Gossip and Friendship Aren’t The Same Animal
Like any good, insecure high school girl, I too wanted to feel I belonged. It is during these tender teen years that we begin to form our identities as separate from those of our parents and families, and begin to test out our confidence in the cold waters of the world.
Swimming away in a hyper verbal, exquisitely sensitive girl environment, we often cling to negative bonding as one way of feeling better about ourselves. Truly, all “isms” are derived from futile, immature and destructive exercise. She is not wearing designer jeans. He has acne. Her voice is weird. He walks with a turned-in toe… the list goes on and on and gets uglier by the nano second.
But the truth is, no matter how much negative bonding you do – and to redefine what I mean by negative bonding, I mean that you actually bond with another human being by being negative about someone or thing, you cannot actually count on those you do negative bonding with for real, authentic friendship.
In fact, some of the most popular people in high school often have few close friends as they enter college and life beyond, having lost out on the chance to forge meaningful bonds with others that went beyond gossip, backstabbing, verbal bashing and catty, snide commenting.
In the workplace, it is often shocking that the level of gossip can reach such epic proportions and that perfectly full grown and otherwise intelligent human beings can actually cause physical, psychological and emotional pain to one another and not even think twice about it.
When the people who engage in behavior are also your superiors and have the ability to influence the way people view you as a professional, your disbelief about the toxicity of your situation may actually leave you paralyzed and incredulous. The sad fact is that the same people who will bond with you negatively over someone or something and also bring in cake for celebrating things, may actually be someone who is saying those very same negative things about you or someone you really care for.
Gossiping, though we would love to feel it puts us out of harm’s way if we create a wall of “us” vs. “them” is truly NOT the same as friendship.
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