Most cultures teach us to be socially kind, generous and forgiving. While this is a generally good social approach to have, we are rarely taught when to stop. So long as the person we are interacting with is following the communal / cooperative social contact model, then this king, generous and forgiving is a fantastic method. When the person we are interacting with is not following this model, then we need to know how to tell if they are not growing and learning, and are potentially an Abuser. The Three Pillars Method fills in a heuristic for how we can determine when this default social behaviour stops being useful and we need to change tactic – switching from Assuming Good to Assuming Harmful.

We use the Flag System and Good to Abusive Scale framework to assess a person’s behaviours. Based on a person’s Flags and how they drift down the Abusive Scale framework, we consider whether to change the person’s Trust Zone from Assumed Good to Assumed Harmful, based on the Three Pillars.

Brief: The Point of This

Language

When interactions with people go well, we don’t need to focus much on the nature of the relationship – whether that is with intimate partners, family, friends, acquaintances or work colleagues.

The Three Pillars Method is a toolset for when interactions don’t go well. While using a transactional view of relationships isn’t a good way to make friends, it is a great way to check relationship health when something goes wrong. A transactional view looks at friendships more in terms of economics, considering that the goal of a social interaction is a net social gain, and who is putting in the work, and where the costs of the relationship are.

The Three Pillars

Society teaches us to forgive and forget, to give second chances, to allow people the right to a human error.

We use the Three Pillars Method to provide a good cognitive heuristic to solve this. The Green Pillar indicates when mistakes are handled with learning, but warns about uneven relationships. The Amber Pillar indicates when you should stop cruising in your relationship and pay attention with a ‘cold hard look‘. The Red Pillar indicates when the relationship is problematic / harmful and it would be wise to expect harmful results in your prediction of their future actions.

Green Pillar – Assumption of Good

The key aspect of the Green Pillar is that people grow and learn from mistakes.

We begin by assuming a person is essentially good and means well (similar to the Good to Abusive Scale and the Trust Zones) – hence the Presumption of Goodwill. With this assumption, when an interaction goes poorly, and our self examination (Social Scripts) shows that the error was likely the other person, we confront them about it (first few steps of Good to Abusive Scale).

When we say confrontation, we are not talking about being verbally or physically aggressive (aggression is a very rare tool to use – Understanding Anger). What we mean by confrontation is that we are going to kingly and assertively raise to the person who did the concerning action about our perception of the event with the assumption that this outcome is a mistake rather than their intention (Principle of Charity) and that decent people will seek to explore, solve and grow from this – after all, don’t you?

Rational people will accept rational information and respond in a rational way.

Our goal here is to be solution seeking and we are assuming their cooperation in finding out what went wrong that led to the unwanted outcome. This might end up being your error, their error, an outside thing that affects you both, or just a some kind of amorphous thing (doesn’t fit the three major categories) which is no one’s fault. Assuming someone’s cooperation (Pedestalling) is an excellent tool for encouraging people to be helpful, but be mindful of self-interested people who refuse to participate – that’s a Red Flag.

There are a few methods to doing this, we explore some of these in Solving Problems. It is important to allow for a person to not be ready to recognise that they had a part in the bad outcome and need some reasonable evidence, time and self reflection – I would want to have this if someone approached me with such a claim. If this is a common response to frequent problems, which result in delays and no change – that’s a Red Flag.

It is also important to recognise that sometimes bad luck happens and no one is actually at fault, however that should be rare.

A reasonable person, someone who we would want to have in our Friendship and Acquaintance Circles (Social), is generally going to accept good faith evidence and take an opportunity to grow by developing better skills, having specific areas of caution and essentially being a mature person about this whole social interaction business.

All going well, our friends, family and selves grow from addressing conflict and we become a better group because of it.

If you aren’t doing this yourself, it is time to start.

If the other person doesn’t do this, then we should start being careful. More of that in the Amber Column.

Limits

All good rules need a reasonable limit.

In this case, if you are frequently having a conversation with someone about things that have gone poorly, even if they are truly growing from those discussions, then this is likely not a relationship of equals. A common threshold for the number of conversations around this before this relationship should come under scrutiny is perhaps 3 confrontations in 3 months.

Signs of Concern

If the person keeps repeating the same kind of mistake and not trying to address the problem (rather than experimenting with various solutions to figure out what is good and comfortable for them), then they are showing that they don’t care about the negative outcome enough to do something about it. That is likely a red flag.

To be fair, it could be that the behaviour that you find concerning is not high on other people’s list of concerning behaviours, hence the person doesn’t see a need to change it. If that is the case, then this person may not be an Abusive Person per se, but they are not compatible with you – they may be a Person who is Toxic to you. You may need to consider letting their friendship go.

If the person’s behaviour is commonly regarded as concerning, then I urge you to more strongly consider finding a new person.

Signs of an Unequal Relationship

The person may be making new and different mistakes rather than the same genre of error. This may indicate that the person has a lot to learn to be at your stage in life. They aren’t an equal.

