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I noticed, when a lot of guys went to prison, they found that their friends didn't write to them. A lot of times, they might make a prepaid call to their friend on the outside, and he wouldn't even accept the call.
This caused a rupture in the friendship, to where they said, "I'm going to get an entirely new set of friends when I get out."
But of course, if they went back to jail again, those new friends would be the same way. They wouldn't be any more loyal than the old friends. The only difference is, the new friends wouldn't have been put to that kind of test yet.
Basically, almost all friends are pretty bad. The only way we're able to remain friends with them is by maintaining an illusion about their true nature. But the illusion can be dispelled by some kind of event that puts them to the test, and forces their hand.
That event may never happen, in which case, you might be lifelong friends, blissfully ignorant of the truth. But, the whole time, your friendship is based on a lie, or a faulty assumption. You think they're better than they really are, but their fault is not apparent so it's kind of irrelevant that they're not what you think they are. You keep on investing in them, but always there's that possibility that it could blow up if they're put to the test.
In the novel 1984, this was how the state destroyed relationships -- by putting people to a test they couldn't pass; a test that would cause them to betray the other and reveal that deep down, neither of them was what the other thought they were.
Florelle was kind of like that too -- she revealed people for who they really are, which caused a domino effect of more unpleasant revelations. Masks were ripped off, and friendships ended because of that.
Girls tend to have a very revelatory effect on men's true natures, both directly and indirectly.
It's kinda like how DNA testing allowed men to find out for the first time that all those years, they'd been cucked, and what they thought they had with their wife was at least partly a lie. All those years, all that money, all those emotions, etc. invested; and then he probably has to break it off.
It can be kinda amazing how relationships can go on for years, without the illusion being dispelled, and then, boom. You get blindsided. Maybe the person talked a good game about what they'd do in a hypothetical situation, but when after many years that situation actually came up, they couldn't or wouldn't act as they'd said they would. Or, there was just an unspoken assumption about how they'd act in a given situation; and because a situation had never come up that produced behavior that went contrary to that assumption, their true nature never became evident up to that point.
Once the masks are off, though, it's pretty much all over; you can't look at them the same way, because if you talk to them about their behavior, they'll probably defend it, or they'll make a fake promise that they won't be that way the next time. It's just over at that point.
It's not that something happened that blew up the friendship; it's that what they were, and what you thought you had with them, from the beginning never was what you thought it was. If it was initially your behavior that set them off, and their reaction surprised you, then what you didn't realize about them was that that kind of behavior would set them off like that, so again, it comes back to an illusion.
So basically our relationships exist in a realm of plausible deniability about people's true nature. Regrettable events don't destroy friendships; people's natures do, because if their natures weren't what they are, we could overcome the effect of those incidents. But the ability and will to overcome (in a lot of cases, on both sides; because one person could just let it go, or the other person could change their nature and therefore their attitude and behavior, but neither is doing what's necessary to resolve the impasse) is lacking; and the fact that we didn't anticipate this from the beginning shows that we were living in a land of illusion the whole time.
This caused a rupture in the friendship, to where they said, "I'm going to get an entirely new set of friends when I get out."
But of course, if they went back to jail again, those new friends would be the same way. They wouldn't be any more loyal than the old friends. The only difference is, the new friends wouldn't have been put to that kind of test yet.
Basically, almost all friends are pretty bad. The only way we're able to remain friends with them is by maintaining an illusion about their true nature. But the illusion can be dispelled by some kind of event that puts them to the test, and forces their hand.
That event may never happen, in which case, you might be lifelong friends, blissfully ignorant of the truth. But, the whole time, your friendship is based on a lie, or a faulty assumption. You think they're better than they really are, but their fault is not apparent so it's kind of irrelevant that they're not what you think they are. You keep on investing in them, but always there's that possibility that it could blow up if they're put to the test.
In the novel 1984, this was how the state destroyed relationships -- by putting people to a test they couldn't pass; a test that would cause them to betray the other and reveal that deep down, neither of them was what the other thought they were.
Florelle was kind of like that too -- she revealed people for who they really are, which caused a domino effect of more unpleasant revelations. Masks were ripped off, and friendships ended because of that.
Girls tend to have a very revelatory effect on men's true natures, both directly and indirectly.
It's kinda like how DNA testing allowed men to find out for the first time that all those years, they'd been cucked, and what they thought they had with their wife was at least partly a lie. All those years, all that money, all those emotions, etc. invested; and then he probably has to break it off.
It can be kinda amazing how relationships can go on for years, without the illusion being dispelled, and then, boom. You get blindsided. Maybe the person talked a good game about what they'd do in a hypothetical situation, but when after many years that situation actually came up, they couldn't or wouldn't act as they'd said they would. Or, there was just an unspoken assumption about how they'd act in a given situation; and because a situation had never come up that produced behavior that went contrary to that assumption, their true nature never became evident up to that point.
Once the masks are off, though, it's pretty much all over; you can't look at them the same way, because if you talk to them about their behavior, they'll probably defend it, or they'll make a fake promise that they won't be that way the next time. It's just over at that point.
It's not that something happened that blew up the friendship; it's that what they were, and what you thought you had with them, from the beginning never was what you thought it was. If it was initially your behavior that set them off, and their reaction surprised you, then what you didn't realize about them was that that kind of behavior would set them off like that, so again, it comes back to an illusion.
So basically our relationships exist in a realm of plausible deniability about people's true nature. Regrettable events don't destroy friendships; people's natures do, because if their natures weren't what they are, we could overcome the effect of those incidents. But the ability and will to overcome (in a lot of cases, on both sides; because one person could just let it go, or the other person could change their nature and therefore their attitude and behavior, but neither is doing what's necessary to resolve the impasse) is lacking; and the fact that we didn't anticipate this from the beginning shows that we were living in a land of illusion the whole time.
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