Mars and Venus II

So this is the sequel to my last post.

As I mentioned, I had a lot of thoughts swirling around my head after Adam and Britt's show last week (btw, new show tonight everyone!)

So I'm done with the man-bashing, and am moving onto friendship (bashing?).

Question # 2:
How close/honest/blunt is too much? When, in a friendship, do we begin to disregard the feelings of others simply because we feel comfortable with them? And is this a privilege or a flaw in relationships?

And in the spirit of leaving Britt and Adam alone, why don't I use an example from my own life for once?

My Dear Anon: she is the easiest person to use for this one. And for the sake of my ridiculously G-rated blog, I'll go with a pretty mild example.

She is, without a doubt, the friend that I am the most blunt and honest with. And it works for us 99.9% of the time. Take her comment in my last post, she's upset that I saw "Push"without her. She called me a "wanker." (As an aside, I've learned that "wanking" means masturbation in England - do you think MDA was calling me a "masturbator?" It seems a bit inappropriate and completely unrelated to the post topic...)

Am I hurt that she called me a name? No.
Am I upset that she's apparently bent out of shape that I went to a movie without her? Nah.

But...if that comment had come from someone else? Maybe I would be both hurt and concerned.
However, it's MDA. I can interrupt her mid-story to tell her that the tale she's in the midst of regaling me with is both boring and I don't care. She can sigh and push the album away halfway thorough my trip to Europe photos because she's not interested in seeing them anymore.

Neither of us are hurt by this. (Though someone might argue that the fact that I remember she did that with my Europe photos 13 years ago might imply that I'm holding a grudge).

However, how much of this is too much? How many stories can I interrupt before she only laughs on the outside at my gall, and starts seething on the inside? Or even worse, gets truly hurt on the inside?

How does one know when to stop with this behaviour? And why should they? If I'm cool with it every time she pushes away my vacation photos - why would she ever stop?

Now one could argue that if you're truly good friends, then you should be able to tell the person that you've become hurt by this, and maybe they could take a hiatus from behaviour x.

But by then the damage has been done. I've already learned that she hates hearing about my holidays. She knows that I don't want to hear about her Zelda escapades. And what's to prevent a person from taking that a bit further in their heads? Maybe it's not just my holidays that MDA doesn't want to hear about. Maybe she hates hearing about my job too. Maybe I should just talking so much period.

So my question is this: yes, it's lovely that when you reach a certain level of friendship with a person that you feel comfortable enough to be brutally honest and harsh- but should we be?

Does it make us lazy as friends? We stop having quite as much consideration for their feelings because they should just know how we mean it. They should just know what's going on in our heads.

Is it OK to be what essentially can only be defined as "rude"?

Why is it OK to do that to the friends that are the closest to us in the world, but not to an acquaintence?

Is this a privilege of close friendship, or is it a flaw?

Discuss.