Schism

"There was a time that the pieces fit, but I watched them fall away.
Mildewed and smoldering, strangled by our coveting,
I've done the math enough to know the dangers of our second guessing,
Doomed to crumble unless we grow, and strengthen our communication."

If there’s one quality in a person I have the most difficulty accepting and dealing with, it is phoniness.
It’s the person who puts on a front for everyone, always appearing to like everyone and be friendly with everyone while secretly wishing he were somewhere else.
It’s the person that agrees to something but then when it comes down to actually doing it, has some lame excuse.
It’s the person who acts all interested in talking with you at a party, you exchange contact info and never hear from the person again.
It’s the person who never really was interested in hanging out with you, but since you were interested, he went along with it for awhile until one day he just quits associating with you.
It’s the person who is super nice to you at the office lunches but goes home and complains about what a bore or a jerk you are.
It’s the person you ask to go out to lunch with who says he love to but then gives a lame excuse for why he can’t today.

Do you know people like this? We probably are all like some of these people some of the time. These are just a few generic examples of how communication in our society sometimes suffers, and most of the time it's not because we are trying to be rude but just have difficulty finding the balance between clarity and frankness.

We are all taught at a young age to be nice to everyone and not talk bad about anyone, and in general those are both good things to follow. However, it can and frequently does get overdone. For people working in customer service, yes, you have to be nice and friendly to people you don’t care for but in such a setting, usually the other person knows it and isn’t taking it as any personal niceness. In a professional environment, we are supposed to be cordial but not particularly friendly with anyone. There are clear ways that we are supposed to behave in these instances. It’s in the social world where it gets muddy, where you can choose who you associate with and be nice to. And in such a setting, being friendly to someone should be genuine. Being particularly formal with someone should indicate ambivalence. And of course, we can avoid people to express displeasure.

So, what is there to gain from pretending to be nice to someone you have no interest in being friends with? You’re not getting satisfaction and all it would do for the other person is potentially cause them to be disappointed when you inevitably quit pretending to be nice. Occasionally, the pretending to be nice does turn into genuinely being nice, but that is rare.

And what’s the point of agreeing to do something, even in a very casual conversation, without having any actual intentions of following through with it? If you know the other person is also not taking it seriously, it’s fine. With a female friend here, we regularly talk about hooking up or her leaving her boyfriend for me, but we both know it’s not going to happen so it’s all fun and games. If the other person takes your agreeability seriously and then winds up expecting something later, all you’ve done is postpone and magnify the disappointment.

And how about talking behind someone’s back? That bugs me more than almost anything else. Don’t say something about someone behind their back that you haven’t told to their face. Yes, it’s definitely easier to tell a 3rd party but you do have an obligation to tell the person you’re irritated with before anyone else. By the same token, once you've been friends with someone and you decide you don't want to anymore, you are obligated to give them an explanation and fix any issues that may be fixable.