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Im in college, and Im in kind of a strange situation. My roommate is from Shanghai (this is important info, hold on), and I also have another friend who is from Hong Kong. I'm pretty close to both of them, altho I consider myself closer to the Hong Kong friend. Thing is, they both hate each other. It's not like even the 'open aggressive hate', it's more of a passive-aggressive hate. Its mostly my roommate doing the passive aggressive things, my HK friend tries to be nice, but you could tell there's a lot of tension, my roommate is not opening up.
When I shoehorned the question to my roommate as to why he hates my HK friend, he told me that he thinks my HK friend is "cute" and "kind of stupid". Doens't seem like a legitimate reason to hate someone. Another reason might be that my HK friend was mad rude to me the first couple of weeks we met, and perhaps my roommate still has a grudge against him for that. What worries me even more though, I think my roommate might hate my HK friend solely because he's from Hong Kong. My roommate has been quiet vocal about his displeasure of Hong Kong and their separation from China, and I think he might be projecting this displeasure onto my HK friend. I really don't know what to do :/
You do nothing....You can't control who people like or dislike, or even why.
This. Also, don't throw around the word "hate" so freely. It's a hateful word!
As your friends get older they'll hopefully realize that not particularly liking someone is perfectly normal but that tolerance is a good thing. Throughout life you come across people you're not particularly fond of and have no interest in being friends with but as you mature you learn how to deal with them politely.
When people have strong negative reactions to other people for no good reason, I take it as a reflection of their character. When you can't give someone the benefit of the doubt and maintain basic civility and you have no valid reason, there's something wrong with you.
I remember the one time I met my college roommate's father. Because we lived in the same room, I had been privy to her phone conversations with him in which he questioned her paternity, denigrated her values because they weren't exactly the same as his (he thought he was a Communist - he was really just an ass who made things up as he went along), and undermined her self-esteem with backhanded compliments and outright insults. I was the one who dealt with the tears and sadness in the aftermath. When he showed up for a visit at our dorm, I was polite but absolutely stonefaced when I met him. My roommate was unsettled by this (i'm normally a ray of sunshine when I meet someone for the first time) and said later that her father had noted my coldness. I told her I'd be happy to discuss it with him if he wanted.
I find that Asian people are generally overachievers and not that outgoing. It's nothing personal. It sounds more like a cultural difference in how they're reacting to each other and how you're interpreting it. If your roommate doesn't like the other one simply because of his nationality, well... here in America, we call that bigotry.
Just because each of them is your freind does not mean that they have to like each other. Some of my friends are also friends with people I don't particularly like or want to hang out with. So I just don't. It's really not a big deal.
Just stop expecting them to like each other and don't ask them to do things with you together unless it is your Birthday and maybe they can at least be civil to one another at your party. But this sort of thing tends to come with maturity.
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