Fight With A Friend Or A Loved One?

Had a blowup with a close friend or your partner recently? Something people tend to overlook: you can be drawn to someone carrying just as much baggage as you are. The flawless couple and the marriage that came pre-assembled in heaven mostly don't exist, and even the tightest friendships hit rough patches. What actually holds two people together over time tends to be forgiveness, plus a willingness to accept the other person's gaps and failings.

Consider how messy fault-finding gets in the legal system. In plenty of divorce and custody cases, nobody can cleanly pin the blame on one side. That's why courts sometimes grant each spouse a divorce from the other, and why joint custody gets handed down when there's no obvious better parent.

I've written it here before: people with equal problems attract. The pot calls the kettle black, and the kettle has every bit as much reason to say the same thing right back. So if you're the friend, the relative, or even just someone who knows both parties a little, go slow. Don't jump in and pick a side the moment a fight breaks out.

There's a particular kind of person who keeps collecting troubled people, over and over, and that collecting is the problem itself. They spot someone struggling and offer, "Can I help you?" The struggling person says yes at first. Then comes the "but." And if the warring pair patches things up, which happens more often than you'd expect, you can suddenly find yourself cast as the meddler who should have stayed out of it.

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