Last week my guy was at lunch with some people and they were joking about how it was good that one of the girls wasn’t dating her exes’ friend because that’d be bad.
Oleg didn’t get it. Why would that be bad? They couldn’t explain it to him so when he got home he told me about it and asked me, why is that bad. Well, because it’s a rule. You don’t date your friend’s ex. Yeah, but why? he asked.
I couldn’t answer his question beyond it’s seen as a betrayal. And then he asked why.
Oh crap. That why again. Once I dug past that initial assumption that it’s a betrayal to date your friend’s ex, I couldn’t answer. We just have it ingrained in our culture that it is a betrayal to date a friend’s ex. You get someone who wasn’t raised in the culture and even to this day doesn’t have a lot of use for TV, where a lot of these assumptions get reinforced, and you find yourself questioning the assumptions.
So what other assumptions do we have based on our culture? What else do we take for granted as true? This is something we should always ask ourselves in everything from relationships to politics. If you’re a writer, what assumptions do you make (or do your characters make) in your writing?
What assumptions are your beliefs based upon? Can you dig past them to find the basis of your beliefs? Or are they merely social constructs you’ve grown up knowing are true?
(Don’t forget to check out my new book, The Gods Defense.)
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