Social thoughts on a rainy Friday afternoon; people congregate in groups.  From the junior high school clique to the Thirsty Thursday Ladies Margarita Night group you meet every week after yoga class.  Each collective has its own dynamics – sometimes with an alpha type personality who dominates things and sets the tone, or sometimes a group is just a loose collection of people who all know one another and there isn’t anything more to it than that.

Married people often socialize in groups – with couples taking vacations together or going out to dinner together or having house parties or group sex if that’s your thing – but what happens when two members of a social group split off or split up?

Who sorts out the messy details going forward?

One of my girlfriends has recently separated from her husband and she’s not sure what to tell their mutual friends, if anything at all, about what’s going on – but she’s feeling that she’s being pushed into saying something because her estranged husband has all of a sudden started paying a lot of attention to one of our other girlfriends – also a mutual friend. 

I’ve also recently been placed in a very similar situation (not with my marriage tho)  involving mutual friends, and I’m not sure that even I know what if anything I should say about the situation to them.  I told my girlfriend that the best thing in my opinion was to simply let your mutual friends know what’s going on without getting into specifics.  Most of us have been in similar situations and are very understanding.  No one wants to be put in a position of having to make a choice – so the worst thing in my view would be doing things to pressure your friends to make one – what kind of friend does that make you?

Maybe tho the best thing to do is to back off and just let things sort themselves out on their own and trust that your friends will figure out that someone is trying to manipulate them – that way you’ve got a clean conscience and haven’t done anything to jeopardize a relationship you value.  Either way – it seems as tho collateral damage is an inevitability when people don’t conduct themselves with respect and dignity in how they involve others in their own mess.

About 20 months ago I had a falling out with two women – and what made this difficult was that these women had been friends with my husband before I was back in his life.  I remember trying very hard to be respectful of his relationships and friendships, but things deteriorated to the point where a choice had to be made – my husband chose me of course – but the other aspect of this was that I had become friendly with these two women as well.  So I had to make a choice too – and I can’t honestly say that I handled this breakup well.  It got messy, and hopefully I’ve learned some lessons from that.

It would be nice if everyone could get along and none of us were ever in these uncomfortable positions – but that’s wishful thinking.

So, I think my best advice to myself, as well as to my girlfriend, and to anyone else who may also be contemplating these things; just be yourself and try to be the best friend you can be to everyone in your life.  People will respect that and won’t stop being your friend no matter what someone else may say or do – and if they don’t – you really haven’t lost very much in the end, have you?

Enjoy your weekend and remember to be kind to your friends – and a little mood music and video for you too!