Friendship: a reply
Jan. 16th, 2002 02:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chrisvenusI was reading sally's LJ (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
winterthing) and came across an article entitled friendship. I started typing a reply but then realised it would be far too long. :) So, here is a link to the original article: http://www.livejournal.com/talkpost.bml?itemid=20421686 and once you have read that you can go on to reading my reply.
Friendship. Hmm... Well, firstly I will say that your comments on different degrees of friendship are perfectly valid and are to a large extent based on trust. If two people are identical except you trust one more than the other than you are likely to consider the more trusted to be more of a friend. My reasoning being that if you trust somebody more you will feel more comfortable around them (ie not owrrying about things you do and say as much because you trust them not to make fun, take offence or whatever) and therefore they go higher in the friendship thing.
Treating people differently will always happen. There are are far too many situations in which you have to favour one person over another. Sometimes they are just minor things (who gets front seat when you are giving lifts and two people are arguing about it) and sometimes they are major (you have two tickets to the biggest event of the year, everybody you know wants to go: who do you take?).
This question I think is not a good question. If you consider it betrayal then I don't think you should do it (with possible provisos of greater good if you do, etc.). However, if you don't think it is betrayal and others do then I think that the difference of opinion there is more important. www.dict.org provides a lot of definitions of "betray" which can sharpen an understanding of what it is to betray them. "To prove faithless or treacherous to, as to a trust or one who trusts; to be false to" is one such example. It implies a need for the person who betrays you to trust you and if you have gained that trust falsely then there is something weird going on. Either a) you have misled them as to your opinion on how much of a friend you are to them or b) they are missing the signs completely and trust you when they shouldn't. In the first case I would say that you are in the wrong for deliberately misleading them. In the second case I think it is your responsibility to make it more clear to them what the situation is.
The fact that somebody rates you more highly as a friend than you rate them shouldn't be a problem really. It happens. Often it will just sort itself out, usually it doesn't matter. It being hard to quantify friendships it is impossible really to say that you like somebody as much as they like you.
I do agree that the two things you describe are very different things as well. They are on the simplest level the same thing. Saying things that you have heard or that you think about another person. The crucial difference though is that the latter (bitching) can cause damage to the person in question whereas gossip won't.
I myself have only a few times properly bitched. This was after I had been deeply upset by somebody and I told several people my perception of events whilst very upset which was quite nasty to the person in question. As I cooled down over a few days I realised that what I said was a bit harsh and very biased so I did my best to talk to those I had bitched to and tell them that I exaggerated the case, etc and even took back a few things that I still think are true. Unfortunately in just two days damage had been done and bad rumours went around. There seemed to be as many bad things about me (due to previous form from a time I was very drunk) as there was about her. I still have no clear idea of what long term damage was done by this and I don't think all the damage was just done by things I said but also by people saying things they had perceived without any basis in fact.
I give that example to allow a clear comparison about that and the gossiping I have done recently that most springs to mind, that is spreading news about simon and caroline's engagement. I told a few people that I had heard that they were engaged because I thought it was interesting news and because the worst that might happen if it turned out to be false was slight embarrassment for the two of them. (I spread the gossip only to people who knew caroline and not anybody who would know simon since I was aware that he had relatively recently split with his previous.
Those two are totally distinct examples falling into two different categories. As you draw the line between them I'm sure there is a point in the middle where it is hard to say whether it is gossip or bitching but that is a personal judgement call.
In addition I do think that there is a part of bitching that is harmless. I may be wrong on this, I don't know. However, some bitching isn't a problem. eg. if I bitch and say that my housemate is a clown who never tidies up after himself. Its bitching but I don't consider it destructive. The other possibly more common example in my case is a friend who I get together with (not often enough) and bitch a lot about people. Its not serious really, its just a bit of fun really and we both know this so it doesn't hurt anybody (I think).
Lastly I agree that a confidence is a confidence. However, I think that if somebody tells you at the time you have to accept it as a secret. ie if you find out your arch-nemesis has to be in bed by 8:30 in the evevning or his mummy won't read him a bed-time story and he then says "shhh... its a secret" then unless you agree to it being a secret then its not really a confidence. You should of course make it clear at the time, preferably before they tell you that you won't keep the secret though.
That having been said it is very hard to say "no" when somebody says, "If i told you a secret would you keep it" since you know that saying "no" means you don't get to hear the secret and everybody suffers from curiosity...
winterthing) and came across an article entitled friendship. I started typing a reply but then realised it would be far too long. :) So, here is a link to the original article: http://www.livejournal.com/talkpost.bml?itemid=20421686 and once you have read that you can go on to reading my reply.Friendship. Hmm... Well, firstly I will say that your comments on different degrees of friendship are perfectly valid and are to a large extent based on trust. If two people are identical except you trust one more than the other than you are likely to consider the more trusted to be more of a friend. My reasoning being that if you trust somebody more you will feel more comfortable around them (ie not owrrying about things you do and say as much because you trust them not to make fun, take offence or whatever) and therefore they go higher in the friendship thing.
