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people who compartmentalize relationships and their life

G

Ginkgo

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Let's say you're afraid your significant other won't be accepted by your family.

Have you fully accepted your significant other?
 

Such Irony

Honor Thy Inferior
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I compartmentalize to some degree. I do it to avoid potential embarrassment and awkwardness that could result if people from different parts of my life were to get together. Sometimes I feel that one friend of mine might not approve of another friend of mine and to avoid losing a friendship, it might be best to keep the two friends apart. One time I had a friend that was extremely religious and I had a different friend that was atheist. Both were rather narrow minded in their views. I made sure that one didn't know about the other. Sometimes I compartmentalize to avoid embarrassment. Sometimes a friend of mine knows about a side of me that I'm not comfortable revealing to just about anyone. Yesterday at work this friend of mine showed up and I started to worry that he was going to mention about X in front of my colleagues. Luckily he didn't.
 

Inconnue

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Let's say you're afraid your significant other won't be accepted by your family.

Have you fully accepted your significant other?

I'd say yes. It really depend on your personality, your self-esteem, how confident you usually are, what risk you can take, your personal history and your upbringing. Some will challenge their family, other will avoid confrontation. The partner should not take it personaly (or leave if it makes them really unhappy).
 

Viridian

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This topic reminds me of Geek Social Fallacy #4...

In this very forum, I'm friends with both X and Y, even though Y loathes X. It happens, I guess... :shrug:

(1000th post, yaaay)
 

CzeCze

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until the gf has been with the guy for 6 to 10 months

Ok, in that case I approve. :p

No really, I wouldn't bring every random person I'm dating (not that I date random people, you get the picture) to meet my family and certainly not my office. Holy crap I'm not trying to get some 'loose reputation' at work.

Then again, I'm a social primary on the instinctual stacking, I'm conscious of social standing and repercussions.

The thing is, once you set up those kind of rules, you actually make introducing your friends, family, etc. a much bigger deal. Like "whoa, s/he NEVER has introduced us to a gf/bf before, this must be someone REALLY special!"

Whereas if you are more casual about it, peope will interpret these things more casually, too.
 

Chiharu

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Hmm... I don't compartmentalize much. The only times I do are like... I have a friend who's very conservative/religious and other friends who are constantly dissing religion. They know about each other and have as good as told me they'd get into a conflict on purpose. i know them, know they'd leave the meeting offended, and don't plan to introduce them Besides, they live so far apart it's highly unlikely they'd mean on their own anyway, so it's hardly like I'm "keeping them apart", I'm just not making an effort to bring them together, if that makes sense.

Other than that, I have to say that I know from personal experience that compartmentalizing is a BAD IDEA. I don't want to dredge up the gory details, but it basically ripped my family apart when I was 13.

I personally believe you need to integrate your life, that strong relationships bring two families together, that true friends accept all aspects of you, and that you should try to be yourself in the working world as much as possible. Certainly you would generally behave differently at home than at work, but it shouldn't be a disaster for those different parts of your life to meet. I think life in general is happier and healthier that way, but then this is just what works best for me.
 

Metamorphosis

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I definitely do this. I really only keep my family and my friends separate, though. I won't even talk on the phone to one group while I'm in the vicinity of the other, but whatever, it works. I don't see how people can keep them all together.
 
G

Ginkgo

Guest
I have done this is the past and still do it. I guess its because different people gather different impressions of me, and sometimes I prefer them isolated in their little stations so they don't collude and forge greater friendships together than they would have with me. Admittedly, it's rather selfish. I can recall two events in which I constructed a social network without me even knowing by merging one friend with another. The results were awkward for me, but not them, at least not for the same reasons. It's like a cockfight. You drop two animals in together and you barely have an idea of how they'll interact. That would be like taking two brain hemispheres and knowing just which neural impulses would flash the most solely based on how you communicate with them yourself. Too complex.

You know they'll have at least 1 thing in common: having impressions of me. Regardless of what brood they hatched from, or where they go or what they believe, they still have their own opinions about me. It's a coin toss whether they'll decide to be friend or enemy behind closed doors, but most likely enemy. I know that sounds paranoid, but if they're trying to establish a relationship among themselves, then one of the best ways to strengthen that would be to seek out a common threat.

I don't like to trash talk people behind their back. Some of the members of this forum might be surprised by that admission, but I'm a firm believer in:

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