Lately events have reminded me of why I decided long ago to trim down my friends to only those closest and most important to me, and to develop a zero tolerance policy regarding allowing people to be hurtful. I unfortunatly found that sometimes those who knew me the best also knew how to hurt me the most.

Every friendship at some point will be tested, people will eventually do something which you do not agree with or something that pisses you off. You have a choice then, approach it from the aspect of “you hurt/bothered/angered me here’s why, what do we do about it?” or “I hate you here’s a million highly personal things about you which suck”. Where friends are concerned that second choice is the deathblow of a friendship for me, it is easy to resort to, and because the second party knows you so well they know exactly what attack will hurt you the most. they also expect to be able to get away with such a response and have all be forgiven when things blow over.

I try to not stoop to that when an issue arises with friends- and it saddens me to see others lower themselves to that type of personal attack especially when it is not warranted.