When it comes to the messy, muddy emotions of love a girl often relies on her best gal pals to guide her through the maze. We consult and analyze every comment, text, smile and slide of the hand. We ask their advice on why he hasn't called or what to wear. This behavior often translates into the relationship we ask our friends their opinion is on a fight we had with our beau. Sometimes we just ask them if we're crazy to try the long distance thing with a boy we only sort of know.
The problem is how much of our friends input is more harmful than helpful? We rely on our girlfriends opinions so much that they feel entitled to always give us their opinion on our relationship even when they shouldn't.
At her cousin's wedding back in October my best friend Em met a guy and instantly felt that spark. The one that makes your spine tingle, your heart clench at an accelerated pace and sends elephants running wildly through your stomach. It could be lust or it could be love. The problem? The boy lives in a different state than Em. And while she has seen him several times since and even exchanged a few kisses most of her girlfriends think she's wasting her time.
They're totally against her and lets call him "Dave". They tell her she's wasting her time, that she doesn't know him well enough to really like him. They tell her it won't work because he lives in a different state. But really how do they know any of those things are true? How do they know what Emily defines as love or what she feels? How do they know what it's like when she and Dave are alone? And who are we all so ignorant that we think we can define what love means to someone other than ourselves. After all isn't love different for everyone? All relationships are different and all people are different so certainly different people in different relationships experince love differently. Sometimes I think our friends opinions cause us to ignore our heart and quite possibly ignore something amazing.
And in reverse sometimes we ignore our friends concerns when we should listen.
One of my other best friends "S" began dating a guy online. S had never met him nor did he live in the same state as her. When Em and I confronted her about how dangerous her relationship was she got upset and defensive. Fortunately she quickly realized how worried we were and ended the potentially dangerous relationship. However, S isn't the first of my girl friends who has ignored her friends when they voiced some seriously negative concerns about her beau. I've seen too many of my friends fall into bad relationships despite their friends warning signs. I've fought with friends who got angry when I voiced the harsh truths about their boyfriends. I've watched them defend boys who called them stupid and treated them badly. I've seen them isolate themselves from their friends because their boyfriend didn't like how they were driving a wedge between their relationship. I've seen girls choose jealous and possessive boys over their friends and what for? Because they didn't listen to their girlfriends concerns in the beginning and the deeper they fell in love the more blind they became to the rift their boyfriend was purposefully creating.
So how do we know when to listen to our friends and when to listen to our heart? It's so hard to know when you're friends are overstepping from when they're giving you legitimately good advice. We all love differently so at the end of the day how do we know which of the thousands of voices to listen to? And we as friends at what point do we realize that we have to stop talking and let our friend just be happy?
No comments:
Post a Comment