Relationship(type) priorities (parent-child, siblings, friends, lovers?)

People prioritize their relationships differently. Whether they have that relationship or not, they’ll always feel that they lack a certain type of a relationship when it’s missing, or romanticize and prioritize the one they’ve got above all other types. It is important for great relationships, that the people in it prioritize the same relationship type. For instance, if the mother prioritizes mother-daughter relationships, and the daughter prioritizes romantic relationships, there’s going to be a conflict. Similarly, if a mother prioritizes romantic relationships, and her daughter prioritizes her relationship to the mother, there’s going to be a conflict.

All relationship conflicts are the same; if your best friend thinks BFF’s is a thing but to you your “best friend” is more of a vague comparative concept: “out of the ones I’ve got”, while you prioritize another relationship, there’s going to be a conflict.

Thelma’s and Luise’s

There’s a lot of women, especially, who prioritize their friendship with women to the point that the NetFlix show “Dead to Me” feels ROMANTIC to some people, while it makes another type of a person’s skin crawl. (In short: Judy accidentally kills Jen’s husband in a driving accident. She befriends mourning Jen, hoping she can make her grief better. Jen finds out Judy killed her husband, gets a bit angry at first, and in a twist of events, winds up killing Judy’s fiance at the end of the season. So the girls are not besties for like a second. Next season starts, and Judy is back in Jen’s life, and with very little drama, Jen forgives her in her guilt about Steve but doesn’t confess to her that killing Steve wasn’t exactly self-defense like she claimed. Now we can all wait in suspense to see if Judy will forgive Jen. We can only guess, right, and marvel at women’s hallowed ability to forgive and forget, right? What a message to send to young men, again, right? “You don’t matter, you don’t matter, you don’t matter, women are holy.” Don’t believe that, young men, older men, you matter. It’s just that the women you matter to are a bit of a different breed. /publicannouncement)

The kind of Thelma and Luise -themed “let’s kill our husbands and make friends” narratives are obviously meant for those people who prioritize their friendship and view husbands as a disturbance in their primary relationship. Then again, myself, I would probably glamour at a TV-show narrative in which a husband forgives his wife for his wife killing her own intrusive mother, sister, or best friend despite that making his devout, Christian wife a little less so.

Whatever your primary relationship is…

Whatever is the most important relationship to you, your partner/friend/pair must agree on it in order for the relationship to work. For example, two women, who prioritize their relationship with their significant other compared to their friendship with each other can make a great partnership. It’s just that it won’t be necessarily as deep as two women who prioritize their mutual relationship at the expense of others, but it will be a great friendship between women who understand each other’s priorities and support them instead of sabotage them in order to get closer to each other.

Women like that exist, but it’s sometimes difficult for them to get away from their female friends, who want to prioritize that relationship above others while sabotaging the friend’s relationships with other people. (And, they only get excited when their friend decides to sabotage their relationships for revenge because their priorities are different, the friend takes the revenge as a similar: ‘oh, you want my husband gone so you can have me all to yourself, you sweetie!” Rather than: “Look, this is what a cunt you’ve been to me, this is WHY we can no longer be friends.”)

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