What would you do in this situation?
Imagine that you had two friends who used to be friends themselves, then had an argument. One of the friends (A) apologised (even though it was only 50% her fault) and tried to make it up with the other friend (B), but this friend wouldnt forgive or apologise herself and decided to break the friendship, causing the other friend (A) a lot of pain for months and months.
What would you do in this situation? Would you try and keep both of them as friends, but seperately or would you take the side of the hurt friend and be less friendly towards the other?
The reason I ask this is that I am in the position of the hurt friend (A), but having finally gotten over the loss of friend B, I am now feeling hurt because the one good friend that I have left is becoming more and more friendly with B, even though she knows how much B has hurt me by ignoring me. This friend also said a lot of negative things to me about B, but as she is so friendly to B it is difficult to know what she really thinks. I cant understand how she can possibly be at all friendly towards B, knowing how much B has hurt me, especially since her and B were never particularly good friends (unlike me and her or me and B).
So I am wondering whether I am right to feel hurt by my friend's action, or whether it is better for her to keep the peace with B (we all work together) even though she secretly thinks these negative things about B. Or whether it is none of my business that they are friends together and me being hurt by it is my problem. I am trying to see things from my friend's perspective (I gave up on imagining Bs perspective long ago), but I cant dissociate myself from the negative emotion that I feel regarding B. I am sort of paranoid that B is trying to hurt me more by being particularly nice to my friend and trying to take her away from me. How do I know if my friend is saying bad things about me to B, like she says about B to me?
These theory of mind problems are my greatest obstacle - they really have a negative impact on my life. I have already lost another friend from a similar situation to the above. But try as I might, I just cannot put myself in my friend's position and can only feel my own feelings about the problem.
lelia
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Oh yuck. I would find a different job and different friends in a club or special interest group. (I find my friends in my church) It never pays to try to make friends in the office.
I don't know the details, so I can only guess that you might need to take things less personally. Easy to say but hard to do. If a person is a gossip, they will gossip about you or whoever sits at your desk. Do you want to be involved? Accept that you will be gossiped about.
oh geez. i've never had many friends but the ones i did have had friends that they had problems with but somehow they were all decent to me. my best suggestion would be that if you really want to be friends with the friend that is still friends with B then try and be friends without B being a source of tension between you two...if that makes sense. I dont really get gossip so I dont let gossip be a topic of conversation with me and my friends (although they love to gossip amongst each other) and it seems to work fine. I guess not knowing the content of the situation makes analysing it a bit difficult. but if nothing works i would have to agree with lelia that finding different friends, ones that share similar morals with you, is you your best bet. i dont know if half of what i said makes sense. i hope so.
best of luck,
Al
AndersTheAspie
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Location: On the edge of civilization. Denmark.
If the original argument was caused equally by both (A) and (B) then I probably wouldn't side with anyone. I would think that (B) has the right to be angry with (A) if (B) really thinks the argument is (A)'s fault. I would try to reconsile my two friends ofcourse, but I can't controll the way they feel about one another.
This friend of yours, (B), is being an idiot, but people have the right to act like idiots from time to time. Would you just leave your friend if you thought he was acting like an idiot in one isolated case?
Another thing you might want to consider: You say that this friend of yours (C?) knows how much (B) hurt you, but does she really? Does she know that you fear that (B) is trying to steal her away from you? If she doesn't know the full extend of things, then you can't really blame her.
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Once I knew everything, then I got smarter, now the only thing I know is that I know nothing.
Strange how that worked out isn't it?