Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

Another significant difference between men and women that I have recently had the opportunity to observe up close and personal is the process whereby each gender goes about resolving friendship issues.

As I am a process-geek Rhino I've decided to capture the process steps for your edification.

MALE process steps for resolving friendship issues:

Process Duration - 5 minutes
1. Man tells friend that he is acting like a total dick-head and he needs to stop or a can of whoop ass will be opened.

2. Friend replies that he didn't realize that he was acting like a dick-head and said behavior will cease and desist immediately.

3. Fists are bumped. Beer is quaffed. Equilibrium is restored.

END PROCESS

FEMALE process steps for resolving friendship issues:

Process Duration: 90 - 120 Days
1. Discuss with several girlfriends, in excruciating detail, the emotional distress associated with needing to end possibly, maybe a friendship with someone because you don't agree with their behavior, morals, they are a bitch, etc., etc.

2. Discuss with their husband, in excruciating detail, the emotional distress associated with needing to end, possibly, maybe, a friendship with someone because you don't agree with their behavior, morals, they are a bitch, etc., etc.

3. In order to justify the decision the woman now lists all of the good things and bad things about the person to see if the bad outweighs the good - even if the bad is so bad that you couldn't possibly like yourself if you had to be around it and no amount of good could possibly absolve it. Share this list with the husband and review each and every item on the list ad nauseum, sometimes acting as devil's advocate, to make sure that all list items have been sufficiently discussed.

4. Decides to end the friendship but take no action for a couple of weeks while rehashing steps 1, 2 and 3 to see if there is any way to salvage the relationship or to see if the other person's disagreeable behavior might magically abate thereby making the need to take action moot.

5. Ignore husband's advice to just have a conversation with the soon to be ex-friend and just get it over with.

6. Consult your friend the psychic to see if there is anything in the soon to be ex-friend's aura or past life that could be causing the current issues. Rehash conversation, at length, with husband.

7. Make the decision to end the friendship. Now that decision to break-off the friendship has been reached it is now time to obsess about the possibly hurt feelings of the soon to be ex-friend. Discuss pending guilty feelings incessantly with husband.

8. Get past the obsession about the soon to be ex-friend's feelings and obsess about possible retribution that the ex-friend might exact - however faint and implausible the hypothetical retribution may be. Discuss fears incessantly with husband.

9. Letting the fear of possible retribution keep you from taking action you once again seek out the advice of the psychic friend. On the advice of said psychic friend, you write the name of the soon to be ex-friend on a sheet of paper and place it in the freezer so as to metaphysically freeze them out with the intent that this "spell work" will cause the soon to be ex-friend to gradually fade, painlessly, away.

10. Over a period of weeks politely decline invitations from the soon to be ex-friend but still have hour(s) long conversations and/or exchange multiple text messages daily.

11. Gradually shorten conversations and then stop returning calls/messages and ignore texts.

12. After a couple of weeks of silence advise the husband that the "spell work" of freezing the name was successful and that the friendship has been ended successfully and painlessly. Do not acknowledge that the passive-aggressive act of reducing contact over time had any effect on the outcome.

END PROCESS

Please note that you did not see the acronym HLDW* anywhere in the above.

Did you?

Didn't think so.

The Rhino's objective and scientific conclusion: Bitches be crazy.

Regards,
Rhino

*Hippie Liberal Douche Wife

15 comments:

  1. You forgot Step 13, find out 6 months later it was all a horrible misunderstanding and find way to blame it all on husband.

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  2. Anonymous9:36 PM

    The Rhino is wise indeed...

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  3. Lack of HLDW reference noted. But you didn't list the frigging horoscopes! The scanning of months of horoscopes to glean some basis for decision making. The psychic will do. Gonna have to become one of those guys. 50 bucks a pop. Talk to the mark for ten minutes, change topics, re-hash what they've said but in different language and make some nice predictions.

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  4. Naut ... I'm waiting for that ... may need an edit later.

    Tim ... Thanks but is all hard won wisdom.

    Therbs ... Try $150 a pop for her clients. She has a few celebrity types as well. But since she is the friend of the hypothetical person in my post (wink wink) there is no charge.

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  5. You need to add, Its this problem that is " making me fat, or Making me loose weight as well and its effecting my decision making process".

    Also, you would quite possibly have the reduction in the After Hours Horizontal machination and so forth, which would be attributed to " she or its on my mind I don't want any right now".

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  6. Anonymous10:57 PM

    You also forgot how much of the discussions with the husband occurs when he just wants to either:
    a sleep
    or
    b, catch BSG or SG-1 on the TV

    Lack of acronym noted but you're still going to get it in the back of the neck..it's a given

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  7. Whats the Phrase Chaz..." Its the slow blade that penetrates the shield"...somfin like that from mem " DUNE"

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  8. 5 (a) - continually bring up this topic of conversation with the husband while he is attempting to offer his full concentration to an extremely important cricket match. Berate husband when he ignoes her. Women huh?

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  9. "The Rhino's objective and scientific conclusion: Bitches be crazy."

    And you have just now figured this out? :-)

    I was waiting for the step where she goes to break up the friendship and comes home all relieved saying it was ALL a misunderstanding all is forgiven and its your fault for not seeing it.

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  10. Yup, that process sounds right to me. Perfectly described!

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  11. You see? It's all because we never talk about our feelings. That's why we're so emotionally underdeveloped. If only we could comprehend the vital nuances of a process like this; then we, too, could be enlightened.

    And the world would promptly collapse due to nothing at all being done by anyone, except "relationship adjustments".

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  12. I read the post to her last night ... she got slightly out of joint then laughed. I asked her if I got ANY of it wrong and she was forced to admit that I did not ... and laughed even more. That's one of the things that I like about her - she is able to step back and really 'see' the truth and humor in things about herself.

    Mick: No, there won't be any rapprochement for the dead relationship ... for which I'm grateful. The other chick was a skank whore and, fortunately, a relatively short term acquaintance. Long story ... but she appeared to be normal for the first month or so after my wife met her and then all of the drama started coming out - like vomit after a 3-day drinking binge ... the HLDW was taken aback but by that time was in full on chick friend mode and female protocol had her trapped.

    Lermontov, Chaz: I hear you ... I take that part as a givem and why I bow down and give thanks for the TIVO every day. If I ever met the person that invented the TIVO I'd tongue kiss them. Just being able to pause live TV while she gets onto something would be enough ... but to capture every viewing of my faves and watch them later, alone, in the deep and silent dark of night ... joy.

    YD: Thanks (fist bump)

    Flinty: I can't even imagine what it is like for you former Empire men to read about this kind of thing ... we Seppos have strayed far from the path of our stiff upper lipped founders.

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  13. Solution - only marry women with no friends whatesoever. After all, if she's done her job properly she'll have gotten rid of all yours long before the relationship got serious.

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  14. Dr. Yobbo ... I like the way you think ... however, the unintended consequence of that would be that I would have to suffer an even greater amount of 'conversation' time. Gives me chills to even think about that.

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  15. Three words then: Mail Order Bride. It'll be AGES before she learns enough English to be able to chew your ears off about this sort of crap.

    ReplyDelete

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