How to Clean Up Your Friendships

There has been much written on the art of breaking up with a friend. Quite often it can be harder and more stressful than ending a romantic relationship. Along with these articles on ending friendships, there seems to be a movement towards “purging” friends: once a friendship is on the rocks, just dump the friend, regardless of how long the friendship has lasted. Thankfully, if you have hit a rough spot with a friend, this doesn’t automatically mean that the friendship is over. There are things that you can do to clean up the friendship and get it back on track.

Is it important to you? The first thing you need to do is decide how important the friendship is to you. Maybe you honestly don’t want to be friends with this person anymore. This does happen and there is no need to feel bad about it. But maybe the friendship is important to you and you want to revive it. Before deciding to dump your friend, make sure.

Talk it out

Quite often the reason a friendship goes south is that you’ve stopped communicating with each other. Something may have been misinterpreted whether it be words or an action. Instead of talking about it, you two let it slide. Only you don’t. You hold on to it, but don’t mention it. But maybe you’ve done or said something too, and your friend doesn’t talk to you about it. All of a sudden there’s hurt feelings and resentment on both sides, further breaking down communication. Mention things as they come up. Quite often asking for clarification can clear things up. If you aren’t sure what your friend meant by something they said or did, ask! It can save you a lot of heartache.

Get together

If you never saw or talked to your spouse or partner, how do you think that relationship would fair? Life is busy, but if you want your friendships to stay strong and healthy, you have to talk to or see your friends regularly. If you are swapped with work and home, drop an email or send a text message to check in. A few words regularly can go a long, long way.

Address issues head-on

This is similar to talking it out, but usually happens after the fact. If something major has happened between you and your friend, address it head-on. A falling out or fight doesn’t mean the end of the friendship. Get together and discuss what happened. Quite often what you’re feeling doesn’t reflect what actually happened and vice-versa. Before meeting agree to leave the blame game out of the discussion. Be open and honest about how you feel and be willing to listen.

Leave the past in the past

So, you and your friend had a falling out but you’ve managed to talk about it and have moved passed what happened. Make sure that is actually the case. If you have any lingering concerns or hurt feelings you need to talk it out and resolve what has happened. Then leave the past in the past and move on. Holding on to what happened in the past will only make things awkward and possibly ruin the friendship. And if it’s something you aren’t sure you can work past, than you need to readdress the friendship.

This is a Guest Post by Vernon Marker. He is a freelance writer for Marriage Fitness. Marriage Fitness is an innovative step-by-step relationship-changing system that teaches you how to save your marriage. Any couple that is going through marriage problems and want to know how to save a marriage can find answers through Marriage Fitness.

Internet Dating and Romance Scams - Warning Signs to Identify a Scammer

There are so many ways to meet and connect with people on the internet, such as social networking sites, chat rooms, dating sites, email, instant message and online personal advertisements. In addition to allowing you to interact and meet new people, these services also open you up to a world of people who may not really be looking for friendship, love or a relationship . . . what they really are looking for is your money.

Romance and Dating Scams are a growing problem in the world we live in. In these situations, the scammer plays on the potential victim's emotions. They know that the potential victim is looking for love or a strong relationship, so they use all of the right words to convince the potential victim that they truly care for them. Many of the scammers will use pictures found on others profiles or even modeling sites as their profile. They will also use a variety of fake names, and some scammers could be operating several "profiles" and names at once.

Many internet scammers will look at the profiles of their potential victims and use the information in their profile to hook them into their scam. For example, if someone was to mention in a profile on a dating website that they are a religious person the scammer will often proclaim that they feel like “God brought them together” which plays into the potential victims faith.

Once they believe that the potential victim is emotionally connected to them, they will tell them that they need money for some reason . . . they were in an accident and have medical and legal fees to pay or simply to pay for a plane ticket so that they finally meet in person. The scammer will ask the potential victim to wire them money, and sometimes will even promise to pay it back as soon as possible. Since the potential victim is emotionally invested in this relationship they want to do whatever they can to help out this person that they love.

If you are using the internet as a tool to find a new relationship, make sure that you learn the warning signs of Romance and Dating Scams such as
• They call you by the wrong name, or only call you “dear” so as to not mistakenly call you the wrong name.
• They claim to be in love with you after just a few emails.
• Conversations quickly go from love and relationships to asking for financial assistance.
• Details that they talk about do not match up with the information in their profile.
• They ignore or do not answer any of your personal questions about their life.
• They ask you for bank account information, or to open a bank account for them.
• They ask you to cash a check for them and wire then the money.
Finally, one of the best defenses that you have against these Internet Scammers is the internet itself. There are many websites where visitors can post information about scammers, and by running such a search on their name, email address or phone number you may find out that your new “love” is a scammer before they have the chance to destroy you both financially and emotionally.

This is a Guest Post by Shawn Mosch.Shawn Mosch is a scam victim turned Victim’s Advocate who, along with her husband Jeff, works to educate people about internet scams. After their personal experience with a counterfeit cashier’s check scam in 2002, Shawn spent countless hours searching for resources and support for victims of these scams. The lack of information and resources available at the time was the motivating factor in launching their website, ScamVictimsUnited.com, in 2003. Over the years Scam Victims United has worked with several media outlets on stories about scams and has been active in working with government agencies to increase awareness about scams, including a petition asking for the creation of scam education and awareness programs. Shawn is able to offer a unique perspective on internet scams because of her experience, and can also relate personally to scam victims. This allows her to offer education, resources and support while giving victims a sense of hope and encouragement that they will make it through their situation, because she is living proof that you can survive being a scam victim.

Making online friends with Friendship and Dating Sites

The internet has revolutionized how we communicate with the rest of the world. Friendship and Dating Sites are a great way to meet new people online. Apart from the exclusive friendship and dating sites there are also microblogging websites and social networking sites where you can do much more than developing friendships like  myspace, facebook, twitter and so on. Some people join these sites to make new friends because they want to date, some people want to improve their business prospects or promoting their services or websites and some people join because they are curious. Most of these sites have facilities like emails, IM's, Voice Chat and Web cams chat which help in developing relationships have become more and more easy. There are many cases where these sites have lead to more than just friendship. Some of the reasons for the popularity of these Sites can be 

Online sites enable people to make friends at their convenience through the internet.  

It is also a good way for developing friendship if one is lonely, shy or lacking self confidence to approach people directly. 

These sites enable you to communicate with people of all age groups, interests and even from different countries.   

Majority of these sites are free to join and one can create your profile and add photographs on this sites so that likeminded people can find you.   

Sometimes we find it easy and better to share our problems with those who are unknown to us than those whom we know.    

Some of the most interesting people you meet may have a lot of knowledge and when you make friends with such people you also get to learn a lot.

However, when making friends on the Internet one should not forget that there are also chances of deception. So it is advisable to go for online dating background checks.

Related Article Links

How to avoid the risk of Online Dating

Internet Friendship Sites - Blessing or Curse

40 Microblogging Websites for Networking