I once had a codependent friendship in which there was a pressure to keep messages short, speak in reference and metaphor, and not explain at length what I meant. For this and other reasons, that relationship was toxic and frequently emotionally painful.
After that friendship ended, I read only the first few chapters of the excellent book Codependent No More, and I was abruptly and permanently cured. That isn’t how that normally works; it’s usually “once codependent, always codependent,” like alcoholism. But it turned out my problem was fundamentally a lack of knowledge and understanding. I straight-up did not know that I was not responsible for other people’s feelings. Gaining that understanding was curative.
This is relevant to @Gordon Seidoh Worley’s and @Raemon’s conversation. It is good to be thoughtful. It is bad to take upon yourself the full weight of other people’s response to you. Do be considerate. Don’t manage other people’s feelings. I’m not good at articulating the difference, but that book is the ultimate work on the subject.
The other message I want to convey here is on the opposite, positive end: It is good to get practiced at tactfully and efficiently explaining yourself, asking for clarification, expressing vulnerability and anxiety about a communication, etc., all with appropriate proportionality, and especially with people you are close to. Bad communication is usually fixed by subsequent good communication, and rarely so by less communication.
My partner and I have intentionally cultivated space for a rich and easily accessible meta-conversation, which we can jump into at any time with cues like “Put what I’m about to say in a bubble,” (i.e. “I have a potentially dangerous thought that I’m not sure I fully endorse, but it feels like there’s something important in there that I ought to share, and I am asking not to be judged for it or for it to go onto the permanent record while I work it out with you in real time”) or “Can I ask an anxiety question?” (i.e. “I have social anxiety about something between us, and I would like to express it without implying that you have done something wrong to cause this anxiety”). Other than love (mutual, deep, genuine good intention toward each other), I believe the meta-conversation is the single most impactful innovation that has allowed our relationship to be abnormally healthy over the long run.
I was responding locally to some gworley’s arguments that didn’t make sense to me, but, to be clear I do roughly endorse this comment.
I agree with “don’t take upon yourself the full weight of other people’s response to you”.
A few random things I think:
if someone hasn’t yet bought into having a big ol’ conversation, it’s generally better to start with something short that’s succinctly communicates the gist of the issue and checks if now’s a good time for a big ol’ conversation
if you’re having a somewhat triggered or anxious or slightly-annoyed conversation over text, and finding yourself wanting to write very long messages, it’s often better to shift towards in-person convo. One of the failure modes is that you don’t actually need all those caveats and qualifiers, you maybe need… like, 1 out of 5 of them, to avoid being misunderstood. If you’re having a realtime convo, it’s much more natural to just say the short version and then quickly back up and qualify things if your interlocutor reacts poorly or seems to not get it.
(meanwhile, if you write out all 5⁄5 qualifiers, you end up burying the real substance in noise that’s harder to read)
(if you’re mostly writing for the benefit of other people, this is maybe not relevant, depends on the situation though)
if you never end up expressing complex nuanced thoughts, something else is probably going wrong.
I also find it valuable to say “can I share a dangerous/confused/anxious thought?” with my partner.
I once had a codependent friendship in which there was a pressure to keep messages short, speak in reference and metaphor, and not explain at length what I meant. For this and other reasons, that relationship was toxic and frequently emotionally painful.
After that friendship ended, I read only the first few chapters of the excellent book Codependent No More, and I was abruptly and permanently cured. That isn’t how that normally works; it’s usually “once codependent, always codependent,” like alcoholism. But it turned out my problem was fundamentally a lack of knowledge and understanding. I straight-up did not know that I was not responsible for other people’s feelings. Gaining that understanding was curative.
This is relevant to @Gordon Seidoh Worley’s and @Raemon’s conversation. It is good to be thoughtful. It is bad to take upon yourself the full weight of other people’s response to you. Do be considerate. Don’t manage other people’s feelings. I’m not good at articulating the difference, but that book is the ultimate work on the subject.
The other message I want to convey here is on the opposite, positive end: It is good to get practiced at tactfully and efficiently explaining yourself, asking for clarification, expressing vulnerability and anxiety about a communication, etc., all with appropriate proportionality, and especially with people you are close to. Bad communication is usually fixed by subsequent good communication, and rarely so by less communication.
My partner and I have intentionally cultivated space for a rich and easily accessible meta-conversation, which we can jump into at any time with cues like “Put what I’m about to say in a bubble,” (i.e. “I have a potentially dangerous thought that I’m not sure I fully endorse, but it feels like there’s something important in there that I ought to share, and I am asking not to be judged for it or for it to go onto the permanent record while I work it out with you in real time”) or “Can I ask an anxiety question?” (i.e. “I have social anxiety about something between us, and I would like to express it without implying that you have done something wrong to cause this anxiety”). Other than love (mutual, deep, genuine good intention toward each other), I believe the meta-conversation is the single most impactful innovation that has allowed our relationship to be abnormally healthy over the long run.
I was responding locally to some gworley’s arguments that didn’t make sense to me, but, to be clear I do roughly endorse this comment.
I agree with “don’t take upon yourself the full weight of other people’s response to you”.
A few random things I think:
if someone hasn’t yet bought into having a big ol’ conversation, it’s generally better to start with something short that’s succinctly communicates the gist of the issue and checks if now’s a good time for a big ol’ conversation
if you’re having a somewhat triggered or anxious or slightly-annoyed conversation over text, and finding yourself wanting to write very long messages, it’s often better to shift towards in-person convo. One of the failure modes is that you don’t actually need all those caveats and qualifiers, you maybe need… like, 1 out of 5 of them, to avoid being misunderstood. If you’re having a realtime convo, it’s much more natural to just say the short version and then quickly back up and qualify things if your interlocutor reacts poorly or seems to not get it.
(meanwhile, if you write out all 5⁄5 qualifiers, you end up burying the real substance in noise that’s harder to read)
(if you’re mostly writing for the benefit of other people, this is maybe not relevant, depends on the situation though)
if you never end up expressing complex nuanced thoughts, something else is probably going wrong.
I also find it valuable to say “can I share a dangerous/confused/anxious thought?” with my partner.