Estranged Relationships

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I went to a friend's blog recently and realized that she has a conflict with her sister and decided to start a cold war and even a "no-interaction" policy.

I just felt so strongly (neither positive nor negative) about it (having experienced a soured friendship), I typed the following to her:

Ya, do agree about the part at how fragile relationships can be and the slightest slip-ups can be a big deal.

Have read about this story of 2 good friends who were having so much fun having lunch with one another and laughing and chatting away and when it came the time to settle the bill, Friend A paid first and later her friend B paid her back, to the exact cent. A conflict ensued.

Friend B grew up in a poor family and learnt to appreciate how difficult it was to earn money and thus took a serious view of money. Friend A focused more on friendship and was unhappy that Friend B is so calculative with her as a friend, returning her every single cent...

See how fragile relationships can sometimes be? One moment you can be happy and having fun with one another and the other moment, you have a conflict with one another. It was a great lesson that I had to learn too.

Think we sometimes have to recognize the fact that we are all different people and have different lifestyles, aspirations, perceptions and expectations and being different, we should agree to disagree.

Painful as the conflict mau feel now because it is still so fresh but most time we make a rash decision only to regret it later. Things sometimes seem less intense after sometime, to the extent some may feel it was silly in the first place having the conflict. I feel this way sometimes about some of my conflicts and trust me, the conflict becomes harder to resolve once we wait too long.

Severing ties with someone is a big decision to make and requires careful thought so that we will not regret the decision in future, because that would means lockingthat person out from your life, literally forever.

What will you say when you eventually see him or her again? Do you talk to him or her? Do you give it another chance? Do you remain stubborn and stick to your "no interaction" policy or be super ingenuine and pretend nothing has happened while in your heart you know you were hurt? It is a tough decision to make but whatever it is, a decision has to be made and definitely not arbitrarily.

(Message was slightly edited on 2 Dec)

I guess I have been through a bad conflict and have experienced intense emotions about it and had to make the decision to end a friendship. I just wanted to make sure that people gave careful thought to the decision to severe ties with anyone after a conflict so they will not regret the decision in future. After all, they themselves know best. More thought will have to be given if it affects other parties in the process as well e.g. ending of a marriage with children. It is no longer a selfish decision of 1 or 2 persons but a decision which would ultimately affect more than 1 life.