  Spiritual
This week: Should you pretend - to please a friend? Edited by: THANKFUL SONALI Library Class!  
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| What if honesty and concern for a friend's feelings are in conflict with each other? |
| ASIN: B0CJKJMTPD |
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Hi folks!
A friend broke up with her boyfriend, and told me about it this morning.
I feel a mixture of emotions on her behalf - predominantly relief (they'd been rocky for a while), a little bit of worry, some protectiveness, the urge to go and yell at the guy ... I guess what every friend feels when someone they're close to is going through something like this. Also - it brought back memories of a break-up I'd had myself some years ago.
The thing is, right after her phonecall telling me she'd broken up, another friend came over to my place and found me looking worried.
Quickly, and with the best of intentions, she tried to 'talk me out of it'. I was worrying too much on someone else's behalf, I shouldn't let what happened to me some years ago bother me so much now, and so on.
While I'm glad she was concerned for me and grateful for her friendship, I got a teeny bit annoyed, too. I'd JUST disconnected the phone, I needed some time to assimilate, to sort out my feelings, and to 'get over it'. That doesn't happen instantly. While she was here, I laughed and joked and pretended that nothing was bothering me. Right after she left, I was back to 'brooding' - and now, a couple of hours later, it hit me that this would be my topic for my upcoming Spiritual Newsletter, and here I am writing to you. I guess I'm pretty much on my way to being well 'over it'. (Incidentally, this being Christmas week, I had originally planned for this Newsletter to be closer to a Christmas theme!)
What the incident got me thinking about is - she made be appear to be happy and worry-free when I wasn't. I felt I owed it to her as a friend, to make her think her 'talking' had worked. Maybe it even helped to some extent, I can't say for sure.
So is that what friendship is about - for one friend to pretend to make the other feel better that the first friend is feeling better? (I purposely didn't draft that sentence more succinctly, because the confusing drafting reflects the confusion in my mind!) Is she being a good friend to me by 'talking' and am I being a good friend to her by 'pretending' - because, after all, what counts is that both of us care about each other and each others' feelings? Maybe pretending to be happy did lead to a quicker 'recovery' for me, too. Or maybe it didn't. I can't tell.
Then there was one time I didn't pretend - a friend invited me for a party and then had a peg too many and puked. Two guys brawled over a girl to dance with. It wasn't my sort of party and I left early. (I guess I'm sounding judgemental here because I really didn't like the party!) The next day, she asked if I'd had fun, and I replied that I hadn't. She got all hurt and said that I should've been polite and pretended to have had fun. I said that she'd asked me a question which I'd answered honestly, I was sorry if it hurt her. It took us a few days to work it out and get back to being friends. As I re-read this, I realise how childish the whole episode sounds - I said, she said. So ... should I have pretended? Would it have sounded more mature then? Would it have been better for the friendship?
I don't know.
I really don't have any answer to the question. It's just something I'm thinking about - is honesty, or feelings? Both, I guess, depending on the situation!
Thanks for listening!
- Sonali |
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| What do you do when you're asked to choose between honesty and feelings? Always choose honesty, always choose feelings, or let it depend on the situation? |
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Spiritual: December 20, 2011 Issue [#4774]
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