Drama (was Re: Pesky Gender, another rant [was: First posting...

Aqua wrote:

<contextectomy>
> And the people who make grand pronouncements about how much they hate 
> the drama that always seems to be around them.

Caution: aimless rambling ahead.

A friend (not a close friend) came over last night to have some 
company after zir recent breakup. The breakup was precipitated by a 
bunch of drama in zir social circles, including zir partner's other 
partner(s).  Zie asked me how I avoid m***** of social drama -- I 
mean, I have a little, but not the life-sucking stuff that some of 
my friends have on a regular basis.  I honestly didn't know what to 
tell zir, so I talked it out a little, but didn't come to any real 
conclusions, and I'm still thinking a lot about it today.

I have some rules that I think make it easier -- I don't trash my 
exes; I try to keep the airing of current relation****p hell while 
it's happening to a minimum -- but I don't know exactly what it is. 
  Zie has a friend who says that the drama queens tend to be people 
out there in the social whirlwind all the time -- maybe my hermitty 
tendencies save me from that. I dunno.

(Note: By "drama" I don't mean sadness and breakups in themselves. I 
mean the stuff that makes social circles upheave, people take sides, 
other people refuse to talk to each other, hosts feel pressured to 
choose between the two people breaking up, etc.  That kind of stuff 
just doesn't happen in my world often enough to be more than a 
little blip.  We had some sadness and stress over one of my 
partner's new sweetie a couple years ago -- it never devolved into 
my being unwilling to be friendly to the new sweetie, and I can't 
even imagine asking my friends to choose between me and the new 
sweetie.)

I said, kind of fliply, that maybe it's because I spend most of my 
time around grown-ups -- people who can be civil with each other 
even if they have differences -- and maybe that's a bigger part of 
it than I thought when I was saying it.

Thoughts?

Serene