{"id":13360,"date":"2025-01-01T01:25:07","date_gmt":"2025-01-01T08:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/2c61a149-9abe-11e8-99ad-ca52c1e5b2af"},"modified":"2024-12-31T08:01:06","modified_gmt":"2024-12-31T15:01:06","slug":"how-to-gradually-ruin-a-good-relationship","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.boundless.org\/blog\/how-to-gradually-ruin-a-good-relationship\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Gradually Ruin a Good Relationship"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A few years ago, I was in a dysfunctional triangulation situation with a couple of other people \u2014 one was my boss, the other was my coworker. And like most dysfunctional relationships, it didn\u2019t happen overnight. Things just built up over time.<\/p>\n<p>Conflicts went unresolved, offenses went unforgiven and nobody was trying to resolve the conflict in a healthy way. Our boss was genuinely being annoying, which made it easy for me to get together with my coworker and bemoan our plight. In retrospect, we were basically gossiping in the name of \u201cventing\u201d and \u201cworking through the issues.\u201d It was the glue that held our relationship and our conversations together. We had once related to each other based on common interests, but our common interest became shared annoyance with an unpredictable supervisor.<\/p>\n<p>At some point, I got exhausted by all the drama and ranting, and I disengaged. I starting changing the subject, leaving the negative emails unanswered and stopped initiating the conversations. Gradually, our friendship died on the vine. Our frustrations were the only thing that was keeping it alive, and with that gone, we had nothing left.<\/p>\n<p>This sort of broken link happens all the time in churches, schools, workplaces, friendships and families. You would think such an obvious and toxic dynamic is easy to recognize and avoid, but it\u2019s a lot harder than you think.<\/p>\n<p>In his book,\u00a0\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Failure-Nerve-Revised-Leadership-Quick\/dp\/1596272791\/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2KY4PY2XQ624F&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.iAps0v-YxmEmqCJ5g-MyzCuo1keHt_OmVJ59Kt2GIbzZCn66Oipv96CTwc58XkWzoK_c4l0wpNiqfMI9B-V5QXfe1RnEJQ3NRSoEYuMTm2XWXB-ByEPT3V8kXl5CCcT3Z13QfXAwW8ICP4fM1ZrAW8Z4QMb3IPBLuXwSrmPdsPaPRu2psXVqPxILcQfKxk4WhjDkWYxpaEDfEUxYqn8SSQ.hvK-v3k14r3_Obptr9qi7bdYRXrYIWTovLcuKSFwk7o&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=Failure+of+Nerve&amp;qid=1733241694&amp;sprefix=%2Caps%2C184&amp;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Failure of Nerve<\/a>,\u201d Edwin Friedman warns against emotional triangulation. Emotional triangles may involve <em>individuals<\/em> (my friend, his annoying ex-wife and me), an <em>issue<\/em> (my dad, his chronic health problems and me), or <em>groups<\/em> (my sibling, our extended family and me). \u00a0But the common denominator in all these relationships is there\u2019s some negative third pillar that keeps the\u00a0relationship together \u2014 without it, we would have no relationship.<\/p>\n<p>Here are a few real examples I\u2019ve seen:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A woman feels anxious about her dysfunctional church, and that\u2019s the only thing she talks about with her friend. Her friend gets tired of hearing about it all the time and stops answering the phone when her friend calls.<\/li>\n<li>Two siblings are angry with their aunts and uncles. When one sibling reconciles with the family members, the other one gets angry and withdraws from his sibling.<\/li>\n<li>A mother is concerned for her drug addicted son and expends lots of energy trying to help him get healthy. When he finally turns his life around, she doesn\u2019t know how to relate to him anymore.<\/li>\n<li>A guy goes to his friend to work through <a href=\"https:\/\/www.boundless.org\/adulthood\/practical-steps-for-breaking-pornography-addiction\/\">porn addiction<\/a>, which is pretty much the only thing they talk about. When the addict either decides to give into his addiction or gets better, he doesn\u2019t need his friend anymore and drifts away.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you want to avoid triangulation, you\u2019ve got to practice resisting triangles when people try to recruit you for them. \u00a0For example, you can politely decline to listen to gossip about someone else\u00a0by saying, \u201cWhy don\u2019t we just go ahead and pray about this?\u201d instead of letting the person vent their \u201cprayer request\u201d to you.\u00a0 Or you can encourage the person to deal with his\u00a0issue directly (believe me, he\u00a0will stop bringing it up if you do that).\u00a0 In doing so, you\u2019re essentially asking people to take responsibility for their own anxieties. \u00a0They probably won\u2019t appreciate it and may even cut off the relationship, but let them do it. \u00a0Then ask God to show you how to make Him the healthy third pillar that was missing in your unhealthy friendship all along.<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019re the one triangulating, you\u2019ve got to do the hard work of learning how to make and keep friends without propping up the relationship on a negative third pillar. Eventually, people are going to get tired of being around the stench of your perpetual frustrations. Suzanne Gosselin nicely summed up the reasons in \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.boundless.org\/blog\/venting-is-bad-for-you-and-others\/\" rel=\"noopener\">Venting Is Bad for You and Others<\/a>\u201d and included this classic quote from psychologist Jeffrey Lohr: Venting is \u201csimilar to emotional farting in a closed area. It sounds like a good idea, but it\u2019s dead wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s nothing wrong with being transparent about your struggles when you talk with friends, but you just need to make sure it\u2019s not the <em>only<\/em> thing you\u2019re talking about. Instead, spend time talking about \u201cwhatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy \u2014 meditate\u00a0on these things\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Philippians+4%3A8&amp;version=NKJV\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Philippians 4:8<\/a>, NKJV). You may be surprised at the friendships you may lose, or, more importantly, the ones you\u2019ll improve.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>Copyright 2018 Joshua Rogers. All rights reserved.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Emotional triangles may involve individuals, issues or groups, but there&#8217;s always a third (negative) pillar propping up the relationship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":42217,"menu_order":0,"template":"","categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13360","blog","type-blog","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life-with-others"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.8 (Yoast SEO v26.8) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>How to Gradually Ruin a Good Relationship - Boundless<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Emotional triangulation may involve individuals, issues or groups, but there&#039;s always a third (negative) pillar propping up the relationship.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.boundless.org\/blog\/how-to-gradually-ruin-a-good-relationship\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How to Gradually Ruin a Good Relationship\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Emotional triangles may involve individuals, issues or groups, but there&#039;s always a third (negative) pillar propping up the relationship.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.boundless.org\/blog\/how-to-gradually-ruin-a-good-relationship\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Boundless\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/boundless.org\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.boundless.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/how-to-gradually-ruin-a-good-relationship-674f2d27dc8f7.webp\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1500\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1000\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/webp\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"How to Gradually Ruin a Good Relationship\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"Emotional triangles may involve individuals, issues or groups, but there&#039;s always a third (negative) pillar propping up the relationship.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.boundless.org\/blog\/how-to-gradually-ruin-a-good-relationship\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.boundless.org\/blog\/how-to-gradually-ruin-a-good-relationship\/\",\"name\":\"How to Gradually Ruin a Good Relationship - 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