Entering a political year can be discerning to certain circles in our life. Family, friends, even in your work place, things start to heading toward different directions. Most of the times, a crack in relationships appeared. Conflicts, and soon confronting can emerge. Contradict perspectives laid out in simple conversations in between office breaks, a family gathering in the kitchen, or late night pillow talk with your spouse.
Sometimes, regretfully, the conflicts are buttoned with offensive labeling of each different sides. It came in a form of offensive post in social media, and in some terrible situations ended with unnecessary arguments. or even worse in internal circles, becomes alienated for being different.
Is the freedom of expression should always bare this consequences? How far should you confront?
Certainly not just political situations, other matters such as your parent who seems uneasy about your current relationship, your friend who deleted you from social media, and other tangled subjects you find messing around your head and contaminated your life.
We might want to trace back, what is it that made us so precipitated in addressing the issue to the other party?
Was it emotionally-driven? What was the aim of giving out such fierceful opinions which you know sparked quarrels? Healthy argumentation is the luckiest agenda you’ll able to achieve.
A few weeks ago I witnessed, as a confronting moment gone bad in public place. A 20-something woman got smashed in the face with a cellphone by her own husband. I did not get any details on what are they discussing, but I don’t think anyone wishes any confronting to end up abusive,messy or even bloody.
Here are the short footage of how hysterical the woman to received such brutal reaction.
The husband was escorted earlier by security just after the incident happened.
What confronting can do
Recently, a shady friend had left me more than just a mixed-feeling of confusion, angry and sad. We’ve been close friends for 9 years, and he was my resort of confiding silly things to harrowing moments.
But our friendship had gone sour for the past 2 years because of several things. Such as, growing distant and tend to be dismissive at every time he found a new friend to hang out with . It was deploying my mood even more now, in presenting the dillema directly to him.
So much in my life can sink into this narrow hole inside my chest, by losing a friend figure. A friend that I subconsciously thought would’ve never left me feeling disappointed.
The choice of confronting him, makes me afraid of being hurt by the truth, and it would break us apart.
The 2-year gathering of all his suspicious behavior among the circle of our friends. Particularly on-and-off act of alienating, and backbiting has escalated into a plan to confront.
A whisper keeps playing hide and seek in my thoughts saying ; “aren’t friends supposed to be easily honest with each other?”. When I find out that he blocked me from one of his social media account, even though I was down, I didn’t act on it immediately.
Harriet Lerner. PhD , an expert on relationship psychology and the author of The Dance of Anger told www.psychologytoday.com :
“Before you open up a conversation with a person who has harmed you, keep in mind that protecting yourself comes first. Reduce your expectations for getting the response you want and deserve to zero. Longing for an apology that includes a sincere, emotionally packed acknowledgement of harm done and authentic words of remorse is totally understandable.
But it’s also often unrealistic when you enter a conversation with someone who has betrayed or harmed you.”
The night comes, I was calmer. Reclining in my bed and still considering wether an action was really that necessary. When I could just drop it for the hundredth time of him being “funny” and blindly make peace with it.
And so I thought I would do that, erasing all intention of barging for a desirable response from my friend. As I was considering myself are steer clear of all types of panic emotions, on my mark, get set and go…I questioned him in text chat.
The Outcome
I wasn’t ready for a lie response. It was either insulting my intellectual or just plain childish. He didn’t even bother to switch the subject and left the chat plain denial and cold.
Years of friendship and a simple heart to heart conversation bailed with a lie.
I was so shivery that night, I couldn’t sleep. Silly isn’t it? Over a stupid social media dilemma. But as crazy as it seems, my common sense were blurred momentarily. It fills my brain with vile judgements and as each thought passed I was getting sorrowful.
Why can’t I just moved on with the facts? So this is the cost of confronting. Just when you thought you had all the ammunition and everything went kaput.
You know someone didn’t really care about you as much as you’d think, when they have no respect to answer a critical question truthfully.
Another friend also said to me once, “Just because you knew a friend is doing you wrong, doesn’t mean you have to say goodbye to the person. It is not life and death matter. More over, technically, they’re not exactly your life-partner.” I was bursting in laugh when she told me this.
But I guess it is true in some ways. These people can still exist in our life, and we learned their flaws each day the hard way. Maybe we too should learn the lesson of moving on, here in this article where you can read all about outgrowing https://hapticroom.com/outgrow-the-feared-stage-of-life/
A Lesson Learned
What we need is to wipe away the thought that they are saints, and very much reliable for the rest of our life. News flash : people do change, or you never really did see their true skin.
So that’s what I did, I pretended to believed his answers. Moving along in liking his posts in social media, and congratulate him on his career promotion the next day.
Lesson learned ; everything you know never guaranteed to prevent you from hurt.
The need to indulge in such expectation that they will apologize,regret or even just getting an honest response when you choose to confront, were rarely fulfilled.
As Harriet continued to advise us, about the level of worth in confronting is ;
“Speak only if you need to speak—for yourself. Do so if speaking your own truths is the ground you want to stand on, irrespective of whatever response you receive.”
