Anyone who has been reading my blog for any length of time, knows that I try and keep a positive message in all my posts.  To do this, I do not talk about subjects that are considered controversial by most of society.  That is not the purpose of my blog.

I do have opinions on things, very often I have strong opinions. Sometimes those opinions must come out.  My hope is that I can express my opinion (negative or positive) about a topic in a constructive way.

I have been reading again….. I ran across a blog post written by Slash Coleman. I found the title interesting, Are You Responsible For Your Friend’s Behavior?

I started reading it thinking it was going to propose the question suggested in the title, answer it and expound upon the answer,  in a way I suppose it did. For me though there arose more than one problem with the blog post, its topic and resulting conclusion.

I have taken a few days to think about what was written before I responded.  Now that I have my thoughts together, I decided it was time.

The author asks the question “Are you responsible for your friend’s behavior?”, if you have introduced two people.  He then goes on to talk about how he has on more than one occasion “set friends up together” by sending both unsuspecting parties an introductory email with an explanation of why they should get to know one another.

I had to stop reading the post for a bit at this point.  I was appalled, I mean completely and totally appalled by the thought of someone “meddling”, as I see it, and “setting” people up with each other, even as friends.  I readily acknowledge that I could be way off base with my feelings about this.  I am the one with personal space issues and other anxiety issues.  However, this whole scenario just feels wrong to me.

The next part of the author’s post is this, after you have taken the time to arrange that these two people meet, are you responsible if one of them flakes out on the whole thing.  In other words, once the connection is made, is everything else out of your hands?  Considering I see the first part as meddling, I think any continued involvement would compound the problem.  Also, people are people and we are not responsible for their actions. 

However, again taking in the fact that you meddled in the first place and set them up for this meeting, I can totally see why the involved parties would hold you responsible for some of how the other person behaved.  If they had come to you and said, “Hey! Set me up with a new friend!”, your responsibility would end once you gave them contact information.  That whole meddling thing, doing it without being asked, just ensures that you will be on the hook no matter what the outcome of the meeting is.

What do you think?

Is sending contact information, an introduction email, and an explanation of why two people should get to know each other, without them asking to begin with, meddling? Or am I totally off base with my reaction to it?

Are you responsible for your friend’s behavior once you have given the two people involved the information about each other?