why do many close-knit bonds between people gain their strength from the exclusion of others?

not negative for the people in the bond really, but bloody boring for everyone else. its all the more tragic if the two bonded individuals have a falling out though

its only a problem when the individuals involved like to bring their exclusivity into a wider social setting. that is boring, and downright rude.

i would suggest that in those particular instances, the friendship is BASED on the exclusion of others.

i know plenty of people who do not bring their private-friendship- manners into wider social settings, so, in reply to my own question, it is not necessary.

More a thing with couples than friends I've noticed. Unhealthy yes but try telling that to somebody in such a dyad.

excluding people is cool.

being cool is cool.

Duane - go talk a walk in the leaves with Rainy

talk = take, obvious from context. To Duane and Rainy.

I can only concentrate on one person at a time

'cause there's something wrong with her eyes.

The answer is clear, from developmental psychology. The easiest form of obtaining identity is defining yourself by what you are NOT. Hence the terrible twos, and the when the child first realises its independance from the mother, family, rest of world. It knows that it is something else, yet it has not figured out exactly what that identity is. Hence it is easier to draw identity- and from common identity comes community- from screaming "I am NOT like her, I am NOT like him" than it is to say "we ARE like this, and we are similar".

Defining identity in terms of non-identity may now be called developmental psychology, but surely it's basically Hegel?

And isn't friendship by definition based on exclusion. Even if I considered myself friends with everyone I knew, I would still only be friends with some people rather than others. By preferring one person to another, by choosing to spend time with or talking to some people rather than others, I am performing a ritual of exclusion. At a minimal level to even consider someone a 'friend' is a form of election, selection and exclusion. Friendship, to that extent, is always and by definition violence to others. It sounds like the bad cases of friendship-as-exclusion are only exaggerated forms of what we have to take to be a general rule.

This doesn't mean that it doesn't make you a tosser to act that way, though.

If you have a special friendship/relationship with someone, the joy is in knowing that that person would rather spend time with you than with anybody else, so to continually reinforce this you have to continually exclude others to a certain extent.

I know I am guilty of it sometimes, but I suppose everyone is.

I like the idea of being in a relationship that resembles a fascist society.

It interests me how Di represents some sort of axis or pinnacle of objectiveness. "This is a negative thing", she says. Hmmm...surely you mean "I view this as a negative thing"?

I feel that if each have their own friends, it's great. The reason I feel this way is sometimes a woman would like to take the day and go shopping where as a man might not like to do this. A man on the other hand might like to go to auctions and the woman might not care about them, and the fellow could choose a friend to do this with him. Perhaps he'd want to go out with the boysfor a drink? That is a good thing too. Where I would draw the line would be that if the two of YOU have made specific plans for a certain date and time,and say one of you broke said plans to go out with friends, that wouldn't be a tiny bit acceptable to me.Does this make sense to anyone? Gale

I don't think it's wise to be isolated. I have been ther./Not great! Gale

And isn't friendship by definition based on exclusion.
Isn't friendship just a relationship between people? The person *outside* looking at it could feel being excluded, of course, but the friendship is in my opinion not based on that *other* person. I do think that it can feel like you are being excluded but that could be merely your (subjective) perception.

The only way to never exclude anyone would be to never talk to anyone, under that definition. It's thorough but not really practicable.

Mmm...*shrugs*...my good friend Karen, about whom I've spoken more than once, has a number of very close friends I'm not particularly in tune with. For my part, though, I don't see that as something that wrecks/ threatens/entangles what we have. Hard to say why, though.

i was mainly referring to a very specific kind of friendship, where two people are so close its almost Heavenly-Creatures-esque.

i don't think the average friendship is defined by the exclusion of others, it may be on some abstract level, but there is always room for more friends. whereas, in my own case where i have been in that "Parker-Hulme-esque" friendship, it would be me and tash in a room full of people not talking to any of the other people because we didn't care, as long as we were talking to each other there wasn't room for anyone else. there was no need to be in the room, to be that anti-social we should have just left the situation, but we wouldn't, because we in a way subconsciously wanted to lord how close we were over everyone else. i don't think thats healthy. i certainly don't think its positive.