A consideration that this may raise is that perhaps you are their mentor / teacher / parent, rather than a friend, acquaintance or work colleague.

An imbalance like this can strongly impact a relationship that is assumed equal, and this needs to be acknowledged and boundaries set in place.

This imbalance is fine if this is the point of the relationship, such as a parent, mentor, coach or teacher. This is also fine if you adjust your collective expectations from friend to mentor – it is important to be honest about the nature of the relationship.

It is hard to get a positive relaxing social feedback when you are not equals – you’ll be putting work into the relationship that a friendship or intimate partnership shouldn’t need.

Amber Pillar – Caution Recommended

Anomalous Concerning Behaviour (3 strikes and you’re out)

Let us consider a person you know reasonably well, who has a history of Green Flags and has graduated into the Green Trust Zone.

In our hypothetical situation, they have recently done some odd behaviours that are raising Amber Flags, where you aren’t sure what is going on, but it isn’t obviously harmful, or 1 mild Red Flag.

Following the protocol, you confront them (as described in the Green Pillar, in line with the Good to Abusive Scale).

In this case, they did not acknowledge what they did, didn’t apologise, and or didn’t make enough change to be considered ‘doing better’ at whatever went wrong.

In this scenario, a follow up confrontation with them about their behaviours may have led to them excusing their behaviour on some external to your relationship factor.

The ‘Bad Day’ Clause (1 get out of gaol free card)

Everyone has the right to a bad day, where we don’t want to acknowledge that we could and should have done better, and we have the right to be fairly unapologetic about it.

In reasonable reciprocation, it is good for us to allow that someone else is having a bad day, where they aren’t being someone they’d be proud of later either. When we confront them about what they’ve done, and they don’t engage in a reasonable process to be held accountable and make changes, perhaps we can let this one slide… “Perhaps” has some important caveats.

Cold Hard Look

When a Cold Hard Look is triggered, we need to take our rose tinted glasses off and take a Cold Hard Look at what is going on. What we mean by a Cold Hard Look is that we stop trying to find an emotional way to justify what they have done in the absence of evidence (Rose Tinted Glasses, pause the Principle of Charity), and we look instead at the trend of personality that their evidence based behaviours imply.

This often involves fact finding, reviewing more of the past than the last 6 months, checking in with friends, and then, if needed, confronting the person.

When we confront them, we want to give them an opportunity to explain to us what is going on. After all, there may be some good reason why they are acting out of their usual character, and it may be that they need a good compassionate friend right now. If you have the resources to be that compassionate friend and their explanation checks out, then perhaps that person can be you.

If their story seems odd, and the facts don’t support their claims, or there are other anomalies in their behaviour that you now realised that you glossed over (due to the Principle of Charity and Rose Tinted Glasses), then this may be an indication that this person is an Abusive Person, using Empty Promises and Hollow Words to con you. If you notice selfishness and a callousness to other people’s harm, you may be dealing with a Narcisisism or NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder).

The purpose of the Cold Hard Look is that there is enough evidence of concern to no longer presume the best in the person, while there is also insufficient evidence of concern to presume malice – we are looking to see what is objectively real as much as possible and trusting trends of behaviour over pretty words or our hopeful assumptions.

Abusive People have a trend of harmful behaviour, but they use uncertainty and hijack our good nature to obfuscate. The Cold Hard Look bypasses this.

Red Pillar – Assumption of Harmful

The Red Pillar is for people who have not grown from their mistake, or have crossed the line with an egregious Red Flag behaviour.

Three Strikes and You’re Out

If you recognise three medium to strong Red Flags in only a few months, then this is sufficient to end the relationship and place them in the Red Trust Zone (not a friend).

This is a guideline, so feel free to shift some of those numbers – the number of Red Flags, the number of months etc. Be cautious in how many second chances someone has when their Red Flag behaviours led to harmful outcomes.

Repeat cycles of harm indicate a Cycle of Violence, which has a very distinctive look.

The ‘Nope’ Clause.

Some things are just wrong. Some things are not forgivable.

One single strong Red Flag behaviour can cross the line and we don’t want to give that person a second chance. Not everything deserves a second chance, or least, not a second chance with me (or you). That person can try to be a better person with other people.

Sometimes, even if we discover that the person was equally a victim of circumstances, we just can’t see them the same way again – that is, we have profoundly lost trust of them or the ability to feel comfortable around them. We may always wonder if they are a hapless victim too, but we just can’t see them the same way – and that last bit it the important bit.

Get Out Now: Protect yourself

If the person has a trend of harm, or there was a sufficient harm that no second chance is going to be granted (crossed the line as described above), then it is important to protect yourself. The best way to do that is to Get Out Now.

After Thoughts – Guideline, not a code

While this method is presented in a fairly flat and static way, this is a guideline only.

Recognise that the boundary between when to use which Pillar is fuzzy, and it is important for you to adapt these guideline boundaries to what works best for you in the circumstances that you are in.