Introspection: Day Three

I don't deal with avoidant people much. They tend to avoid me. I generally feel it's kinder to let them. Someone who refuses to assume they know what other people are thinking unless told, and someone who would rather swallow their own tongue than state their wants outright is a bad combination, and makes everyone unhappy.

And yet, I seem to have a friend who is like this. The first time I did something that rubbed them the wrong way, they let me go on doing it forever, not only not telling me, but doing their damndest to make sure I didn't notice anything was wrong. When they finally did say something, they had an honest-to-God panic attack right in front of me, and disintegrated so badly I couldn't tell if they were afraid I would quit talking to them over this, or afraid that I wouldn't. To their credit, they were completely aware that this should have been no big deal, and it was their anxiety that had made it snowball so badly; but on the other hand, if it was this difficult for them to say one small thing, I had no idea what else might be going on that they just couldn't force themselves to talk about.

I don't have any clue how to deal with this. It's one of those conflicts that can't be resolved from only one side. It's a problem on two levels: One is that a minimum of one person is not getting what they want, because the ask culture person is resenting not being told, and the guess culture person is resenting having to speak directly. But the other is that, if you're not being asked/read like you're expecting, it feels very much like the other person just doesn't care enough to do it. Both of you feel like the other one just isn't listening.

I have never been able to fix this. All my life, I have been the one expected to adapt to the communication needs of other people. The logic is that I'm clearly better at it, which is probably true, but also presumes that I'm the one who's going to do all the work. I can guess what other people want until I'm blue in the face, but it's really stressful, and I'll never get the context I need to be confident in my guesses unless they tell me things outright at least sometimes. I am implicitly expected to fix something that I can't fix by myself, and I always feel like a failure.

I think they just didn't realize how much I didn't know what any of their ambiguous gestures meant until the time I concluded something was wrong, when it actually wasn't. It was exasperating enough for them to raise their voice over, which I have never heard them do before or since. Not guessing didn't work, and blind guessing didn't work either; that was the limit of what I could do without more information. I figured they were going to give up trying to get me to understand at that point, and quietly prepared to leave them alone.

I was very surprised when their response was to... start telling me things. Floored, really. This is a really stupid thing to be surprised by -- it's really more of a logical consequence. But this is the first time I can recall anyone trying to meet me halfway on something like this. They seem to have some brainweasels that make this more difficult than it might otherwise be, which makes me conflicted. I still don't really understand what prompted them to start talking to me in the first place. I don't know that they should have to try so hard to be friends with someone, but they're choosing to try all on their own.

Comments

  1. As someone who has struggled to set boundaries/share feedback out loud, when I have hit a limit and HAD to do it and had the person in question blink at me and say, of course, thanks for letting me know, please tell me if there's anything else, it makes it a million times easier to ... just tell them, even if my own brainweasels are being loud and annoying. I have EVIDENCE, you see, that my person wants to know and isn't going to flip out if I say something. When my evidence in OTHER contexts was people flipping out, it made me anxious about doing it ANYWHERE. But getting a good response? Priceless. So I'm so glad this is working out, and your person obviously likes you and wants to be your friend, even if there are some translation issues to work through.

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    1. The turning point seems to have been when they shifted from worrying about what i thought of them to wiring that i didn't know what they were thinking. (Not worrying doesn't seem to be an option for them. It's in everything, not just with me.) This is much more practical, because there is an obvious solution, which is to just tell me stuff. Not always as easy as it sounds, but at least it's always straightforward.

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