Always Accept Friends' Morals?

My friend, has a friend like that. Like what you describe.
And she pretty much just tells her friend what she thinks. She is not a silent, friend. She says what she thinks. The other woman... well she can get offended or not by it. Because, the truth is, my friend's friend, is a lazy Mom... who EVERYONE, even her relatives, knows... she is this way and just dumps her kids on anyone... just so that she can go shopping all darn day or only think about herself.

And no, you do not have to "like" her or what she does.
And no, you do not have to "support her no matter what..." kind of thing.

But, at some point, a "friend" should be able to tell another friend, what they think.

This, for me, falls into the category of "hate the sin, love the sinner."
I don't agree with the logic, morals or judgement of every thought that passes through every O. of my friends minds...but they're "friends" for a reason....

We tend to choose friends who are like us. I agree with Gamma on this one.

I had some pretty immoral days in my late teens and 20's. And then I grew up, was saved, and turned over a new leaf. This is very much like many people's stories; we grow up and choose better. We want to do better.

But when I have a friend who doesn't show any sign of growing up, choosing better, or doing better, I'm going to take pause. I'm going to try to guide her gently at first, but if the pattern continues, I'm going to begin to pull away.

Because that's not where I want my life to be. And no, I don't need to be supportive of someone who is continually making immoral and harmful choices. I'm supportive of that person growing up and changing and doing better, but I'm not supportive of stagnation. Nobody should feel bad for not being supportive of a person who feels that life is okay if they never get better than they used to be.

I agree with you.
None of us are perfect, so there needs to be *some* grace. And it would be boring if we all had the same ideas and values, for sure. I have many friends that have different religious beliefs, values, goals, etc and we get along very well...we just accept that we are different and we do not belittle each other or shove our agendas down each others throats. However, these friendships work because we all still believe that we are decent people and we share more common interests and values than not. It seems to not work when you
1-have more differences than similarities, making it hard to talk about many subjects
2-You do not have respect for each other due to values and behavior
3-Being together is uncomfortable (listening to other mother belittle her kids, etc etc etc)
That is when the friendship usually morphs into "polite aquaintance" territory for me. We can be polite to each other but not have to suffer behavior that makes us uncomfortable, you know? There is too little time for GOOD friends and the people we actually WANT to spend time with, so why stick around with the people that make life uncomfortable?

no, i don't, always. but i guess we all have to decide what, by our own individual yardsticks, is crossing the line.
for me it's honesty. i had a friend whom i discovered was lying a LOT. to me, to her family, and casually, as a matter of course, often when the truth flat would have sounded better. i got a jolt one day when we got an invitation to an event we didn't want to attend, and her first words were 'what lie should we use to get out of this?'
when it progressed to listening to her mock and laugh at her husband, while getting some friends to help her lie to him to cover up adultery, i had to decide to step away.
it was hard. she was very dear to me in many ways. but i just couldn't hang with that any more.
i like the idea of limitless love and acceptance, but it doesn't actually fly for me.
khairete
S.

I have very few close friends – by choice. The commonality between them is the all are intelligent, thoughtful, loyal, respectful, honest, and caring. Because of those traits that I am drawn to, I find that I don’t have to deal with drama. Each of my friends have completely different views on spirituality, politics, and the way they live their lives. For example – one is an extremely proud atheist, liberal, and vegan. Another close friend is conservative, Christian and meat eater. I do find myself in conflict with many of their ethics/morals but the core of their personality is full of intelligence, thoughtfulness, loyalty, respect, honesty and caring.

I wish some were just a little more tolerant of others but I know that no matter what they would have my back if I ever needed them and of course, vice versa and they are truly good people.

When you don't feel like dealing with whatever their vice is anymore, then do yourself the favor of moving on. You don't have to stay in friendships that bring nothing to the table but annoyance and you can always try to rekindle a friendship once issues pass.

It isn't wrong to set boundaries within friendships. Your cheater example. It would be completely fine for one friend to say to the other, I don't support you having an affair and I don't want to hear details. Line drawn. Friendship still intact unless cheater friend wants to end it.

