Hallo Together :)

Recently an old friend of mine whom I haven’t seen for several years called me. It was an awkward situation for she promised never to talk to me again. The reason she called – to thank me.

We were great buddies during high school. Unfortunately she has always been a very restless and creative person who had trouble seeing something through to the end. She would have an idea which she would explore for a while and drop it to pursue another one in a matter of days. Well one day she just decided to drop out of high school for it “constricted her creative genius” or something like that. She was pretty determined and even had all the paper work prepared. Well I had a lot to say against it. I would not budge that quitting high school was a stupid idea which in the end would limit the number of paths she could walk on in her life. Using every method available to me – talking to her parents, talking to the guidance counselor and reasoning with her I was finally able to deter her from quitting high school. Unfortunately she was so mad at me for getting involved so strongly that she would never ever talk a word to me again. We spent the remaining high school year in utter silence and passed the next three years entirely disconnected from each other. As it turns out she finally decided to attend the university in order to study arts and psychology (she is doing a double bachelors degree or sth. like that) This would not have been possible without a high school diploma.

I have got another example. A good friend of mine once wound up in a pretty nasty relationship. His girlfriend was a self centered disrespecting and evil jerk. She would cheat on him all the time and he had to spend a hilarious amount on money on her. Things went so far that he was considering leaving college in order to find full time employment to be able to buy her nice things etc. My friends and I we all tried to make him aware of the malignant effect the relationship was having on him. Alas, he was too much in love with her. No matter what we said and how we phrased it he would not cease seeing her as Aphrodite personified.

His best friend (they were like brothers and knew each other since kinder garden) then resorted to means which many will justly consider amoral at best – he let himself be seduced by his best friend’s girlfriend. I won’t go into details here but the result was a tape which recorded her cheating and fortunately also some very revealing sentences like: “He is only a temporal solution until I find a guy who can afford a woman like me”. Well the best a friend achieved what he wanted – the couple broke up. Unfortunately the friendship broke up as well. This happened 1,5 years ago. Since then both have not exchanged a single  word. Still, the guy is in a fulfilling relationship right now and is leagues happier then he was before.

If you knew a friend was making a huge blunder would you try dissuading them from their chosen course of action even if it could kill the friendship entirely?