A short retrospect.

[42_23]

I /gquit Pride of Victory (my WoW guild) tonight. The details are fairly tied down, I kind of said I wouldn't make it public. That was mostly regarding that I wouldn't say, in Guild Chat, what I said in Officer Chat - if you care enough to ask, I'll tell my side of it, and try not to spin it like it's all the tale

Comments

[nebanebet]

Also, I don't know if rashness is really so much the thing at issue so much as the ease with which you can determine when a situation is worth getting out of. Rashness implies that you do something without having really looked at the situation, even more than it implies quickness. You can come to a decision in fairly short order without being rash if you've seen the same patterns over and over again, and after a while I think it behooves one to do so rather than trying to excuse or rationalize what you see, if you are suffering in the meanwhile. There are limits and exceptions to this, of course, as with everything, but generally speaking, if a relationship is harmful, getting the fuck out is very, very rarely a bad move. The trick, of course, is determining what "harmful" means -- which can be hard when you think you are obliged to (or inevitably going to) suffer, be it for others or for other reasons.

I've gone through this same process (breaking off harmful relationships, both with individuals and with social groups) multiple times, and you get better at recognizing the "run, do not walk" red flags after a while. It gets easier and easier to disengage from and avoid pathological situations as it goes -- you learn first, that it's a good idea to do so; second, that it's okay to do so; and third, that the imagined consequences are usually worse than the actual results, and that there is more social/interpersonal resilience to you than you thought.