When a group takes sides after two members fall out

There is a short answer about groups fracturing after a dispute and a useful one, and they are not the same. What follows is the useful one.

What happens to the group

When two members of a circle stop speaking, everybody else has to work out what to do, and most of them do it privately and badly. Occasions become complicated, since inviting both is impossible and inviting one is a statement. The organiser usually stops arranging things rather than making that choice repeatedly, which removes the group's main mechanism.

Within a year the circle can be effectively gone, and the two people who fell out are frequently blamed for an outcome mostly produced by the response to it. This is a common and largely avoidable way for long-standing groups to end.

The pressure to choose

One or both parties will usually seek support, which is natural and puts everybody else in an uncomfortable position. Support is often sought in the form of agreement, and agreeing with an account is a small step from taking a side. People also drift towards whoever they are closer to, which produces a split along existing lines rather than along the merits.

Some members disengage entirely to avoid the discomfort, which reads to both parties as a judgement. Almost nobody makes an explicit decision, and the group ends up sorted anyway.

What neutrality requires

Silence is not neutrality, since both parties will interpret it, usually unfavourably. Stating plainly to each of them that you value both friendships and will not discuss the other is what actually works. It has to be observed as well as stated, which means declining to hear accounts and declining to relay anything.

In the long run, this will be uncomfortable and one or both may test it, particularly early on. Most people accept it once they see it is consistent, and a few will not, which is a cost of the position rather than a failure of it.

Keeping the group functioning

Somebody has to keep arranging things, and the workable approach is usually separate occasions rather than an attempt at a joint one. Being explicit that there are now two overlapping sets of arrangements is better than pretending the group is intact. Time helps considerably, and groups that survive a year of parallel arrangements often reconvene once the dispute has cooled.

Attempting a reconciliation event too early is a well-established way of making things permanently worse.

The group's job is to remain available rather than to fix the dispute, which is not its business.

If you are one of the two

Recruiting the group is tempting and expensive, since every person who takes your side is a person the group may lose. Asking friends not to choose is generous and is usually remembered, and it also makes an eventual reconciliation far easier. Accept that some people will side with the other person for reasons of history rather than merits, and that this is not a verdict.

Avoid making attendance conditional, since telling a friend you will not come if the other person is there puts the cost on them. If the dispute is serious enough to warrant asking people to choose, say so explicitly rather than achieving it by implication.

Long-term outcomes

Many disputes cool within a couple of years, and groups reassemble with the matter unmentioned rather than resolved. Others harden, and the group settles permanently into two overlapping circles, which is a real if diminished outcome.

Between old friends, members lost to the awkwardness rather than to the dispute frequently drift back if somebody contacts them individually. The person who kept arranging things through the difficult period is usually the reason any of it survives. It is worth being that person if you can, since the alternative is a circle of ten becoming three friendships and a memory.

The takeaway

State your neutrality out loud to both of them, because a group usually loses more people to the awkwardness than to the argument.

The apology that works is specific, unhurried and free of the word but.