Sticking My Nose in Other People's Business

It's recently been brought to my attention (thank you Scoot and others) that I have a tendency to stick my nose in other people's business. Who, me?

So I thought, where better to address my problem, then on my blog. Let me start out by saying that this only happens with people I care about. If I don't care about you (you being the entire human race, except for a select group of people), I could care less about what you do. To each his own as my good friend, Gil, would say.

But, if you are a good friend, and someone's either hurting you or about to (history repeats itself) I just can't help but add my two cents. But, for doing this, I get the "stay out of it...it's not your place" all too often.

And, the recent circumstances have all had to deal with friends' romantic relationships. When do you step in and when do you say "OK, throw yourself back in the fire and of course, yes, I'll be here when it all goes awry AGAIN."

Now, I know that people can change. I've seen it in my own relationship. I know people make mistakes. I know when you're young, both people in the spoken relationship can do stupid, stupid things to hurt one another very badly and regret it. Then eventually forgive and move on. It's happened in my life and I've seen it with friends. But, when it's not your heart on the line, it's the heart of a good friend's, why is it harder to just sit back and see what happens?

And, in another circumstance, what if it's someone whom you don't know that well, and you know that what they're not seeing (what they don't know) is what's hurting them? What do you do then? It's not your best friend, it's not even a "good," friend, it's just someone, being hurt (who doesn't know) and you just have to sit there and act like nothing's going on.

Has anyone else struggled with this before? When is it your place to say something? And, if you do say something, will it just end up hurting you and your relationship with the inset couple? I'm trying really hard to live by "not my pig, not my farm" motto, but it's just not that easy. At least, for me it's not.