I do have a few people in my life who will always be my 'friend' regardless of the poor choices they (or I) may make. But, that doesn't mean that I will have a great deal of contact with them if they are doing something that requires me to have some space. It doesn't mean I don't love them, just that I choose not to be caught up in the present situation.

Simple answer P.. It's all about patterns of behavior.

One time does not constitute a pattern.
Twice does.

Many, many people marry the wrong person the first time for a multitude of reasons.

I have learned to be less judgmental of people's mistakes, if they learn from them. And then I distance myself when I see a definite pattern of narcissistic choices.

As Mother T said, "People come into our lives as a blessing. Some as a lesson."

You get to decide what is right. I absolutely do not condone cheating, but perhaps that was role modeled to you by your parents or family of origin or church. Not all people have those teachers. But I hold hope that they can learn better.

Just this past month I let go of a friendship that I had invested a considerable amount of time into, and the women is in complete shock, as I detected a pattern of being used by her. I simply stopped answering her phone calls, txts, etc.

I try to separate my friend's situations from *who* they are. I have friends who have areas of weakness-- we all do-- and who sometimes make decisions which really aren't the best for them, but overall, they are good, caring people.

I do have limits, of course. People with good boundaries can be supportive without enabling. For example-- if you were an addict, I'd go visit you in recovery and be supportive of your progress. But if you steal money from my purse for your addiction, we are done because you are choosing to deceive me and be a dishonest person. When a person's poor decisions begin to directly affect me, we are done. If you are honest with me about a hard time, it will be hard to hear, but I can handle it. If you lie to me repeatedly or do something which affect me or my family directly (say, identity theft), then we are finished.

And there have been a few friends I've let go of over the years. When they only perceive themselves as victims or they are constantly miserable and love to complain but don't look to improve their lot, I do not have time for that, nor the patience. We ALL have hard times-- how we handle them is important. So, the mom who ditches her kid constantly? Couldn't stay friends with that person. The woman who marries her once-married lover?... that's really more about her, and I have more tolerance, I guess.If I didn't, I likely wouldn't have been friendly with her while all of that was going on. (By the way, I abhor cheating, but I also understand the lack of self-esteem and mentality of women who get sucked into being 'the other woman'... it's pretty sad. )

I suggest we stop being friends when we no longer enjoy their company and not because we judge them to be immoral or incompetent or any other judgemental reason. This is a subtle difference. Not enjoying their company is about us doing what is helpful for us. Judging them is about them and our effort to prove something to them.

When we no longer enjoy their company we withdraw without making a statement about them. When we tell them we won't come to their wedding because we don't approve of their marriage it's about them more than about us. It implies to them that if they made a different choice we would be their friend.

If someone bugs you that much, you should let the friendship go. If you value the friendship, the friend won't bug you as much in the first place.
Sounds like you have a conflict with the values and not with the people. If it were me, I would look for things in other people that can help my own growth...everyone has faults, but everyone has something to teach. About your lousy mother friend: I bet she does some pretty awesome things with her kid that you don't get to see. What would she say about you?

I'm with you, people change and sometimes that means a friend ship is over.

It really depends on the friend. It's one thing to be supportive and stand by a person who's not only been a part of your life a long time, but has always been there for YOU when you needed them. It's quite another to put up with someone you aren't all that close to anyway, even if you were close at one time.
My BFF does some things and makes some choices I really don't agree with or even approve of, but that woman would take a bullet for me and any of my kids. We are like sisters, better than sisters, she would have to do something truly heinous for me to cut her out of my life.
And I'm sure she feels the same!

I have a hard time with this question, because it really hasn't been an issue for me. I guess I weeded out those folks that I had issues with long before they become "good friends".

Maybe I am a decent judge of character and never spent long tending relationships with people that disappoint me morally, or maybe I just got lucky. I don't know.

So, I guess I don't really know what I would do. It hasn't happened.

But, I also don't have tons and tons of friends. I keep my relationships small in number and they are more manageable and have deeper meaning for me. If any of my good friends did something like sleep with a married man, I would be dumbfounded. Really. Or cheated on their spouse? I would be blindsided and I have no idea how I would react... I guess I can't imagine being blindsided, either, though. As most of us women tend to dish and vent about the issues with have with our spouses, and I don't have any friends who seem to have deep issues or venting that reaches any level beyond "gee, did I tell you what he did?! (laughing all the while)" .

