House of Eratosthenes

I’ve noticed, over the years, there are some that just don’t work as friends. They want you to do something, or to stop doing something, and won’t take no for an answer. Something serious or not-so-serious.

I had a friend who was a real friend. We were at a Chinese restaurant having lunch, and he upbraided me for not having just one beer. I was driving, and I have a twelve-hours-between-bottle-and-throttle rule. Comes from a confrontation I had with a cop, back in 1992, that I needed to have happen. So that’s something weird about me. So my friend encouraged, and then did some lecturing, finally a bit of good-natured mockery. Then he dropped it, because he was a real friend. He’s dead now. I miss him.

A fake friend will come up with some kind of narrative about other things you do, or what you are, to try to manipulate you.

“You’re trying to control me.”

“You think women are property.”

“You lack the sophistication needed to recognize there are more than two genders.”

“You don’t think black lives matter.”

“You’re insecure in your masculinity.”

“You’re afraid of strong women and can’t handle seeing them in a movie.”

“You MAGA Republicans are a threat to democracy.”

“You like to go around making people feel like idiots.”

“You cling to your guns and your bibles.”

Some of them make it impossible to continue the friendship. The exchange is quick and efficient and goes something like:

You’re motivated by such-and-such.

I assure you, I’m not.

Oh yes you are!

What do you do with that? It’s hard not to interpret it as an accusation of lying. How can you take it otherwise? And how do you take it seriously? Oh dear. You caught me. I tried to fool you but you’re way too smart for me. Yes, you’re right…I’m out to whatever, and I shall not rest until all the whatever are whatever’d. See? Doesn’t work. You can’t take it seriously.

Real friends don’t manipulate this way. It’s really the first test of friendship, and we need to get back to recognizing it as such: A real friend will want you to do something you don’t want to do, nudge you about it for a little while — and then drop it. A real friend will ultimately say “Well, that’s your decision.”

Maybe if it’s something important, and they’re so sure they’re right, they’ll come back around after the consequences have landed, to ask “Did we learn anything?” Which is annoying. Some friendships have ended over that, I suppose. But that shouldn’t be the case. We need to be ending friendships over the manipulation, the narrative-building. That’s the real sign of a fake friend.

What we’re missing, is balls.

It takes balls to take an attitude of: You won’t do what I want you to do, okay that’s just fine. We can stay friends. It’s your call; up to you.

It takes balls to respond to the narrative-building with: Okay, you think I’m an “incel” who hates strong women in movies. So be it. I’m not going to like your crappy movie to prove you wrong.

Western society, currently, is in trouble. Too many people have crafted these narratives about other people they’re trying to manipulate, to get them to do what they want them to do. And too many people have caved in on this. “Oh no, I don’t want anyone thinking that about me, so I’ll do what you want.” Which never works.

But at some point, while we were snoozing, that became the default way of selling things. People don’t want to take no for an answer. They don’t deal with rejection. They respond to the rejection with these efforts to manipulate.

And then it works.

And then they respond to “I’m doing something slightly different from the what you would have me do, if I were a puppet” with more manipulation. It becomes a vicious cycle. An expectation sets in that you are, after all, a puppet, and to pull the strings all anybody has to do is come up with an unflattering narrative about you, and then you’ll do it. Some marriages work this way. Some people live out their whole lives that way.

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FriendsTuesday, April 30th, 2024

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Tuesday, April 30th, 2024