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

Quoth Serene <serene@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> on Fri, 16 May 2008 19:50:10
-0700:

>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?
>
One thought is that there are people who seem to enjoy a certain level
of drama (perhaps because it comes with story arcs, and even
cliffhangers). They won't demand that their friends provide it, but
they're tolerant of, even interested in, each other's drama, so they
tend to hang out together. 

That's when they're doing it in a relatively healthy way. Not my idea
of a hobby, but if all involved agree, okay. And sometimes someone who
likes drama will latch onto someone who doesn't, because they have
other things in common, and if they break up, that can be hard on the
less-drama-tolerant of the two. I seem, these days, to either be
reasonably good at detecting the people who want a higher level of
drama than I do and not getting close to them, or to give off "she's
not interested/interesting" vibes that keep them from wanting to get
close to _me_.

But it's not always about civility or lack thereof: someone can make
a dramatic tragedy out of a breakup without necessarily being rude
to their ex, or insisting on dividing the friends. Someone else can be
quiet and say it's no big deal, but then say nasty things about the ex
one-on-one to lots of different people, or do passive-aggressive
things if a mutual friend suggests inviting both to the same picnic,
or sulk if said friend mentions seeing their ex.

I also suspect some of the people for whom friends and lovers are 
completely different categories, and see no reason why anyone would
want to be friends with an ex (not-enemies, maybe, if there's a child
in common, but not friends), are likely to generate drama in break-ups
because they have less motivation not to: they aren't trying to
maintain a friend****p, or build a new one, and they assume that each
person will retain custody of the friends they brought to the
relation****p. 

[At this point, I note that the idea of custody of friends seems very
weird--even if you force your friends to take sides, you can't force
A to take your side, or B to take the other person's--and that it has
derailed me from any further consideration of drama, who generates
it and why, or how I mostly avoid it.]


-- 
Vicki Rosenzweig | vr@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"Heat death or cold, in randomness or Cause,
It is not how it ends, but what it was." --John M. Ford