I don't have to approve of everything you do in order to be your friend.

My immediate thoughts regarding the example that you cited about how your friend parents: Talk about it. If I have a friend who does something that I fundamentally disagree with, I can say that I don't with agree or like it. After all, we ARE talking about it, right? At that time--or any other, if we're friends--I can ask my friend to share his/her perspective on what's happening. I might say something like, "I already have my ideas of how I think that that should look, and I must say that I can't get inside your head on this one. How are you drawing your conclusions?" Regarding your friend..."What makes you decide when you need a break from your kids? I sometimes feel overwhelmed, but I couldn't imagine sending them away for that long. How do you come to start seeing that as an option?"

I think that when you let it bother you so much without trying to understand what's behind it, then you are making it all about you and showing that the friendship is only valuable when it reflects what you believe in. You are actually only interested in being friends with yourself and leave no room for a second person to have a separate identity.

I don't have those type of deal-breakers in my friendships. I play it by ear and let the relationship grow me in time.

If I had a friend who started dating a married man, my concern would not be his marriage. My concern would be why my friend sees him as a viable option. If the relationship led to marriage between them, I would caution her to be self-aware and to have the difficult conversations with him regarding why he saw getting started in that way was a viable option for him and what type of responsibility he takes for the demise of his marriage and what he plans to do to avoid that in the future.

I believe that we are each on a journey that no one else can travel for us. Our relationships are supposed to grow us, and not always in the directions of our pre-conceived hopes. In order for us to learn compassion, we have to be shown that everything is not so cut and dried and aligned with certain hard and fast conclusions that we've drawn, especially if from a distance.

I can't think of anything that my friends can do to lose my friendship. I adjust boundaries all the time, though.

As I get older and my circles around the block get more numerous, I tend to accept more of some things and less of others.

Cheating is horrible to me.

Sticking it to the boss or job is more understanding to me.

We all have differing measuring sticks according to where we are in life.

Things that are guaranteed to loose my friendship over: You becoming a mass murderer, being a full time child molester, being an animal abuser. Things like that.
We might drift apart if we hit a point where we just have nothing in common anymore and spending time together becomes a chore more than a delight. Might not cut the ties completely to the relationship and relegate to an acquaintance instead of a good friend. Probably wouldn't drop you on the curb though unless it's just really bad.
For things like having an affair or other things like that. Probably not a deal breaker. In fact, highly unlikely not a deal breaker. Parenting in a way that I don't agree with, unless it is causing harm to the child, not my business.
I have only dropped a small handful of people out of my life that I just could not take anymore. It took years of it never getting any better for me to decide the relationship was toxic and just not worth my time and energy anymore.
I've love and supported my friends through some seriously stupid choices before. I didn't agree with their choices and I told them so at times. But they were still good and true friends and we moved past those problems.

I agree with SH, a friend should be able to tell the other friend what she thinks. I answered to the other question and actually went back later and added that I would have told my friend about my feelings before receiving the wedding invitation.

I guess I would either confront the person and if they continue doing what they are doing, I would dump the friendship or like you said turn it into an acquaintance situation. At the same time, I don't think I would even feel the need to address a friend unless they are harming themselves or someone else (including me). Other than that, they can pretty much do as they please.

In the case of the cheater-wedding, I could not support that marriage so I wouldn't go to the wedding. I might not even have gotten an invitation seeing how she would know I wouldn't support the marriage. I just can't support adulterers, it tears up families and emotionally destroys the other spouse, I mean real mental damage is done when someone cheats on their spouse.

I've had some pretty darn selfish friends that I have had to dump because they continually treated me a badly. I would confront them and THEY would pretend like I hurt their feelings (as you can tell they are great communicators *sarcasm*). So I just got tired of it and said good-bye and good riddance.

On the other hand, my very best friend isn't religious in any way (religion is a huge part of my life), and I call her my sister. We live across the country from each other but I would fly up to be with her in a heart beat if she needed me. We have different goals and lifestyle choices but she isn't hurting anyone or herself so I leave her be.

I'm with Gamma G. on this one.