I apologize in advance if posts like this are not welcome here.
I have a friend circle of 6 guys including me. Before some of us got jobs, we used to play games everyday, hang out together if we are in town. Everyone was chill, enjoyed games more and mostly respected each other to some degree.
After getting jobs we still made time to play and hang out, but not as frequently. I only get time to play games with them on the weekends as my job is in a different time zone. But I still call or text them nearly everyday. Some of them play every single day (kind of addicted to GTA online and valorant for some reason).
But in the last couple of months I have noticed a shift in their behavior. Talking behind each others backs and always getting offended for the silliest of things. This is especially true for those who continued to mindlessly play every single day (they work on the same startup company as well).
I always knew that there was one guy among us who would unnecessarily run his mouth. But I always thought of it as his way of having fun. Mybe it was his way of feeling included. Idk. So I never took any of his ramblings to heart. But everything hits differently now, in a bad way. Every conversation feels like I’m walking on eggshells. Now the others are also starting to become like him.
It’s not just me who thought this way. Another guy who have been besties for a long time with the blabbermouth guy personally called me and told that the whole group feels like it’s infected by something and shared thoughts similar to mine.
I want to call it out, but i’m not sure how to do that in a thoughtful way. I just want them to reflect on themselves, not that I have any right to say that. I’m not afraid of offending them as it’s almost impossible to say anything meaningful without doing so.
Thank you for reading. I hope you have a wonderful day.
Addressing this issue with the offending parties absent is called “gossip” and it is, itself, a toxic social action.
Address it with the people — sorry with the friends — in question.
Yes and no. It’s necessary for interventions and sometimes to determine if someone is being dishonest. There’s a difference between checking a fact with someone else or raising your concerns to a third party about actually problematic behavior and enjoying the discussion and critique of someone else as a bonding activity with another person.
We would have waited a lot longer to get my grandmother tested for Alzheimer’s, if we hadn’t been able to compare our experiences of her, for example.