Treating people differently will always happen. There are are far too many situations in which you have to favour one person over another. Sometimes they are just minor things (who gets front seat when you are giving lifts and two people are arguing about it) and sometimes they are major (you have two tickets to the biggest event of the year, everybody you know wants to go: who do you take?).
"Is it excusable to do things which people would count as a betrayal and then excuse it to yourself on the grounds that you do not count them as a 'true friend' or a 'rank one friend' even if they count you as being much more important to them?"
This question I think is not a good question. If you consider it betrayal then I don't think you should do it (with possible provisos of greater good if you do, etc.). However, if you don't think it is betrayal and others do then I think that the difference of opinion there is more important. www.dict.org provides a lot of definitions of "betray" which can sharpen an understanding of what it is to betray them. "To prove faithless or treacherous to, as to a trust or one who trusts; to be false to" is one such example. It implies a need for the person who betrays you to trust you and if you have gained that trust falsely then there is something weird going on. Either a) you have misled them as to your opinion on how much of a friend you are to them or b) they are missing the signs completely and trust you when they shouldn't. In the first case I would say that you are in the wrong for deliberately misleading them. In the second case I think it is your responsibility to make it more clear to them what the situation is.
The fact that somebody rates you more highly as a friend than you rate them shouldn't be a problem really. It happens. Often it will just sort itself out, usually it doesn't matter. It being hard to quantify friendships it is impossible really to say that you like somebody as much as they like you.
And am I right to have a clear distinction in my mind between gossip (good - can include all the nice things I want to say about people as well as trying to find out what is going on with my friends before I put my foot in it) and bitching (bad - judgemental and often leads to witch hunts which I will not have). Is it just a distinction in my head?
I do agree that the two things you describe are very different things as well. They are on the simplest level the same thing. Saying things that you have heard or that you think about another person. The crucial difference though is that the latter (bitching) can cause damage to the person in question whereas gossip won't.
I myself have only a few times properly bitched. This was after I had been deeply upset by somebody and I told several people my perception of events whilst very upset which was quite nasty to the person in question. As I cooled down over a few days I realised that what I said was a bit harsh and very biased so I did my best to talk to those I had bitched to and tell them that I exaggerated the case, etc and even took back a few things that I still think are true. Unfortunately in just two days damage had been done and bad rumours went around. There seemed to be as many bad things about me (due to previous form from a time I was very drunk) as there was about her. I still have no clear idea of what long term damage was done by this and I don't think all the damage was just done by things I said but also by people saying things they had perceived without any basis in fact.
I give that example to allow a clear comparison about that and the gossiping I have done recently that most springs to mind, that is spreading news about simon and caroline's engagement. I told a few people that I had heard that they were engaged because I thought it was interesting news and because the worst that might happen if it turned out to be false was slight embarrassment for the two of them. (I spread the gossip only to people who knew caroline and not anybody who would know simon since I was aware that he had relatively recently split with his previous.
Those two are totally distinct examples falling into two different categories. As you draw the line between them I'm sure there is a point in the middle where it is hard to say whether it is gossip or bitching but that is a personal judgement call.
In addition I do think that there is a part of bitching that is harmless. I may be wrong on this, I don't know. However, some bitching isn't a problem. eg. if I bitch and say that my housemate is a clown who never tidies up after himself. Its bitching but I don't consider it destructive. The other possibly more common example in my case is a friend who I get together with (not often enough) and bitch a lot about people. Its not serious really, its just a bit of fun really and we both know this so it doesn't hurt anybody (I think
I do think that a confidence is a confidence no matter who it comes from - and that is nothing to do with friendship.
Lastly I agree that a confidence is a confidence. However, I think that if somebody tells you at the time you have to accept it as a secret. ie if you find out your arch-nemesis has to be in bed by 8:30 in the evevning or his mummy won't read him a bed-time story and he then says "shhh... its a secret" then unless you agree to it being a secret then its not really a confidence. You should of course make it clear at the time, preferably before they tell you that you won't keep the secret though.
That having been said it is very hard to say "no" when somebody says, "If i told you a secret would you keep it" since you know that saying "no" means you don't get to hear the secret and everybody suffers from curiosity...
Re: small and fuzzy thinks...
Date: 2002-01-16 03:17 pm (UTC)As for the latter, as I said, if I thought you'd object to it being spread I wouldn't have done so. :)