A few questions of etiquette

[j4]

How do you explain to somebody that other people get hurt too, when they appear to experience selfhood as an island of victimised perfection in a sea of irrelevance and stupidity?

Is it okay to break a confidence if somebody's only asking you to keep it secret so that they can carry on manipulating you while simultaneously preventing you from asking your friends for support?

How do you tell somebody politely "Please stop fucking up the lives of my friends"?

Comments

[j4.livejournal.com]

1) Not your problem.

Well, not in the abstract, no; but it becomes my problem when the way they act (as a result of their self-absorption) affects me and mine. In general I'd rather educate than annihilate; I'd rather get people to understand what they're doing, and give them the opportunity to change. If they understand but then carry on regardless, then that's a different matter; then I may well attribute to malice what I could formerly put explain as stupidity.

3) Not politely.

Yeah, that'd be my feeling, too. The problem is, if you tell people something like that impolitely, they can then accuse you of victimising them.

Tricky, huh?

(Who are you, btw?)