{"id":514,"date":"2014-10-23T09:00:20","date_gmt":"2014-10-23T13:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/annelitwin.com\/?p=514"},"modified":"2014-10-23T09:00:20","modified_gmt":"2014-10-23T13:00:20","slug":"dont-discuss-friendship-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/blog-posts\/dont-discuss-friendship-rules\/","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t Discuss Friendship Rules"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t<![CDATA[The last friendship rule is the \u201cmother of all friendship rules.\u201d An\u00a0unspoken taboo says we cannot name our friendship rules. While it\u00a0is true that our relationship expectations, or friendship rules, become\u00a0unconscious by the time we are adults, it is also true that for many of us,\u00a0when another woman does not behave in the way we expect, our reflex is\u00a0to stop speaking to her or withdraw from the relationship rather than to\u00a0talk about what happened. We become distant or cold without explaining\u00a0why. Or in relationships outside of work, we may stop returning calls\u00a0and just disappear without an explanation. I have heard every excuse in\u00a0the book about why women withdraw rather than confront an ex-friend\u00a0(and yes, I have done this myself). The excuses sound something like this:\n\n\n<ul>\n\t\n\n<li>&#8220;She should know what she did.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\t\n\n<li>&#8220;I shouldn\u2019t have to say anything. She should be able to figure it out.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\t\n\n<li>&#8220;There isn\u2019t any point in bringing it up because she would just get\u00a0defensive.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\t\n\n<li>\u201cI can\u2019t trust her now so what\u2019s the point?\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\nThe taboo against discussion means that mismatched assumptions may not be discovered until damage has been done to the relationship.\u00a0Vana, a Latina manager in the United States in her forties, explained,\n\n\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">We never really stop and talk about what we expect from each\u00a0other as friends. I know I would always help you out, but we\u00a0never stop and say those things. We just, in our minds, expect\u00a0it\u2014and it\u2019s our own fault that we get burned sometimes.<\/p>\n\n\nIt becomes even more imperative to be able to name and discuss our\u00a0friendship rules in the workplace, where boundary and role confusion\u00a0also enter the picture. We must learn to articulate and negotiate our\u00a0friendship rules and develop relational courage so that we can stay present\u00a0and in relationships when other women do not meet our expectations.\n&nbsp;\nAn excerpt from my book,\u00a0<em>New Rules for Women<\/em>, available at Amazon (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/0982056982\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/0982056982\/<\/a>).]]>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t<![CDATA[]]>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[62,170,221,429,490,612],"class_list":["post-514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-posts","category-excerpt","tag-bosses","tag-employees","tag-friendship","tag-organizations","tag-relationships","tag-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}