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How to be Mean
a friend of mine posted this picture of an assignment on mapping abstract concepts.
i’m pleased to see the non-verbal, passive-aggressive mean behaviours listed as well. sometimes i wonder if i’m (with gottman, of course) the only one who notices that as unkind.
i feel that i’ve been seeing a lot of this sort of thing lately from a number of people. and the excuse is always something about not wanting conflict. dude! it creates more!
still overwhelmed with the work and the packing and the moving. i promise to write more that’s not just, ‘hey i found this!’ next week after the parents leave and i have some much anticipated down time.
February 28th, 2007 at 11:25 am
but do you generally expect people to be upfront? my guess is that you have to actively invite people to be upfront with you, encourage it even, if that’s what you want. encouraging it probably means making people feel safe and secure when they give it to you - ie not biting their head off. i’m hearing your point though that non-confrontation creates more conflict in the long run. possibly true, but i’m not sure everyone would agree and hold that point of view. therefore, you’d need to actively encourage it or take responsibility for getting it.
February 28th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
i do generally expect people to be upfront. i think the evidence of being otherwise leading to more bad feelings and trouble is overwhelming.
it is my firm belief that refusing to talk, glaring, eye rolling, and refusing to make eye contact are confrontational and are a power play. they are an attempt to manipulate and get what one wants without having to be in conversation about it.
i also don’t believe that confrontational and compassionate are mutually exclusive. ever heard of interventions?
March 1st, 2007 at 3:16 pm
well, coming from a particularly waspy, anglican, non-confrontational cultural background, i’ve definitely seen and experienced something akin to valuing grace above conflict, not imposing where it’s not strictly necessary, and a stiff upper lip when things are uncomfortable. heck, the british empire was founded on such manners. so it can’t be all bad. but it does lead to quite a neurotic way of life - just look at british comedy for how that plays out.
sure, interventions do make sense. but they seem on the extreme end of things. when things get to a certain point. when some boundary is crossed and concern outweighs the other’s personal freedom and space. something like that. but again that’s my anglican root talking. if your italian, possibly, you might intervene on a daily basis… i think it’s cultural to some degree.
March 1st, 2007 at 6:17 pm
*Warning: Extreme Upfrontness Ahead*
I’m sorry, I am confused by the comments here. I was under the impression that the point of Sparkle’s post was that using passive-agressive behaviors such as glaring, eye-rolling, pouting and refusing to talk was *indeed* confrontational, even though not in a throwing-plates-at-the-wall sort of way.
Simple as that: being sulky, distant, and eye-rolling is *just* as mean as yelling.
Having been on the recieving ends of both of those types of treatment, I would say the people using the non-verbal forms of hostility under the guise of being “non-confrontational” caused me much more pain and distress than the people who were upfront.
Besides, conflict is a part of life, and a very healthy part of it. Being able to resolve conflict with others is a hallmark of being a mature, self-actualized person.
There are plenty of ways to talk about problems without being confrontational, but the key is people actually have to TALK.
I think that the whole ‘trying not to be confrontational’ line is a cop-out for people who don’t want to take ownership of their thoughts and feelings
and interact with the world around them like a grown up. It’s a way to weasel out of holding oneself accountable, and I don’t buy it.
March 2nd, 2007 at 11:32 am
davee:
of course interventions are an extreme example. i find that generally, examples work best when they illustrate the point in a clear manner. extreme examples tend to do so well, i think.
you’re right, there is a time and a place for letting something slide. but when you get to the point that something is bothering you enough i, gottman, hamster_grrl, and i’d bet a number of other people, believe that saying something directly creates much less conflict and bad feelings than refusing to talk, refusing to meet someone’s eye, and stonewalling (in short: pouting) does.
hamster_grrl:
i agree with 97% of what you say. i can’t hold with yelling in and of itself being mean, though. i used to be a mean yeller when i fought. everyone took issue with the yelling, so i did my best to cut that out. i discovered i felt almost *more* mean when i said the same things quietly and calmly. now i’ve given up trying to stop the yelling and instead be less mean in what words i use. i find it’s much more effective, and i’m less inclined to yell after all because the arguments don’t escalate with the same intensity as when i let myself say things just to hurt the other person.
March 2nd, 2007 at 3:40 pm
my comments were not to say that those behaviors were not confrontational (even though we call them ‘non-confrontational’) but was around ‘expecting’ people to vocalize their disagreement over expressing it in other forms. i don’t disagree that it would be better for everyone to communicate in caring, skillful, communicative ways. but i think expecting that is unreasonable. if you want more openness, you have to ask for it, support it, encourage it in people. everyone comes to the table with a different cultural background be it at work, in relationship, or in friendships. and we’re all neurotic in various ways.
to expect people to be the best communicators is mean in a way; it’s ignoring that cultural background and conditioning. accepting people for where they’re at but then encouraging their growth as communicators seems much more compassionate. that was my main point.
and yelling was definitely interesting for me personally. it definitely escalated the energy for me and made it harder to be skillful, much more in need of defense and feeling less safe and less wanting to be open. but i’m sure other cultures have a way different experience of it, some it seems to open them more and communicate involvement and enthusiasm and caring maybe.
