I remember when I was just blossoming into a young lady, there were vultures on the prey (I’m not blowing my own trumpet…just read on). Some of these said vultures were my brothers friends most of whom had a good 8 years on me! Who doesn’t like a little attention right? My brother would hear none of it! In fact I would sometimes hear him tell his friends off with a pretty serious look on his face that would indicate he really meant what he had said.
Anyway, despite getting the occasional stink eye from me, I knew my brother had my best interests at heart and he still does. I’m sure my brother looked at it this way: “This is my baby sister and my friends are…boys (read vultures) who I’m sure have their hawk eyes elsewhere. If anything happened between them it would definitely ruin our brotherhood because I’m going to take my sisters side.”
Instead of risking losing friends he preferred not to even attempt to get there in the first place. Ain’t I glad he was over protective of me? We love our older brothers.
This brings me to those unsaid rules of relationships or rather what I love to call “commandments of relationships”(even though they are not written on stone).
*Thou shall not date your friends’ siblings…the ending is always ugly and it will of course lead to choosing and taking sides and probably ending of good relationships.
In that same breath, thou shall not date your friend’s close family member! Unless the friend doesn’t mind and is the one hooking it up. Don’t date your friend’s mother, grandma, aunty…just don’t! There are 7 billion of us, I’m sure you can find somebody else.
* Thou shall not let your folks hook you up with one of their friends’ son/daughter…unless you create the sparks yourselves. Otherwise you will just have yourself a very micro supervised relationship where the parents have the say in everything. ‘Son, you know we don’t want to be on the Mwangi’s bad books so just give her what she wants ok?’
*Thou shall not date your ex’s friends. Despite it being in really bad taste you are interfering with a friendship and it will just show how the two of you werebusy lusting over each other behind your friends back plus… really? Who wants somebody elses’ used goods?
* Thou shall not have the hots for your friend’s husband/wife and if at all you can’t help yourself keep it to yourself. Have some self control. We all know the outcome will be super ugly.
*Thou shall tell your ‘friend’ when you know what’s happening behind their back .We all know how messy it will get when things blow out of proportion and our friend finds out that we knew about the whole thing all along. Right? I know this one sparks a huge debate but wouldn’t you like to know if that was happening to you?
*Thou shall not have an affair with your best friend’s wife/husband…even if you are drunk as hell. Besides being adulterous…it is just plain nasty! Bad manners!So…just don’t!
*Thou shall not have an affair with a teacher. If you are caught, your transcripts will be in trouble and the teacher’s career well…
* Thou shall not ask your partner to have a threesome (especially if marriage is on the cards). Unless you are both just freaky like that!
*Thou shall not cheat! And if you are cheating or have cheated then don’t get caught! If you are going to get caught then just don’t cheat!
*Thou shall not hide previous marriages or children from the current squeeze!
*Thou shall not trap the other into having children together. Like interfering with their contraceptives! or getting thyself pregnant and you had discussed that you don’t want children just yet.
*Thou shall not let their child see them practicing the act of infidelity. You will just distort that child’s perception of relationships at a very tender age. We wouldn’t want that to happen now would we?
All these scenarios are bound to bring about some nasty repercussions: relationships ruined,friendships lost, names tainted, images tarnished…so it is just better to quit while you are ahead.
That’s all I can think of for now. If you have others in mind please do share.