If two people are in a relationship like very close friends, marriage or long-term dating, or just roommates, they often have fights about little things. These fights are not because the little things have some hidden importance that would make them not-little, but because there is a big thing that upset one or both people. They don’t talk about the big thing. They never mention it. They may not understand that is why they are upset.
That is how people fight over toilet lids being left up, or dishes in the sink one day to many, or whose turn it is to take the garbage out, when what they are really hurt by is loss of autonomy, or financial insecurity, or fading intensity of intimacy, or some other big deal.
That is also why many couples cannot resolve longs series of fights on their own, and why couple’s counseling works, most of the times when it does.
People rarely become rational communicators on their own.
That is how people fight over [...trivia...] when what they are really hurt by is loss of autonomy, or financial insecurity, or fading intensity of intimacy, or some other big deal.
Are you really comfortable putting “hurtful and/or stupid things written in a Potions textbook” in the same category as financial insecurity? Or are you saying that Dumbledore used the textbook to induce a profound fear like that? And did it such that Lilly never e.g. tried to respond to one of the Potions remarks face-to-face?
I dunno. I’m trying to imagine how this played out concretely, and I just can’t manage it. Try this exercise: pick two of your high-school friends, and try to produce the effect you’re describing, without either party realizing that anyone else is involved. Give yourself all of Dumbledore’s powers. I don’t believe I could have done it without mind-manipulation magic—and if I were going to use that, why bother with the Potions textbook at all?
Are you really comfortable putting “hurtful and/or stupid things written in a Potions textbook” in the same category as financial insecurity?
Yes, I am absolutely comfortable doing so. I’m talking about two children who have never been taught to communicate with intention, with raging adolescent hormones, and with typical teenage naïvete regarding bother their own emotions and those of others.
I don’t have two high-school friends to rub together. The fact that I’m still in touch with one person from twenty years ago is the freak result of a whole series of unlikely coincidences. But somewhere in those years I’ve harbored runaways that age, I’ve sheltered semi-homeless kids that age, I’ve broken up fights between kids that age, and I’ve provided relationship counseling to kids that age. It’s hard to make them get along if they aren’t inclined to. It’d be shit-easy to imagine making them fight if you could convince one that the other was doing hurtful things, which is what we are led to believe happened.
I guess what I’m saying is that you are either limited in information on teenagers or in imagination. Sorry, but I don’t know how else to answer you, just now.
My apologies, I wasn’t clear. I meant, pick two of your high-school friends when they were in high school. Or if you prefer, pick any two of “your kids”, whatever that means to you, at an age when they’d been friends for at least five years. Not two kids who “aren’t inclined” to get along, two kids who are.
What, concretely, do you write to start them fighting? I see several straightforward ways to worsen an existing argument, but creating a new one, without either participant noticing the asymmetry, is much harder.
I guess what I’m saying is that you are either limited in information on teenagers or in imagination.
No need to apologise; you don’t know me. Without wanting to get too distracted by an argument over credentials: my involvement with teenagers in unending, God help me, but perhaps I do lack imagination. I’d observe in turn that you seem to have identified very closely with Snape’s suffering, and have paid relatively little attention to Lilly’s thoughts and feelings in this affair. That’s when I noticed my confusion: I tried to model Lilly’s half of this, and failed.
I’d observe in turn that you seem to have identified very closely with Snape’s suffering,
It happens I don’t. I’ve never been ‘friendzoned,’ never hidden my courtship attempts behind friendship, and never lost a friend due to what seemed to me to be a single event. I have little sympathy for young Snape.
Teenagers aren’t well-equipped to build lasting bonds and relationships. Their poorly-controlled emotional outbursts and social anxieties are more likely to lead to defensively cutting contact than building bridges. They break apart easily enough on their own, even if they are, for a time, inclined to each other’s company.
Without regard to the degree of the hurt—and teenagers do react in an exaggerated fashion to minor injuries of ego, don’t they? -- people do get in arguments where they never mention the thing that upset them enough to get in an argument. I think that is what the author means us to understand took place between Snape and Lily.
If two people are in a relationship like very close friends, marriage or long-term dating, or just roommates, they often have fights about little things. These fights are not because the little things have some hidden importance that would make them not-little, but because there is a big thing that upset one or both people. They don’t talk about the big thing. They never mention it. They may not understand that is why they are upset.
That is how people fight over toilet lids being left up, or dishes in the sink one day to many, or whose turn it is to take the garbage out, when what they are really hurt by is loss of autonomy, or financial insecurity, or fading intensity of intimacy, or some other big deal.
That is also why many couples cannot resolve longs series of fights on their own, and why couple’s counseling works, most of the times when it does.
People rarely become rational communicators on their own.
And so she never told him.
Are you really comfortable putting “hurtful and/or stupid things written in a Potions textbook” in the same category as financial insecurity? Or are you saying that Dumbledore used the textbook to induce a profound fear like that? And did it such that Lilly never e.g. tried to respond to one of the Potions remarks face-to-face?
I dunno. I’m trying to imagine how this played out concretely, and I just can’t manage it. Try this exercise: pick two of your high-school friends, and try to produce the effect you’re describing, without either party realizing that anyone else is involved. Give yourself all of Dumbledore’s powers. I don’t believe I could have done it without mind-manipulation magic—and if I were going to use that, why bother with the Potions textbook at all?
Yes, I am absolutely comfortable doing so. I’m talking about two children who have never been taught to communicate with intention, with raging adolescent hormones, and with typical teenage naïvete regarding bother their own emotions and those of others.
I don’t have two high-school friends to rub together. The fact that I’m still in touch with one person from twenty years ago is the freak result of a whole series of unlikely coincidences. But somewhere in those years I’ve harbored runaways that age, I’ve sheltered semi-homeless kids that age, I’ve broken up fights between kids that age, and I’ve provided relationship counseling to kids that age. It’s hard to make them get along if they aren’t inclined to. It’d be shit-easy to imagine making them fight if you could convince one that the other was doing hurtful things, which is what we are led to believe happened.
I guess what I’m saying is that you are either limited in information on teenagers or in imagination. Sorry, but I don’t know how else to answer you, just now.
My apologies, I wasn’t clear. I meant, pick two of your high-school friends when they were in high school. Or if you prefer, pick any two of “your kids”, whatever that means to you, at an age when they’d been friends for at least five years. Not two kids who “aren’t inclined” to get along, two kids who are.
What, concretely, do you write to start them fighting? I see several straightforward ways to worsen an existing argument, but creating a new one, without either participant noticing the asymmetry, is much harder.
No need to apologise; you don’t know me. Without wanting to get too distracted by an argument over credentials: my involvement with teenagers in unending, God help me, but perhaps I do lack imagination. I’d observe in turn that you seem to have identified very closely with Snape’s suffering, and have paid relatively little attention to Lilly’s thoughts and feelings in this affair. That’s when I noticed my confusion: I tried to model Lilly’s half of this, and failed.
It happens I don’t. I’ve never been ‘friendzoned,’ never hidden my courtship attempts behind friendship, and never lost a friend due to what seemed to me to be a single event. I have little sympathy for young Snape.
Teenagers aren’t well-equipped to build lasting bonds and relationships. Their poorly-controlled emotional outbursts and social anxieties are more likely to lead to defensively cutting contact than building bridges. They break apart easily enough on their own, even if they are, for a time, inclined to each other’s company.
Without regard to the degree of the hurt—and teenagers do react in an exaggerated fashion to minor injuries of ego, don’t they? -- people do get in arguments where they never mention the thing that upset them enough to get in an argument. I think that is what the author means us to understand took place between Snape and Lily.