Nothing is worse for a
relationship than
third party communication. You know how it goes, you
like a person of the appropriate
gender(s), but you're too
shy to talk to that
person. So you go on about it to your
best friend until s/he gets so
sick of hearing about it that s/he decides to
take action. Set you up. Or say someting to
the object of your affection.
Relationships that start this way
rarely work out. They never seem to get to the
stage where the people actually
involved can
talk to each other without a mediator.
Conversely, it could be that you are already involved with the
object of your desire, and you both talk about the relationship with your
mutual friends. This is great so long as the relationship is
great. When things are good, you get to hear you friends telling you about how your
SO was
gushing and
saying the sweetest things about you.
Yay!
But when things go
bad, third party
communication only makes it worse. Remember that game,
telephone? Know how garbled the
message gets? Well, the principle is
magnified when the
subject matter is your
heart. People tend to
overreact when they hear from a third party that something is wrong.
Don't
pretend that you don't know about this
phenomina. It
insults both your
intelligence and the intelligence of your
lover. Realize that when you
talk about your
love with his/her best friend, what you say will be passed on, along with a
commentary on your
body language and
facial expressions.
Above all, do not atempt to
soften the blow of a
difficult conversation by mentioning the need for
a 'talk' to a
friend first. This is
manipulative. No one likes the words "
we have to talk" but at least when they're said in person there is some immediacy, some
closure. Nothing is worse then hearing that your SO wants to talk, but
later. This leads to very
unpleasant conclusions being drawn. There is nothing so awful as
enduring a
seven hour flight home with a talk hanging over your
head. It leads to
paranoia, and makes the resulting talk even more difficult.
The he says she says is not an entirley
bad thing. It can help to
break the ice when two people are starting to
date. But when it is used to manipulate, it is
pure evil.
But in the he says she say
sometimes there's some
poetry
if you
turn your back on it
and let it happen
naturally
(
Ani Difranco,
Hell yeah)