I've never been vocal on this topic before, for fear of alienating those closest to me. It seems some of that is inevitable anyway - no matter what I do. Still, it is my perhaps unreasonable hope that those who truly care for me won't be offended by my choices.
I have a personal principle that goes something like this: I'll stay friends with you if you'll stay friends with me. Simple enough. But it becomes an awful lot harder when any two of my friends have such a bad barney that they won't talk to each other any more.
(You might be surprised how often this happens.)
However, I am still talking to both.
This leaves me with a gigantic heartache - I know some of what happened, they both told me, yet I refuse to pick a side. It's not my fight. This is frequently seen as a betrayal (by one or both parties) on my part, and they distance themselves.
Never mind the fact that fights so major will often have fault on one side as well as the other. Even saying that much tends to make everyone mad at me, so I haven't, until now.
There's plenty more to say about this, and it may irritate some people. I hope that you know enough about me by now to be firm in the belief that if you are a friend o' mine, I am with you - no matter who else I am also with.
4 comments:
I can identify. I have kin who tolerated each other and were actually outwardly friendly for 35 years. Then all of a sudden, it's a grudge match. One of them makes a concerted effort to keep me out of it, but the other goes on about how if I still love That One then I'm a traitor.
Y'know it reminds of the girl drama that I dealt with as a teacher. I'm weird ... even as a teacher ... most teachers didn't like having classes with a boy-girl ratio skewed toward the boys. If the ratio wasn't balanced, they wanted more girls.
Me? No, thank you, but no. If it can't be balanced, I'd've rather had too many guys.
Why? Lost my marbles, eh? No. With boys, conflict looks like a cocked fist and sounds like trash talk or even swear words.
With girls, conflict breeds and festers under the surface, staying hidden until all of a sudden WHAMMO!! It blows like Krakatoa and Vesuvius all at once.
I feel for you, Grace. When conflicting parties get you in the middle, they don't seem to understand that you're a big enough person to have love for two people who hate each other.
I found myself in a similar situation at a former workplace. Rather than take sides, I tried to remain honest, fair and unbiased - but being in the middle can be a very uncomfortable place. As you say, both sides want you to support them and feel you are betraying them if you don't take their side. In the end one side "won" and I'm no longer working there - but given the my time again, I would have done the same thing.
Or more likely, a wise friend will tell you, "Don't you dare stop talking to them - don't stop being their friend; that's not what I would want for you." Now, /that's/ the kind of friend I seek ...
Well said!!! I am glad to call you friend.
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