I need to say something.
To all my friends and beyond: Sometimes being “loyal” to our friends, is NOT being supportive. There are shaded areas in the venn diagram between being loyal, being supportive, and enabling unhealthy and damaging behavior. Please know, that loyalty, though normally honorable, is often the forefront to what is unintentionally enabling pathological behavior.
In times when we are presented with “sides” to choose, we often resort to an act of being “loyal” and choosing the closest “side” by relativity, perhaps the “side” we knew initially. There are a number of ass backwards things about this that must be reconsidered before any further action if we intend on being truly and actually loyal to those who are dear to us. Let’s say that 2 parties disagree: one is our friend, they other is a person who don’t know very well (a person nonetheless). Herein the two shall be referred to as ‘Friend’ and ‘Someone’.
1. Our Friend is seeking validation for their feelings that they aren’t getting from Someone. This is where they may turn to us for validation; they are confident that because of our loyalty to them, we will be on their side. So, they make a more public spectacle of their situation and we are now obligated to stand by their side. This is usually at the expense of putting Someone down, just so that Friend feels more validated in their feelings. This is not a healthy way to seek validation. This is manipulative.
2. No one likes being put in a position where we have to choose sides, it’s largely unnecessary and uncomfortable. We may blindly oblige if we are more familiar with one than the other. This is where we have to examine the reason why there are sides in the first place. We are all familiar with misrespresentation, misunderstanding, being uninformed, there being sides to every story… etc. So why do all these factors disappear when a Friend ostracizes or vilanizes Someone else, sets them apart, and presents sides that we must choose? We have been forced to make an uneducated choice. We are now pressured to make a statement that would only serve our friend’s pathological narrative. We have also contributed to vilainizing Someone in the process. This is dangerous and damaging.
3. We must take responsibility in knowing our Friend on a deeper level. This is the only way we can help them when they are in need and calling them out on their shit. People get hurt, and if their coping tactic is to arrange their friends in a way that makes them feel supported by ostracizing the person who they are hurt over, then they need intervention. They need their shit called on. That’s manipulative behavior and we are enabling it. It’s not loyalty to one, but rather bullying the other.
4. For us to be put in such a position in the first place, it means our Friend is in pain. Our Friend is hurt. They need support and redirection. Converting pain into anger directed at Someone who may be innocent (see reason 2) is not a healthy way to process emotions; we all know this. We must take the extra steps needed for our loved ones, to support them in processing their emotions in a more productive way.
5. Blind loyalty robs our Friend the opportunity to self reflect. We are only giving them the immediate satisfaction of feeling ‘right’ when they may be dead wrong, or even partially wrong. This is where we have done our Friend a disservice by rejecting an opportunity to help them grow. With blind loyalty, we have given complacency to a shallow relationship. We are serving as a wall of protection to our Friend, which also shuts them out of a place where they can expand their view and interact with their surroundings. We are standing in solidarity with an entity that refuses to grow. We are encouraging our Friend to hold resentment hostage. We are damaging our Friend.
To all my friends and beyond: Sometimes being “loyal” to our friends, is NOT being supportive. There are shaded areas in the venn diagram between being loyal, being supportive, and enabling unhealthy and damaging behavior. Please know, that loyalty, though normally honorable, is often the forefront to what is unintentionally enabling pathological behavior.
In times when we are presented with “sides” to choose, we often resort to an act of being “loyal” and choosing the closest “side” by relativity, perhaps the “side” we knew initially. There are a number of ass backwards things about this that must be reconsidered before any further action if we intend on being truly and actually loyal to those who are dear to us. Let’s say that 2 parties disagree: one is our friend, they other is a person who don’t know very well (a person nonetheless). Herein the two shall be referred to as ‘Friend’ and ‘Someone’.
1. Our Friend is seeking validation for their feelings that they aren’t getting from Someone. This is where they may turn to us for validation; they are confident that because of our loyalty to them, we will be on their side. So, they make a more public spectacle of their situation and we are now obligated to stand by their side. This is usually at the expense of putting Someone down, just so that Friend feels more validated in their feelings. This is not a healthy way to seek validation. This is manipulative.
2. No one likes being put in a position where we have to choose sides, it’s largely unnecessary and uncomfortable. We may blindly oblige if we are more familiar with one than the other. This is where we have to examine the reason why there are sides in the first place. We are all familiar with misrespresentation, misunderstanding, being uninformed, there being sides to every story… etc. So why do all these factors disappear when a Friend ostracizes or vilanizes Someone else, sets them apart, and presents sides that we must choose? We have been forced to make an uneducated choice. We are now pressured to make a statement that would only serve our friend’s pathological narrative. We have also contributed to vilainizing Someone in the process. This is dangerous and damaging.
3. We must take responsibility in knowing our Friend on a deeper level. This is the only way we can help them when they are in need and calling them out on their shit. People get hurt, and if their coping tactic is to arrange their friends in a way that makes them feel supported by ostracizing the person who they are hurt over, then they need intervention. They need their shit called on. That’s manipulative behavior and we are enabling it. It’s not loyalty to one, but rather bullying the other.
4. For us to be put in such a position in the first place, it means our Friend is in pain. Our Friend is hurt. They need support and redirection. Converting pain into anger directed at Someone who may be innocent (see reason 2) is not a healthy way to process emotions; we all know this. We must take the extra steps needed for our loved ones, to support them in processing their emotions in a more productive way.
5. Blind loyalty robs our Friend the opportunity to self reflect. We are only giving them the immediate satisfaction of feeling ‘right’ when they may be dead wrong, or even partially wrong. This is where we have done our Friend a disservice by rejecting an opportunity to help them grow. With blind loyalty, we have given complacency to a shallow relationship. We are serving as a wall of protection to our Friend, which also shuts them out of a place where they can expand their view and interact with their surroundings. We are standing in solidarity with an entity that refuses to grow. We are encouraging our Friend to hold resentment hostage. We are damaging our Friend.
We have all been the Friend, the Someone, and the immediate public that has operated in this unproductive right and wrong binary. Self reflect. Help. Promote.
I enjoyed your blog and you provided so really good points. I would ask do you apply this same logic to a marriage? While I agree that we must spend the time to correct our spouse would it not be better to show a united front in public then address the mistakes made in private? I would elaborate more but it suchs typing on a phone
Thank you, Tyrone. Im trying to understand your question. Though I believe the situation I present could be applied to almost any variation of relationships between people, I find it would be hard to ostracize a spouse. I believe couples turn to friends for validation and insight (our rather, outsight) and that is fine so long as its done healthily. I also believe that it is possible for a couple to publicly disagree and maintain a unified front; they are still two individual people.
It’s different that you have this discussion in reference to choosing sides. Therein being respectful is the best course. As for your last point that’s very true that we need self reflection and have to sometimes be told to do this