Characters often want change as part of their role. And just as importantly, their role often requires that they can’t achieve that change. The tension between craving and deprivation gives birth to the character’s dramatic raison d’être. The “wife” can’t be as clingy and anxious if the “husband” opens up, so “she” enacts behavior that “she” knows will make “him” close down. “She” can’t really choose to change this because “her” thwarted desire for change is part of “her” role.
I’m conflicted about drawing this kind of conclusions from people behaviour, it opens up a door that allows you to interpret anything any way you like.
More simple explanations are that if a “wife” knows how to interact with the husband in a way that causes him to open up and talk about what’s happening, then the conflict gets resolved and you aren’t observing a clingy and anxious “wife” anymore.
It’s actually hard to communicate openness and communication while you are feeling anxious and clinging, so you’d see a lot of people acting in ways that “discharge” their anxiety, rather than fix their problem. You don’t need to go as far as to postulate that they are actually acting like this “on purpose”.
Even if the “wife” is clearly showing a stereotypical script, it might just be that “she” has no utter clue of what else could be done about “her” situation. “She” could be just assuming that it’s the correct way to face the problem, nag the “husband” until it finally works. Yeah, “she” would likely feel nervous and lost if considering the option of going off script and trying something else, and would avoid doing that because of that. But people have been using “punishments” in contexts where they have no hopes to work for countless millennia now, and there’s no reason to assume everyone just secretly wants the target to persist in unwanted behaviour so they can punish him some more.
There are other circumstances where drawing simpler explanations is harder, and then you can start to wonder if there is this kind of “purpose” in someone’s actions. Self sabotage is definitely a real thing, sometimes. But I think you’d be safer by going with the simplest explanation first, because you can use “secret reasons” as an explanation for everything in psychology.
Aside from this, the post was really good and insightful. It got me thinking about what roles I’m being pushed on and where I’m pushing my friends to.
I often see that people I know make assumptions about me being the rational one of the group, such as assuming I’d commit the stereotypical mistakes of someone who follows Hollywood rationality… which I always found weird as hell, because 1) in other contexts it’s basically a meme that I’m really genre-savvy (for example, I DM in games for the group and people have a habit of worrying at least about the first four-five levels of subversions and recursions of my twists and plots), and so I thought they should realise I’d have saw the possibility of making the obvious cliched mistake coming, and 2) because I never showed any hint of such behaviours and regularly do the opposite thing, but I guess it makes more sense now.
My role, according to them,is to be incredibly devious and intelligent and do the non-supervillain equivalent of having the hero fall in my devious-four-levels-of-deception-trap, and then screw up something obvious such as leaving him unattended to free himself or fail to my own hubris or insert cliched genius mistake x, so the “balance” between intelligence and heart is reaffirmed.
I’m conflicted about drawing this kind of conclusions from people behaviour, it opens up a door that allows you to interpret anything any way you like.
More simple explanations are that if a “wife” knows how to interact with the husband in a way that causes him to open up and talk about what’s happening, then the conflict gets resolved and you aren’t observing a clingy and anxious “wife” anymore.
It’s actually hard to communicate openness and communication while you are feeling anxious and clinging, so you’d see a lot of people acting in ways that “discharge” their anxiety, rather than fix their problem. You don’t need to go as far as to postulate that they are actually acting like this “on purpose”.
Even if the “wife” is clearly showing a stereotypical script, it might just be that “she” has no utter clue of what else could be done about “her” situation. “She” could be just assuming that it’s the correct way to face the problem, nag the “husband” until it finally works. Yeah, “she” would likely feel nervous and lost if considering the option of going off script and trying something else, and would avoid doing that because of that. But people have been using “punishments” in contexts where they have no hopes to work for countless millennia now, and there’s no reason to assume everyone just secretly wants the target to persist in unwanted behaviour so they can punish him some more.
There are other circumstances where drawing simpler explanations is harder, and then you can start to wonder if there is this kind of “purpose” in someone’s actions. Self sabotage is definitely a real thing, sometimes. But I think you’d be safer by going with the simplest explanation first, because you can use “secret reasons” as an explanation for everything in psychology.
Aside from this, the post was really good and insightful. It got me thinking about what roles I’m being pushed on and where I’m pushing my friends to.
I often see that people I know make assumptions about me being the rational one of the group, such as assuming I’d commit the stereotypical mistakes of someone who follows Hollywood rationality… which I always found weird as hell, because 1) in other contexts it’s basically a meme that I’m really genre-savvy (for example, I DM in games for the group and people have a habit of worrying at least about the first four-five levels of subversions and recursions of my twists and plots), and so I thought they should realise I’d have saw the possibility of making the obvious cliched mistake coming, and 2) because I never showed any hint of such behaviours and regularly do the opposite thing, but I guess it makes more sense now.
My role, according to them, is to be incredibly devious and intelligent and do the non-supervillain equivalent of having the hero fall in my devious-four-levels-of-deception-trap, and then screw up something obvious such as leaving him unattended to free himself or fail to my own hubris or insert cliched genius mistake x, so the “balance” between intelligence and heart is reaffirmed.