THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY…
WAS NEVER MY ENEMY

There’s a particular kind of humiliation that comes with realizing you’ve been fighting a war you never signed up for.

Not a dramatic war. No fabulous courtroom showdown. No champagne thrown across a restaurant. Not even a satisfying argument in a Manhattan apartment where someone storms out wearing six-inch heels.

No. I’m talking about the kind of war where you walk into a room and everyone suddenly gets quiet. Where people you’ve barely spoken to look at you like you’re dangerous. Where you’ve somehow become the villain in a story you never got to read.

And the worst part? You start believing they’re your enemies, too.

The People I Thought I Hated

For a long time, there were people I genuinely couldn’t stand. I didn’t want to see them. Didn’t want to talk to them. Didn’t want to be in the same room with them. Fuck them. That was my attitude.

And I had reasons. Or at least I thought I did. There were stories. Comments. Looks. Little pieces of information that seemed to add up to something.

Except recently, something occurred to me. What had these people actually done to me? Not what someone told me they thought. Not what someone implied they’d said. Not what I assumed they knew. What had they personally done?

And when I started separating what I’d experienced from what I’d been led to believe, I came to an uncomfortable conclusion. Not nearly as much as I thought. Some of them hadn’t done anything at all.

And there I was, carrying around an entire collection of grudges like they were designer handbags. Except these weren’t even mine.

The Art of Making Two People Hate Each Other

There’s a name for what can happen when one person uses information, insinuations, and selective storytelling to create conflict between other people. It’s called triangulation.

And when it’s deliberate, it’s a hell of a strategy. You don’t have to tell an outright lie. Sometimes all it takes is a raised eyebrow.

“I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but…” “I don’t know why she has such a problem with you.” “Just be careful around him.” “You didn’t hear it from me.”

A little here. A little there. A warning disguised as concern. A private conversation presented as a betrayal.

And before long, two people who might have gotten along perfectly well are looking at each other like sworn enemies. Meanwhile, the person passing the information back and forth gets to remain everyone’s trusted confidant. How convenient.

One person becomes the messenger, the interpreter, the witness, and sometimes even the hero. Everybody else becomes a character in a story they don’t control. And nobody thinks to compare notes.

The Building Full of Strangers Who Knew My Name

I’ve experienced what it feels like to believe an entire group of people has turned against me. People who seemed to have strong opinions about who I was, despite barely knowing me.

The situation became serious. Police were involved. There were legal boundaries and accusations. I felt as though a version of me existed in other people’s minds that I didn’t recognize. And I was angry.

Not just at the person I believed had influenced the situation, but at everybody around him. I thought they were cruel. Judgmental. Easily manipulated.

But here’s the part that took me much longer to consider: What if they were reacting to a version of events that was just as incomplete as mine?

What if some of the people I resented had been given reasons to distrust me, just as I’d been given reasons to distrust them? What if we were all responding to different pieces of the same puzzle?

I can’t know what everyone was told or why each person acted as they did. But I can question the assumptions I made. And that’s where something shifted.

Sometimes Isolation Doesn’t Look Like Isolation

We usually imagine isolation as someone telling you that you can’t see your friends. But sometimes it’s subtler.

You can still go anywhere you want. Nobody takes your phone. Nobody locks the door. Instead, your relationships become contaminated.

This friend supposedly doesn’t respect you. That neighbor apparently said something terrible. Those people are laughing at you. Someone else can’t be trusted.

And slowly, you stop wanting to be around anybody. Not because you’re forbidden. Because you’ve been given a hundred reasons to believe the world is hostile.

You withdraw. You become defensive. You start watching everybody. And when someone finally reacts badly to your suspicion, it feels like proof that you were right all along.

That’s the trap. A conflict can become self-sustaining, even when the original story was distorted. You start behaving toward people as if they’ve already hurt you. They respond to that behavior. You respond to their response. And around and around it goes.

Nobody wins. Except, perhaps, someone who benefits from everyone staying divided.

The Most Uncomfortable Question of All

Here’s something I never expected to ask myself: Have I been unfair to people who were never actually my enemies?

That’s a hard question when you’ve spent so much time feeling hurt. Because anger can become a kind of armor. It gives you certainty. It gives you somewhere to direct the pain. It gives you a story that makes sense.

But sometimes healing requires you to admit that your understanding of a situation may have been incomplete. That doesn’t mean everything that happened to you was imaginary. It doesn’t mean you owe everyone an apology. And it certainly doesn’t mean you should ignore genuine threats, dismiss legal boundaries, or walk back into unsafe situations.

It means you can stop treating assumptions as evidence. You can acknowledge that someone else’s behavior hurt you without deciding that everyone connected to them is guilty. You can recognize that two people may have been encouraged to distrust each other without knowing whether either one intended harm.

You can even feel compassion for someone you once despised. And you don’t have to become friends with them to do it.

Put Down the Grudge. Pick Up the Facts.

So here’s my challenge. Think of someone you dislike. Not the person who directly harmed you. The other person. The friend. The neighbor. The coworker. The woman you can’t stand because of something you heard three years ago.

Now ask yourself: What have I personally witnessed? What was told to me by someone else? Did I ever verify the information? Does the person telling me these things benefit from us not getting along? Am I reacting to this person—or to the story I’ve been carrying about them?

You might discover that your dislike is completely justified. Some people really do behave badly. But you might also discover that you’ve been renting space in your head to someone who never actually earned it. And that’s an expensive piece of real estate.

Maybe We Were Never on Opposite Sides

I used to think the people around my former relationship were part of the problem. Now I’m wondering whether some of us were simply caught in the same confusion, standing on opposite sides of a conflict neither of us fully understood.

I don’t know what they believe about me. I don’t know what they were told. I don’t know whether we’d ever like each other if we sat down and had coffee. And I don’t need to find out.

I can respect the distance, including any legal boundaries, and still change how I think about them. Because I’ve realized something important: I don’t want to hate people on somebody else’s behalf anymore.

I have enough opinions of my own. Enough battles worth fighting. Enough living to do.

And if someone has been influencing how I see other people, I don’t have to keep participating once I recognize the possibility. I can put down the anger. Not because anyone deserves forgiveness on demand. But because I deserve to make up my own mind.

And as I thought about all the people I’d spent so much time resenting, I couldn’t help but wonder…

How many enemies would disappear if we stopped believing everything the same person told us about each other?