This is a direct response to Slave-Girl's blog from earlier today.
If you are in any kind of relationship be to professionally, romantically, or just as friends somebody at some point in time is going to get hurt, relationships are filled with conflict as well as harmony. It is impossible to avoid because

It.Will.Happen.

Any relationship worth its salt will have strife, conflict, and some pain. And constantly worrying about causing pain, or about being hurt does nothing but stress yourself and chip away at the relationship eventually destroying it (self fulfilling prophesy anyone?). Conflict makes things, ie relationships, stronger.

Take Iron for example - in the middle ages the vikings would extract Iron from peat moss. The peat would be burned down the extract the iron that was in the moss/dirt. the lump of raw iron was then superheated, and pounded out to remove impurities. The process was repeated as many as 50 times before the iron would be in its purest form. If the iron was not tempered by the repeated heating and pounding it would have shattered under any kind stress, making it useless to the owner, and possibly getting him killed.

Strong relationships are made the same way. By repeatably being thrust into the fire and pounded at. Its not always fun, and its often dirty painful and exhausting. But the end result is a strong, resilient bond that has been tested and strengthened again and again and again.

Do not worry that you may cause pain or discord, instead when it happens do what needs to be done to fix it. Too many people turn and run at the first sign of conflict - in the process destroying the relationship they were worried about hurting in the first place.

**Kisses**