Faux Amis

Friends are kind of a touchy subject. I mean, you never really want to doubt a freind's truthfulness, or their trust but sometimes you just can't deal with what's going on. Like, you'll take a look around, and realize that your little circle of friends is more like a mangled oval, with bits and peices ripped out from the inside. Making friends is the easy part, in my mind anyway. It's keeping them, and knowing whether they're right to keep that's the hard part. It's sort of hard to explain in an intro paragraph, so read on, dear nonexistant audience, read on.

I was sitting on my laptop and chatting with a few friends of mine when the subject shifted from whatever we were talking of to the trustworthyness of people, and from there, how much you should trust your friends. It's probably the greatest irony I've been witness to recently, which is why I must ruin it by acknowledging it. It's a tough notion to accept, that your friends may nopt be right for you, and an even tougher one to act on. Cutting a poisonous friend loose is something everyone should do as soon as they find one, but actually going ahead and doing so requires a lot of courage, and even more important, a veritable well of tact.

People have feelings, regardless of whether or not they relaize you do, so if you want to still stay on top of the hill as the good guy here, you'd need to be quite aware of how they'll react beforehand, and work to ease them through it. Of course, what I just said makes no sense, so I'll reiterate. Cutting a poisonous friend loose is good for you, but talking to them about it is good for everyone. You may not be the only one in the group who has a problem with that person, or some of their habits, and as such you should realize that just cutting them loose isn't enough. You can't just write off a friendship. A friendship has it's ups and downs, and rather unlike a badly written paragraph, simply erasing it isn't going to work, nor is it viable. Talking to the person about what it is they do that annoys you may solve the problem, and it is only when both sides cannot reach a compromise that you should cut off said friend, and even then it's best to attempt to do so amicably.

Anyway, although I couldn't say I don't have any poisonous friends, my specific problem was with being the poisonous friend. I know a guy who's got a few quirks, and the rest of our friends find him slightly odd, as do I. But I want to help him through it without simply ridiculing him behind his back, and it's a hard thing to do. I'm not some tactless snob, but I'm not Mr. Debonair either. I want to help him change his ways, but isn't that wrong? Why sould I attempt to change another, and make them conform to what I find reasonable? I don't know if what I'm doing is right or not, but I hope that my intentions sort of justify it. I mean, it's not as if I want to change him out of an obsessive need for manipulation, it's just that I hate seeing him being ridiculed, and I hate doing so to another. I suppose it stems from guilt, but eh, if I help him out with this, and if he's willing to take my help, wouldn't it be a good thing? Eh, I need to think about this.