Triangulation: talking about others when they are not present
When people get into conflicts with each other, one of the fine arts of conflict is to use triangulation to bring people to your side of the issue. The way this works is that when A and B have a conflict, B talks to C and tells C lots of negative things about A. The goal of this type of triangulation is to degrade the person not present. This kind of malicious gossip can occur very easily and spontaneously, you may not even realize what it has done until you analyze why you feel a certain way towards someone, or how you ever got such a wrong notion about someone. Malicious triangulation is very dysfunctional behavior and is one of the worse things that can happen in a community. Malicious gossip and character assassination undermine relationships in a huge way. They poison peoples perspectives of each other, fill voids of understanding with misinformation and deceit, and create an atmosphere of distrust, disrespect and paranoia.
Now sometimes, to help your own understanding of people and their conflicts you need to get and share information about people who are not present. This is healthy and normal and there is an easy test to distinguish between what is healthy and helpful and what is unhealthy and destructive. It's the invisible person test. When the topic of someone who is not present comes up, imagine that the person of whom you are speaking or hearing about is standing behind you. If what you say, or hear would make that person angry, defensive, or unhappy you are engaged in an unhealthy triangulation.
When you find yourself in triangulation's about others, use the invisible person test and point it out to those present. If you go along with triangulation and character assassination, you become an accomplice to dysfunctional behavior that is very destructive to relationships. Relationships are the foundation of community.
If you don't care about the community dynamic involved here let me add something to catch your self interest: People who gossip to you, in turn, will gossip about you. So if you want to create a place where you don't have to worry about what people are saying about YOU behind YOUR back, it is worth the personal investment to point out triangulation whenever it happens.
Part 5 About conflicts
