Atheism. It has been a problem with most of the women I knew. Those problems are all gone, now. Can’t say I miss any of them. Well, I can say it but I’d be lying.
At the risk of sounding like an alcoholic but I have a ruined friendship because said ex-friend was incapable of even being around social drinking. I’m not talking about slamming shots in the Himalayas with Marion Ravenwood or keg stands at the Delta House. I’m talking about house parties with glasses of spritzer.
Post snipped.
This is mostly what does it for me. Proselytizing when you know I don’t agree will chase me off very quickly. Many of my friends are Christian or Republican, or both, while I am neither, but we are still friends because we all love horses and spend our time together on horsey activities. We’ve agreed not to discuss the other stuff.
A couple of things that will send me running for the hills: Constitutionalist BS (how can you be so stoopid as to swallow that nonsense?) and unaddressed addiction issues.
Maybe it’s different being white?
I have a black friend who will quite often go off on white people, how we are no good, how we are haters but hide it, how we are the devil incarnate. After a while I’ll look at him and say ‘uh excuse me but’. He’ll give me a blank look and then he realizes I am white and says, ‘well you’re different, you know what I mean, it’s not all white people, you’re one of the okay ones’.
I’ll say, ‘uh huh I see’.
Then we laugh and move on to something else.
I know he doesn’t really hate white people, I know he’s venting, I know it’s about racism and sometimes he lumps all of us white folk together even though he knows not all whites are racist.
I’m pretty good at compartmentalizing. If you’re going to be a jerk about your views, then sure, I might not want to be around you, but in general I can be friends with people even whose views I find pretty vile. Heck, even within our family - my Mom’s sister is a pretty conservative evangelical christian, and their aunt is gay and super liberal. My mother usually votes for Democrats, and my Dad for Republicans. They drive together to their polling place and cast votes to cancel each other out. We all love each other, get together at Christmas and don’t discuss politics, and it works fine.
I love to discuss politics, so usually I’m the one who needs to be careful to make sure that I’m not the boor.
I think it is different if you are white.
I’ve befriended two white people at work. They are so nice and sweet…I can’t imagine them doing anything racist. But if either revealed the same hatred that your friend did with regard to black people, I’d be totally freaking out. Because these folks are managers. They have the ability to hire and fire individuals and award million dollar contracts. Racism is not just about who you badmouth behind closed doors. It’s about power. It’s about how you treat people. I’m not trying to be a racist’s "best black friend–the one they trump out whenever they are called on their bullshit.
I’m also not trying to be someone’s exceptional negro. Maybe a white person can hear “I don’t think of you as white” and not take offense. But if someone said “I don’t think of you as black”, I’d be kind of pissed off. Because I am black. If you can’t like me without white-washing me, I’d rather you not like me at all.
Depends on what you mean by “friendship”. If you mean “I know your name and probably something about your spouse and kids, can interact with you in friendly fashion at parties, and will probably even have a good time talking to you for a while,” then there are very few things that would demolish that. Other than the obvious things like raw homicidal intention, the big one is not being able to agree to disagree and then quit talking about it. Nava’s Basque community sounds like one big shouty debate game to me, and I’d probably be fine, but people who will not stop trying to seriously hammer me around to their way of thinking get very old, very quickly.
If you mean close friends, there are more. Being anti-gay rights would do it. Being sexist or racist, and supporting that behavior in others. Thinking that abuse of children or animals is acceptable. Being highly religious used to do it, but I live in a more liberal area than I used to, and people are more inclined to discuss their faith here than shout about it.
I stopped talking to my favorite cousin a couple of years ago (well she used to be my favorite) because she wouldn’t stop e-mailing me her right wing and religious crap. Worst of it was she told me once that she had never voted in her life, so she hadn’t a clue but would keep sending me the right wing crap. Then she sent me a so called apology in which she blamed me or her father and dead husband for everything in her life. I thought about forgiving her at Xmas time, then I remembered the apology.
I also refuse to go along with chain letters, same cousin once sent me a chain letter which the first paragraph threatened all sorts of mayhem if I chose not to do it. I didn’t read any further, but asked her why she would send me such a threatening chain letter when she claimed to love me. She though it was so heart warming, apparently she didn’t actually read it.
And I’d never say to him what he has said to me but I also never think those things either. When I hear him say those things though I don’t hear hate so much as hurt and frustration. I don’t hear him telling me I am not white, I hear him saying you aren’t one of those whites, but if I ask hm who those whites are he can’t tell me. Maybe being white though I can’t relate. Kind of like when I was in an elevator and I realized I was the only white person. An older black lady smiled at me and made small talk and I know it was an attempt on her part to put me at ease. The thing is, I wasn’t uneasy, just kind of surprised. It would never have occurred to me to think that the only black person in an elevator might be uncomfortable, it’s not in my range of experience. Maybe it is different when you are the minority.
Unfortunately or not, I also tend to be color blind.
When my son was in a private school there were 19 first graders, one was bi-racial and two were Asian, the rest were white. I unthinkingly asked the only black woman at the picnic which kid was hers. It was only when she gave me a weird look that I realized :smack: it’s pretty obvious.
I had to laugh at that. That is very color blind, and would that the rest of the world was .