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. 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.

We use the Flag System and Toxic People framework to assess a person’s behaviours. Based on a person’s flags and how they drift down the Toxic People framework, we consider whether to change the person’s Trust Zone based on the Three Pillars.

Introduction

Humans are Social Animals – we are stronger as a group than individuals. For groups to work together requires working through conflict and difference so that we can cooperate. A functional society leans on the Presumption of Cooperation, that is, it needs to have the majority of its members working cooperatively for the greater good of the society.

As such, most people are socially good most of the time.

Language

When interactions with people go well, we don’t need to focus much on the nature of the relationship – whether that is with 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, but 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.

With this in mind, the parts of an interaction then are:

• Event – The entire interaction from beginning to the end
• Action – This refers to the actions taken that led to the outcome.
  • Actions speak louder than words. Words can add context, but should not be at odds or ignore the action.
• Cost – This is rarely financial.
  • Cost is any kind of resource such as social esteem, effort, personal items, pain, discomfort and time.
• Outcome – The best effort to look at the objective outcome result
  • Was the outcome overall good or bad?

The Three Pillars

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

What many societies don’t do is teach us

• A reasonable limit to forgiveness and thus how many “second chances” should a person actually have
• How to know that the nature of the relationship needs to change
• When to tell that when we need to walk away, or
• How many times do we give someone a free pass.

The goal of the Three Pillars Method is to provide a good cognitive heuristic to solve this. A cognitive heuristic is a set of guidelines in a framework that works most of the time in most situations, speeding up and guiding decision making. While heuristics are good most of the time, there are always situations where they fail, so be on the alert for that.

Green Pillar – People who grow and learn

Similar to the Toxic People Mind Toolset, we begin by assuming a person is essentially good and means well. 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.

When we say confrontation, we do are not talking about being verbally or physically aggressive (aggression is a very rare tool to use – more see Understanding Anger). What we mean by confrontation is that we are going to 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, and that decent people will seek to explore, solve and grow from this.

Our goal here is to be solution seeking and we are assuming their cooperation in finding what went wrong that led to the unwanted outcome. There are a few methods to doing this, such as Helping Another [LINK]. 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 and self reflection – I would want to have this if someone approached me with such a claim. It is also important to recognise that sometimes bad luck happens and no one is actually at fault.

“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness, that is life,” Jean-Luc Picard.

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.

Limits

All good rules need a reasonable limit. In this case, if you are frequently having a conversation with someone to confront them about something that has gone poorly, even if they are truly growing from it, this may not be a relationship of equals. A common threshold for the number of conversations around this before this relationship should come under scrutiny is perhaps 5 confrontations in 6 months.

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

Is this what you want? Are you comfortable with that?

Or do you need to have a conversation about that with them?

Are you actually their mentor rather than their friend?

An imbalance like this can strongly impact on a relationship 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.

Amber Pillar – The ‘Bad Day’ Clause, Only 2 second chances

Aka the Bad Day Clause

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.

• So long as our bad day didn’t lead to outcomes that are more than reasonably uncomfortable, and
• that this the bad day is an anomaly in our usually good track record,
• then it is lovely and reasonable to be given that flexibility

In reasonable reciprocation, it is good for us to allow that someone else is having a bad day and 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.

• Credit
  • For someone to have earned this, they need a fairly good track record of being decent, civil people, who in the rare times that they make a mistake or are part of a problem, they generally do a reasonable job of learning and growing
• Mild enough
  • That the action the person did resulted in an outcome that was minor enough that it isn’t going to be too personally expensive to shrug off and effectively ignore
  • Caveat: If you find yourself shocked by what happened, or wondering how you are going to get through this “cost” – then this is not a mild consequence
• Rare
  • The use of the “bad day clause” (whether they claim to use it or you internally label shrugging this one off using this clause) is an anomaly (an exception) in someone’s generally Green Flag behaviour
  • We need to set a reasonable limit before we need to escalate this new trend. On average, 2 freebies in 6 months seems fair. A 3rd “bad day clause” should trigger the Cold Hard Look

Cold Hard Look

When 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 Cold Hard Look is that we stop trying to find an emotional way to justify what they have done in the absence of evidence.

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” Sherlock Holmes

The Cold Hard Look lets go of assumptions of goodness, and looks at the evidence first.

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

When we confront them, we want to give them an opportunity to explain to us what is going on. 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.

Do not offer them explanations.

You won’t know if you guessed the reasons correctly, or if you have an abusive person who is using your guess to fool you.

Let them explain it to you.

However, 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, then this may be an indication that this person is a perpetrator of Relationship Violence or a Bully, using Empty Promises and Hollow Words to con you.

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.

Red Pillar

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 you may feel that you could give them a few more poor behaviours before you cut them off, or re categorise them.

This also applies to having given this person 3 second chances… that is too many for you to not start to expect that this person is going to yet again fail to be reasonable and do the decent thing. If you have given someone more than 3 chances to get serious things in order, then I highly recommend that you look at the Cycle of Violence and work out if you are on it.

The ‘Nope’ Clause.

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

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.

We do not need to give this person a second chance, although you can choose to.

We do not need to give them an explanation. although you can choose to.

For this kind of situation, there is no free pass, no Bad Day Clause, no redemption.

What happened was unforgivable. It didn’t stretch a friendship, it broke it.

Get Out Now

Once you have figured out that the person has earned a place in the Red Zone:

• Do not seek to redeem or repair the relationship. Do not feel obligated to explain, teach or help them through their process
• The most important thing to do is to protect yourself, protect the vulnerable, and protect your community
• The next most important thing to do is to heal from this
• The last most important thing to do is to ensure that you do not let this person back into your life now matter how much they claim to have grown (Perpetrator Reformation Fiction)

If the person is a Perpetrator of Abuse, take a look at our section on Domestic Violence and Escaping Abuse.

After Thoughts – More of a guideline than 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.