My partner and I have friendships with two couples. Both couples are married lesbians. Both couples are viewed as community leaders. For simplicity I’ll refer to each couple as “KB” and “KR”.
KB are overwhelmingly neoliberal. KR are leftist leaning liberal.
KB are frustratingly capitalist. The breadwinner is a realtor. Both are overly materialistic and wasteful. They own a luxury diesel truck and a new Subaru. And this might be my most frustrated gripe, but both of them quietly refer to service tradepersons as servants. They spend lavish amounts of money on masquerading as feminists. They often cosplay for any event they attend. They have overwhelming support from the majority of our community yet constantly cause drama amongst our community members. They have a “community” swimming pool that is ultimately exclusionary and invites superficiality.
KR are community driven. They regularly hold events that support the entire community. They’ve chosen minimalism and share an electric vehicle (not a Tesla). They can be assholes towards service tradepersons, although I think much of it is due to ignorance and malinformed expectations. They are very true to themselves and do not masquerade. They also have strong support from the community, but the support is genuine. They don’t have a swimming pool. LoL.
I’ve had healthy disagreements with KR, but KB wants to punch down anytime there’s a disagreement, so I avoid conflict in order to not cause any rifts even though I often disagree with KB often.
Ultimately, I believe this boils down to my disdain for fakeness, but I can’t announce my disapproval as “fake” because the community will label me as a bigot.
So I just want to ask y’all because I trust you. Am I being a bigot? Are my frustrations misplaced? I realize everyone here doesn’t have the same assessment I do, but I’ve attempted to do my best to describe each partnership as succinctly and comprehensive that I can on a forum.
If my frustrations are misplaced, please tell me without regard for feelings. If my frustrations are valid, I don’t need additional validation because I don’t want to subscribe to an ego that could cause further division due to support.
Mostly, I don’t want to feel guilty because I don’t have blanket support for people that are not representative of ideals that I feel are valid.
However, I am open to suggestions and guidance on navigating each of these friendships without creating rifts that divide our community. I want to be supportive towards any group that doesn’t always have overwhelming community acceptance.
I just wanted to come back and revisit this.
Thanks for everyone who gave a response.
Over the past weekend, KB visited our home. This was the first time B met our new dog.
Our new dog is a good boy that we rescued from an abusive situation. He’s a Rottweiler. He’s big.
Well, big boy growled at B when she was petting him, and she flipped her shit. During the shit flipping, I kinda shut down and went back to what I was previously doing until my partner demanded that I take control of our dog.
I wasn’t thrilled about what he did, but I’ve grown to accept that some dogs don’t like some people. We’ve had other visitors that he growled at, and they brush it off as “he’s adjusting.” because we’ve only had him for <3 months. However, now I know that B went home and ranted to K about the occurrence.
K contacted my partner the following day about B’s rant, and now my partner has been in shambles because they think we can no longer have visitors. My partner has since reviewed some studies that verify some dogs just don’t like certain people, and we’ve agreed to evaluate how we let the big boy meet new people.
The thing that bugs me though is I’ve been to KB’s home several times and their 4 doodles bum rush me and bark and growl everytime, but I ignore it or joke, “y’all don’t mean that.” But at the end of it, I don’t take it personally or give in to their dogs. I’ve certainly never left in anguish to go home and rant about it. However, I’ve only met two dogs out of the 1000+ dogs I’ve encountered that caused me to develop real fear. Both of those dogs have attacked several friends with significant damage including both of their owners. I grew up with several large dogs throughout my childhood, so I understand that gives me an advantage when dealing with some dogs’ bullshit. This may be what separates myself and B, but I’m still frustrated with their reaction to the big boy vs my reaction to their big doodles.
All in all, I’m trying not to be frustrated by any of it and ultimately respect my partner’s friendships. But, fuck! there’s a whole part of me that wants to punch down on B and be like “How’s that shit feel? Your real estate money don’t keep my boy from giving you the shit you deserve.”, but I won’t. I want to take the HiGh rOaD because they’re only a friend due to my relationship with my partner, and I love them. And I only feel this way because any of my real friends would have taken it and looked big boy in his eyes and said wtf is your problem, then pushed him away or told him to GTFO, “we’re not friends until you can learn to behave.” And that’s how I treated him when he growled at me during the first few days we brought him into our home. Now this fool won’t leave my shadow. He’s literally sitting beside me with admiration as I write this shit.
Anyway, I don’t want to shit on people who have rational fears of dogs, but I’m terrified of the wrong person getting offended by our bubba and causing problems for us that don’t exist.
Again… Thanks all y’all who gave some rational insight to my original gripe. Now, I’m just going to have to delineate whether this is a one off or does big boy have a legitimate judgement.
Mostly, I don’t want to feel guilty because I don’t have blanket support for people that are not representative of ideals that I feel are valid.
Frankly, that sort of blanket support wouldn’t be a good thing. It could be a different situation if they needed help and you were withholding it because they aren’t based enough for you, but it sounds like they’re doing juuuust fine as is
You’re not being a bigot for judging people by their words and actions
You gotta be able to hit back the neolibs back, verbally, in a manner that exposes their shitty behaviour, if feasible. Become a pillar of the community, if possible. Maybe raise your concern when they say something crass, wait for an opportunity to bring up that it must be nice to afford that much cosplay, small nasty ways to show they are not the same as the rest of the community (if the community is overwhelmingly petit bourgs or LA or , don’t bother too much.) I am at the same spot with a bunch of people and if you are in a place to put them down without losing access to vital ressources and have taken precautions, there are only so many ways we can fight back rn and wrestling control from shitty “community leaders” is the best we can hope for, often.
I don’t mean to talk down to you, your irritation is valid, I just think it shouldn’t be the end point, otherwise it will just turn into stewing resentment. I am not excluding myself from needing to do that more often,
you dont sound like a bigot at all, queer people can also be insufferable.
both of them quietly refer to service tradepersons as servants
