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Friday, September 07, 2012

Frenemy Friday

Lately conversations and thoughts have turned to friend-or-foe considerations.

Wikipedia points out that the term frenemy "can refer to either an enemy disguised as a friend or someone who's both a friend and a rival." The Urban Dictionary has 3 pages of definitions for frenemy.  The one that I like is
Someone who is both friend and enemy, a relationship that is both mutually beneficial or dependent while being competitive, fraught with risk and mistrust.
This cartoon, found at CSL CartoonStock, is by Kieran Meehan and is a good presentation of how female frenemies experience this phenomenon:
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image: cartoon by Kieran Meehan about frenemies
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In a business setting this cartoon also from CartoonStock by Bradford Veley brings up the issue of trust:
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image: cartoon by Bradford Veley about frenemies
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It seems to me that the best approach to dealing with a friend/enemy is to stand back, if you can, and view the situation as a game, much like the relationship between cartoon characters Tom and Jerry.

As Machiavelli said, "keep your friends close and your enemies closer."


--Marge


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