Broken Rules of Friendship.

There are a whole bunch of unwritten and written rules of friendship, and within everyone's groups, the rules vary slightly.

To me, though, there is one rule that I think stands out above all others. To me, it may as well be in the Ten Commandments:

Thou shalt not date thy best friend's ex unless permission has been granted.

This rule has been broken in my circle of friends. Take friend A, who I shall call Cassie. She was in a relationship with Jono for just over two years. In November, he broke up with her, and she was devastated. Friend B, whom we will call Trish, helped both parties through the breakup. Then Trish and Jono start spending a lot of time together. At first, Cassie doesn't mind. But then, she starts to feel uncomfortable with just how much time they are spending together. Cassie decides to share her feelings. Trish and Jono are rude to her, and say that she's paranoid.

Lo and behold, barely a MONTH after the end of this relationship, Trish and Jono get together, depsite Cassie's feelings. How's that for a slap in the face?

I only just found out about this, and I wanted to stay out of it, because it isn't anything to do with me. But I couldn't. I believe that Trish has broken the most basic rule of friendship. If I were Cassie, I would feel betrayed. Trish helped her through the breakup, and then turns around and stabs her in the back, and accuses Cassie of being 'paranoid.' Obviously with good reason.

This incident has made me realise how strongly I feel about friends dating other friend's exes.