we see in the mirror is a reflection of what others have told us about ourselves. In this case, it's more of a metaphorical mirror, and also more of a metaphorical reflection. But it has a bigger impact than the physical one that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Fatherhood"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":526,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2012\/02\/29\/keeping-conversations-moving\/","url_meta":{"origin":357,"position":1},"title":"Keeping conversations moving","date":"February 29, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"With the Clementi case in the news, the shooting at a high school in Ohio, and the latest episode of Glee highlighting how bullying leads to catastrophe, I asked myself what it takes to actually bring positive social change into the lives of kids today. You see, the adults have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Fatherhood"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":437,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2011\/03\/22\/my-sexy-assist\/","url_meta":{"origin":357,"position":2},"title":"My sexy assist","date":"March 22, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I had a really pretty assist today. We have an 8-on-8 league, and last week our game was quite embarrassing. We didn't show up to play mentally at all, and ended up losing 2-7, and I broke my nose in the process. There were a million and one excuses, but\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Sports Stories"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":250,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2010\/01\/21\/being-restful-aint-that-easy\/","url_meta":{"origin":357,"position":3},"title":"Being RESTful ain't that easy","date":"January 21, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"This is a more technical post, and so if you aren't interested in some nuances of browsers and Internet architecture, then you should pass on this one. It's okay, you won't hurt my feelings. Man, we ran into a doozy today. We had one report from a user that people\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Technology"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":267,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2010\/02\/14\/building-fences-makes-us-better\/","url_meta":{"origin":357,"position":4},"title":"Building fences makes us better","date":"February 14, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"We had a really intense week this past week at the office. It was a really good week for me, but definitely one that we will all need to reflect on, and improve upon if things are going to get better. One issue that really stands out to me, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "just thinking out loud"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1273,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2014\/10\/23\/28-days-til-30\/","url_meta":{"origin":357,"position":5},"title":"28 days til 30","date":"October 23, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Surprises (Part I) The biggest surprise for me has been how quickly my body fell off. It's fair to say that I didn't do a killer job of taking care of myself in the back half of college. I ate as I normally did, and exercised much, much less. But\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "just thinking out loud"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}