I bet you can't guess the subject!

Relationships.

Specifically, how they involve more than two people.

It doesn't take much thought for you to understand why I've been scrutinizing this topic obsessively for the past month or two - see: Finishing High School Pt. 2.  I've spent a lot of time trying to analyze exactly where I fucked up with the innumerable doomed relationships that have come and passed in the last four years.  Perhaps it's out of a need to solidify a surefire method of meeting the right people in college?  Maybe an unconscious urge to tie up any loose ends with the people I'll be leaving in a few months?  Who knows?  Anyway, in light of a recent series of events, I've decided to lay out what I know (strictly for my own purposes [so be prepared for a boring post]) about relationships and use that as a building block from which I can try to formulate some hypotheses regarding, you know, why I suck at stable relationships.

Basically, there are three types of loving relationships that really matter in the world: familial, romantic, and "friendly" (for lack of thesaurus access).  I've got the familial relationships nailed.  My family is pretty awesome, and I have no major strife with anybody in my family.  Regarding romantic relationships, I've been pretty unsuccessful, but that's mostly because I rarely take interest in anybody besides one or two crushes at a time, who coincidentally tend to dislike me.  Also, evidence has shown that I am pretty terrible at being involved with them (although I think that now that I'm older and hopefully wiser any future romantic endeavors will be less me-shitting-all-over-myself and more I-hath-slain-the-mighty-beast or some other fucking awesome one-liner).  Friendships are my least successful area to date, since I currently have very little to show regarding close friendships.

This is all common knowledge.  The reason why I feel that it is important to bring this up is because the difficulty with all of these relationships lies in the fact that they aren't even true relationships, when examined from a distance.  Familial relationships are the obvious example for this: brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, grandparents, sons, daughters, aunts and uncles are all involved with each other, and in this way, a relationship between, for example, two brothers, cannot be fully examined without acknowledging parental influences, among others.  And contained within a family tree are a significant number of romantic relationships, as well as friendships.

However, since I am not in the stage of life where starting a family of my own is my priority, I have to deal the much deeper and more intricate complexities of high school/college-type social paradigms. Social networking is responsible for a sort of new plane of relationship complication - the fact that nothing is private, for one, and also the fact that most people are connected to people with whom none of these basic relationships are shared.  Some of my Facebook friends are people who I may have had a class with in my sophomore year to whom I never spoke.  Others are people I have never even met, but have only heard of.  People such as these gain have access to all the details regarding the statuses of one's own relationship.  Gossip Girl isn't far off.  For an example, look no further than Choch from my earlier post: Why I am Michael Cera in every movie ever.  I don't even know the kid, but he dashed any potential for the formation of what I will vouch for as the single most important romantic relationship of my life thus far.  Whether or not this was facilitated by the use of Facebook is questionable, since again, I don't know the kid, but it seems like that's the only way in which word of my actions would have circulated around the entire class that quickly.  Another phenomenon resulting from the internet's open floodgate of communication is what I will call "perceived anonymity."  Under the guise of anonymity, in any circumstance, people will become completely uninhibited in their actions and statements because there is little fear of consequence.  It's a sort of justifiable deindividuation, (thank you, AP Psych!), because a person can completely alter his/her behavior based on the fact that no one will ever uncover the person's identity.  This is so commonplace on the internet that, believe it or not, the phenomenon will carry over into other non-anonymous communication platforms.  As in Facebook. 

The event that is drawing my interest (and is really the trigger that set me off on the ramble you're almost done with) is a break-up between a good friend who I respect and a not-so-good friend who I also respect and still find sympathetic despite not being friends with her.  Brief background: Couple was good.  Similar in personality and mannerisms.  I have no idea what caused the break-up, but the point is that I have essentially the same impressions of both individuals: both are good people at heart for the same exact reasons.  But does that prevent personal attacks from flying?  No fucking way.  And the reason why this story is important is because, as far as I know, the only post-breakup insults that are flying are not even between the people in question.  They involve outsiders, who have decided to choose sides in an otherwise (seemingly) uncomplicated, not excessively dramatic (as in remorse but not regret on the part of the dumper, sadness but not absurd sadness on the part of the dumpee) breakup.  Presumably because of the safety they feel because of the internet's magical identity-protecting powers.  Should people really be allowed to choose sides in such a matter?  No.  The one time I ever was emotionally attached to someone else's breakup resulted in the agonizing, unwanted dissolution of a great friendship.  So this is a stance I'm comfortable taking.

Perhaps it's a result of my current hatred of the complications of who-knows-who and who-is-attached-to-who, but I will never understand why people will ever feel the need to get involved in affairs such as these when it doesn't concern them.  The only reason that makes any damn sense is that they, unlike me, feel obligated to rush to the defense of the person of preference, whether or not the following backlash against the other is justified.  This makes me wonder if I am wrong about the whole taking-sides business.  Did I just get the shit-covered end of the stick right from the get-go?  There is no question that relationships, especially when facilitated by new technology, are not a matter that concerns only the individuals involved with a specific, single relationship.  I just need to find out for myself whether or not that is a good thing.