You know,
IF I have a pet peeve about people it has to be how some view carelessness vs intent. If someone is careless they might hurt someone else, they didn't start out meaning to hurt them, it just kind of happened. I think we do this allot, not that we want to be careless, but we don't often think before we go and we hurt feelings.
So the persons feelings are hurt, and sometimes, nasty people seek revenge and do something on purpose. Like strike out or break something of value you like. This is the bigger issue if you ask me, because this was done with intent, opposed to just being careless and to me worse. THis actually happened to me.
When latter I would confront them, they said we were even as far as they were concerned. I argued they did theirs with malice, I did my offense not meaning too. They said its the same thing.
No its not, I answered, and you will see the next time you break something of mine, because I will intend to hurt you on purpose, and when I am done you will understand how nasty intent can be.
THey didn't break any more of my things...
The point though I was trying to make, we may hurt feelings because we are careless because of the limitations of our hardwiring, and we have to be careful with this. But does not mean we have to be victims of intent, and let others poor crap on us because we brushed thier toes..
Does that make sense?
Dave2u4now38520.67375[quote=Dave2u4now]. . .Excellent points. I was just on the spouses board and I was reading some things that made me rather sad/angry.
I know they were just venting, but some of their words were so nasty and I felt like saying "Hey, the poor bastard isn't making you miserable on purpose."
I agree with you.
We are often viewed as passive aggressive.
My significant other is hurt by my lack of following through. I'm glad he is not into breaking things...I would have nothing left unbroken.
I tend tend to judge people by their intent in all things. However, if you screw up, you do have to take responsibility for it and make amends. If you dont, *then* carelessness is the same as mal-intent.
I get into arguments about things that are said. My husband claims that I'm argumentative and 'combative' in talking to him. How in the world can I come across that way to him when I HATE to argue about anything?
My first problem is that he'll start up on me and I feel that he's verbally attacking me so I get defensive and I lash out at him. The other problem I have is that I understand that he's no more an 'authority' on certain subjects than I am. So when he starts talking like he is such an authority and I offer him a different view - he gets all angry at me and claims that I 'just like to argue with him for argument's sake'.
Let me say that I really hate to argue with people. I tend to be one that avoids conversations when I know that it won't do any good to discuss certain topics - I refuse to discuss politics or religion with my husband under ANY circumstance. But if I feel that someone is verbally attacking me or is stating things that I've read something or heard some other facts about - I'm going to respond. I'm either trying to share information that I've gotten or I'm telling that person to 'back off'.
What's hard is that I don't mean to come across to him the way that he describes that I am. I told him that I don't mean to - he acts like I'm lying to him, like I'm doing it on purpose. So when I tell him that I feel like he's verbally attacking me, he gets all defensive and acts like I'm suddenly making that up to get back at him. When I've simply never bringing it up. So the last time I jumped his case just as he was jumping mine. I explained to him that it's his FEELING that I'm being argumentative and combative, it's not my INTENT. That he also has the INTENT to just discuss things with me but I'm FEELING that he's verbally attacking me. That made him stop and think.
Aaarrghh! He tells me sometimes that I'm just making things so hard for him when all I try to do is be a partner in this relationship to help him. When he says things like this, it makes it so discouraging to me. I feel like everything I do is for nothing. But I tell myself that I WILL NOT just sit there and say nothing, I was in a relationship like that once and I was miserable. I won't do that again.
It's things like this, that I remember that really are pushing me to get diagnosed. It might help him to know that I'm truly not doing things like this just to aggrivate him.
autumnstar
I suspect this is one of the biggest problems people have when communicating with each other--assigning motivation to the other person rather than simply asking them. When you think about it, it's hard enough to know what our own motivations are, much less what someone else's are.
Autumstar, have you ever heard of "active listening?" It's a VERY effective technique for couples, especially. It's also very relevant to the problem you just described. I highly recommend finding a book or Net resource on it and asking your husband to do the same and start practicing it. Or maybe find a counselor who specializes in it.
Two friends of mine, a married couple who were separated, started seeing a pastoral counselor who used it. It was a real eye-opener for both of them. They've been back together, pretty happily from what they both say, for almost 10 years now.
This, I'm finding more and more, is an extremely useful discussion. Thanks for starting and keeping it going, guys!
Sachetm,
Thanks for the suggestion. I'll look that up and see what I can find on it. I'll try anything to get past this rough patch. It's becoming so reactive to me (how I'm responding) that I need some way to refocus here.
Thanks!
See, this is why I rarely get mad at anyone because I understand that sh*t HAPPENS!!!You know,
IF I have a pet peeve about people it has to be how some view carelessness vs intent. If someone is careless they might hurt someone else, they didn't start out meaning to hurt them, it just kind of happened. I think we do this allot, not that we want to be careless, but we don't often think before we go and we hurt feelings.
So the persons feelings are hurt, and sometimes, nasty people seek revenge and do something on purpose. Like strike out or break something of value you like. This is the bigger issue if you ask me, because this was done with intent, opposed to just being careless and to me worse. THis actually happened to me.
When latter I would confront them, they said we were even as far as they were concerned. I argued they did theirs with malice, I did my offense not meaning too. They said its the same thing.
No its not, I answered, and you will see the next time you break something of mine, because I will intend to hurt you on purpose, and when I am done you will understand how nasty intent can be.
THey didn't break any more of my things...
The point though I was trying to make, we may hurt feelings because we are careless because of the limitations of our hardwiring, and we have to be careful with this. But does not mean we have to be victims of intent, and let others poor crap on us because we brushed thier toes..
Does that make sense?
[/QUOTE]
I just had to post this quote from a study for you!
"'When faced with a complex communication task such as making a request, people need to engage in extensive, substantive processing in order to interpret the situation and formulate the appropriate kind of message. Affect infusion should thus be an important feature of request production (Forgas, 1995a). Happy persons tend to be more confident and ambitious, set themselves higher goals, overestimate the likelihood of success, take more moderate risks, and prefer simple and direct solutions (Forgas, 1995a; Mackie & Worth, 1989, Mackie & Worth, 1991; Mann, 1992; Sinclair & Mark, 1992; Stroessner & Mackie, 1992). People in a happy mood may thus underestimate the likelihood of giving offense and come to use more direct and less polite request strategies to maximize compliance because of the selective priming and greater accessibility of positive memories and experiences about similar successful situations in the past.
Negative mood in turn tends to produce more negative assessments of the self, reduce self-confidence and self-efficacy, increase vigilance, and lead to more self-deprecating and pessimistic attributions and judgments (Cervone, Kopp, Schaumann, & Scott, 1994; Forgas, 1994; Forgas, Bower, & Krantz, 1984; Mayer & Hanson, 1995; Sedikides, 1992a, 1994, 1995). Accordingly, sad people might selectively recall incidents when they suffered a loss of face because of overly direct requests and may use a more cautious, indirect, and polite requesting strategy. Negative mood was thus expected to result in more polite and elaborate request formulations throughout.'
The hypothesis was born out in the studies described in the article.
Forgas, J. P. (1999). On feeling good and being rude: Affective influences on language use and request formulations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76(6), 928-939.
Bottom line, YES, it makes perfect sense. I'm sure Forgas would agree!
sachetm38520.8187962963