March 2nd, 2007 at 4:05 pm
i feel like we’re having two separate conversations: you’re saying ‘being direct is bad if you aren’t italian’ (?) and i’m saying stonewalling is mean.
are you implying that stonewalling, pouting, rolling of eyes, and refusal to talk are cultural habits? and are NOT mean and do NOT cause greater conflict? i’m not buying the cultural argument here: i see this in all cultures around the world.
i’m sorry, david, i’m just not going to stop expecting communication and conversation from the adults in my life. i’m not expecting people to be “the best communicator”, i’m saying that the habits above are mean and i’m not the only one who thinks so.
i’m saying that people who rely on these habits to get their way in the name of non-confrontation are hypocritical; they obviously create more conflict.
dude, if what you want is drama by all means refuse to talk when your lover is irritated with you.
March 3rd, 2007 at 5:26 pm
yes, i’m not arguing about the relative merits of the different ways that people communicate. i realize that was your initial point primarily.
but my comment was about ‘expectations’ around that. you definitely got my point here when you wrote “i’m just not going to stop expecting communication and conversation from the adults in my life”. ok, that’s great. my point was that you have to ask for it, take responsibility for getting it, you have to do something too. they won’t always give you what you want. otherwise you’re just complaining yes?
March 5th, 2007 at 10:45 am
I’m sorry Davee, I have to disagree with you.
It’s not unreasonable to expect adults to act like adults.
The only person I am responsible for asking to act like an adult is myself. It’s not my job to make sure everyone else around me also acts like adult.
If I am communicative and make an attempt to start a conversation and the other person does not want to engage in the process, that is their choice and their responsibility. I shouldn’t have to beg and plea.
Are you saying that you only are communicative and have conversations with people who ask you point blank to do so? Don’t you want to foster relationships based on honesty and trust on your own initiative rather than foisting the responsibility for your actions on the other person?
March 5th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
Ah, I’m glad we’ve found an interesting dialog about this. But I’m not sure we’re in disagreement. Taking personal responsibility is exactly what I’m getting at.
The word “expect” to me implies wanting the world to be a certain way, but it also for me fails to include taking responsibility for having expectations met. And if people don’t meet your expectations then what do you do? If you do something, then that seems like taking personal responsibility for the situation, but if you don’t do something you’re just sitting in an arm chair passing judgment.
That doesn’t mean it’s -your- job to make everyone around you meet your expectations. But if you didn’t do something then how will your expectations ever be met? not by just wishing harder for them to be met… of course not. you have to do something.
Personally speaking, since you asked, I am more open and forthcoming with friends who have invited that kind of dialog and intimacy, and create a safe space for it. People who are angry or abusive toward me much less so. So how they interact with me does in fact have an effect on how I communicate with them. I foster relationships based on how people want to foster them with me to some degree. That doesn’t mean it’s -their- responsibility to get me to communicate a certain way, but it does show that they’re behavior is interdependent with my feelings / behavior toward them.
That interdependence is probably what I was really trying to point out. If I want my friends to be more open and intimate with me I should ask them to be and not just expect them to be. I might even change my own behaviors - having fewer outbursts of anger for example, or practice being better at receiving criticism, or providing positive feedback more often - so as to create an environment where my friends will be more and more open and intimate with me. That’s not taking all of the responsibility for their behavior, but it’s acknowledging the interdependence of my behavior and how they behave with me.
March 7th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
wow, y’all have been having a whole conversation while i was off sorting out my move.
davee, there are two things that stand out to me about your argument.
1) you seem to imply that hamster_grrl and i don’t do *anything* to express what it is we’re looking for in the way of communication. i’ll have to disagree with you there.
2) your argument of “you have to make it ok for me first” smacks of the bully saying he’ll stop being a jerk, but only when you treat him really nicely first. i can’t say that’s an approach i would support.
March 7th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
and i’ve really enjoyed this thread.
1) not accusing you of that kind of quiet expectation, but was just trying to illustrate the logic in my point. sorry if i sounded personal.
2) i think that goes to far. it’s not either / or, you have to make me / or i won’t. but that does get at my point. we can blame the bully entirely, or we can blame ourselves (as some do) for being a victim, but the situation as a whole has more interdependence. the bully relates to us a certain way because of the way we relate to the bully. so if we take self defense classes, increase our self confidence, or similar then maybe the bully will relate to us differently. whose responsibility is it for the bully being mean? it’s not ours really, but we effect the system. similarly if our friends are pissed at us, they might just be misunderstanding what we said or how we feel, it could be their “responsibility” to get clear but we can do something too.
it makes me wonder where the whole sense of responsibility in things is, if the larger interplay is always more complex. i’m not advocating we do away with the notion of ‘responsibility’, by the way, not my philosophical basis. it’s just i fear we take it too far, abdicating the role we play in things. at a cultural level, americans like to ignore the part we play on the third world. oh, it’s their responsibility to uplift themselves, we seem to say. meanwhile, we’re intimately involved in the overall situation. similarly at a social level, we seem to like to define how people should behave and decide whose responsible: for a car accident; for an argument. but it seems to never be so cut and dry. i’m not sure i can paint clear lines of responsibility the more i think about that interdependence.
guess i’ve have the need to type all this out… sorry to use your initial, fairly pedestrian post as that opportunity. this must really be on my mind.
March 8th, 2007 at 10:30 am
i’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt, since i have experience with your word choice blunders, that you weren’t trying to be insulting when you referred to my post as pedestrian.
March 8th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
and i will give you the benefit of the doubt, that you weren’t trying to be insulting by implying i frequently blunder my words. lol.