If you've followed me for awhile you know I'm always full of thoughts and one particular thought has been nagging at me, so let's dive in. Why do we choose sides? My thoughts on this topic below...
Divorce - the end of marriage, and the end of friendships too?
One of the more insidious aspects of divorce is the conscious malice that unfolds out of our mouth's about our former lovers with our closest allies, sometimes unconsciously. I used to catch myself during the most bitter times of divorce ruminating with friends (all of them still married) and finding myself becoming “that guy” that: Only. Talks. About. Divorce. And during those conversations I would be telling, from my perspective, all the evil things that had gone on. We do that, it helps us come to terms with our judgement against ourselves and our former partner.
My ex-wife is vacationing this week for the holidays with some of my former friends...
When the divorce unfolded they chose sides. I’m not sure why that happened. We were close friends... we vacationed together, beached together and truth be told, I was friends with them first. So then why are people outside of our boxes forced to make a decision on who they can remain allies with? I’m unclear why this unfolds the way that it does.
Are people just simply uncomfortable with discomfort? Unable to have those sensitive conversations because of a preconceived notion around what they think happened or what they were told happened? If you were my friend for years, why are you suddenly not my friend? When nothing occurred related to us, why do you feel like you suddenly can no longer be friends and are forced to choose a side?
We are a very fickle race aren’t we? We base most of our decisions on bad information or research or collected anomalies that somebody else told us. We follow so-called experts that we see online. We base our lifestyles on social media profiles of someone else whom we've never even met. And sadly, rarely do we take the time to investigate research with an open mind nor do we even know how to think on our own.
We base our assumptions like we base our political assumptions - how can I have an opinion about one topic and you have a completely different opinion about the same topic? How can you decide to no longer be friends with someone but remain friends with someone else even though prior to that moment you were best friends with both of them?
In the end those who remain by your side are the ones that are meant to remain by your side, but then again I don’t even know what that means because the ones that chose to remain by my side, why did they?
I have an alternative solution - remain neutral and tell the divorcees that you are friends with both and want to remain that way, refrain from discussing your divorce, unless specifically asked, and remember that someday you may need someone to be your friend. Can anyone else explain or relate? I can't be the only person that has felt this personally?
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