snippy

I wrote this in another venue, and it's good enough (as a reminder for me later) to import here, slightly rewritten.

Somebody asked me, "How do you convince someone to schedule time with you, given that they claim to want to spend time with you, but hate scheduling things?"

I've not had much success convincing others of things.

Instead I plan my time. I'm not that much of a scheduler anyway, so this ends up working very well. I plan the things I want to do. There's always time my schedule that can be devoted to opportunities that arise, and most of my plans can be changed if I want to (except plans that include another person--that would be rude). But I won't, for example, leave an entire weekend free on the off chance that somebody might want to spend time with me. That results in frustration and resentment for me.

Of course, I can do this because I don't have young, dependent children; when I had that kind of responsibility, I had less flexibility. But the basic rule was the same, it's just that the most important relationship was the one with the dependent kids, because *they* didn't have flexibility in when and how their needs were met.

This makes for a full, fun life. It doesn't, of course, meet the need to spend time with a particular person--that's partly dependent on the other person. But I'd rather live my life than wait for someone to share their time with me, and if they don't want to spend time with me, then I'll be frustrated either way--so it's better for me to go do things I enjoy or be with people who do want to spend time with me.

Dear Abby used to give this same advice often to stay-at-home wives who complained that their working husbands didn't want to spend time with them on the weekends to just sit together and talk, or go on a picnic. She'd say make your life interesting, and hope they will want to share the good times with you rather than missing them. But if they don't...well, at least you know where you are on their priority list, and that information can shape *your* decisions.

I'm not willing to be at the mercy of another person's whim about when they want to spend time with me, not from a significant other anyway. My experience of the world leads me to conclude that relationships take some degree of intentionality (which sometimes looks like work and sometimes doesn't, and varies among relationships). Having the desire to spend time with someone is just having a fantasy; intentionality means taking action to make it happen instead of leaving it in fantasyland. People who aren't willing to make definite plans (even if those plans might change because of reasonable circumstances, like a child's needs) aren't good relationship partners for me.

If you aim for nothing, you're certain to hit it. I'd rather assert my will over chaos than wait for chaos to sweep me into contact with my loved ones, and I want to be with people who value me enough to feel the same way.

Agency is an important issue for me; it's one of my hot buttons, the kind of thing that will get me excited and/or outraged. Today Christine Kane talks about agency and taking some control over relationships.

The first time I ever heard this concept was when I saw Oprah in Raleigh, NC years ago. She presented this idea. Then she partnered it with another truth. She said (in that “Sistah!” way that she does when she’s being funny) “…and giiiiirl, when someone shows you who they are… bee-LEEVE them the FIRST TIME!” (She repeated this one a lot. She was talking about abusive relationships.)

So, what does it mean?

You teach people how to treat you means that it all comes back to you. It’s up to you to allow or not allow certain treatment. It also means that you have to first get clear about how you want to be treated. It means that you have to take responsibility enough to write your own owner’s manual. And you are accountable for living by your owner’s manual. For some of us, it may be the very first time we ever even gave this any thought.

(Remember that accountability and responsibility have nothing to do with blame. They are an entirely different energy and intent than blame. Blame seeks to shame and belittle. Responsibility seeks to un-victim you.) (bold is emphasis in original)

So you make a list of how you want to be treated. You might have to start with how you don't want to be treated--it's hard to phrase some things positively, although that's a more effective way of accomplishing the goal. Most people know about this part.

The valuable stuff in Ms. Kane's entry starts just past that first beginning activity. How do you apply it? I think the next thing to remember is it's a process not an event: you won't be perfect even though you've defined your terms. However, you can learn from situations where you fail to apply your behavioral standard, and she gives a good example of that with guilt.

Even better, she helps you figure out what to do when you still don't get what you want from others.

Not everyone is going to honor your requests or your clarity. And sometimes it’s going to have to be you who treats you well. If we go back to my hotel room example, there have been times where contractually, I didn’t have much of an option in terms of getting a better hotel room. And so, I ended up paying for my own room and driving myself to a better hotel. “I don’t stay in hotel rooms that scare me” means that I don’t allow it. Period. If I don’t honor that, then I won’t feel safe with me.

For me this feeds back into why I do so many things alone. Yes, I cherish my time alone, but often I'm doing something that I wish I had company for. Since I've had long-term difficulty making friends who were both available and enjoyed the things I wanted to do, I decided long ago that I'd rather do the things alone than stay home (or even than go with friends to do something they want but I don't).

There are consequences to only accepting certain kinds of behavior from others.

The biggest risk involved in teaching people how to treat you is the risk that some of them might go away. Some friends might not call you anymore. Some clients might leave. In my situation, I might simply not get the performance date. You have to be willing to surrender those things that aren’t in alignment with how you want to be treated. They necessarily must go away. And the test is to let them.

This is why I don't have much of my birth family in my life. I won't let them treat me the way they want to, and they won't treat me a different way; I'd rather give up my extended family than be treated badly. That's my choice, and I take responsibility for the consequences.

At Silflay Hraka, Bigwig breaks down small talk at parties on global warming by the class of response, and the reward:

This is one reason I continually refer to global warming as "The Rapture for secular humanists," another being that I consider it a wonderful turn of phrase, and am thereby driven to share it with others as a means of illustrating my brilliance.

A third is that it functions as an excellent acquaintance filter at parties, allowing me to classify people based on their reaction;

"Bwa-ha-ha." -- People like me. They should be given a quality beer--a Delirium Tremens or Allagash Interlude.

"Ha. Christ, you're an asshole." --- People related to me, who should be given a quality beer, though one of perhaps slightly less caliber.

Pained silence - Neighbors of a different political bent whose children regularly interact with mine. They should be given a quality beer, because people in close circumstances have to get along, after all. Behind each other's backs we can use terms like "closet facist" and "goddam hippies" to relieve the internal strain.


I love that. "The rapture for secular humanists"!!! Send me a beer, Bigwig!

Via Silflay Hraka's Carnival of the Vanities, a post about an experiment that had an unhappy ending.

Simonne decided to stop initiating contact with friends for two months, to see how important she is to them (first false assumption: that two months is a reasonable time period for this test; second false assumption: that you can tell how important you are to someone by how often they call you).

During the experiment, I was not employed and I did not start any major project that may have attracted people to participate.

With nothing to offer and hidden in my house, I had a very big surprise: during the two months, only two persons called me to see how I am. Two!

She concludes, based on very little evidence and without inquiring as to why people didn't call her, that:
When I took no initiative, then I found out that very few people care about the others. Sometimes, even what seemed to be a 10 years friendship faded away facing my decision of not keeping those contacts anymore.

Hey, there are plenty of reasons why people might not call you. They might think you need some time alone, that you withdrew on purpose; they might think that since you stopped calling them, *you* don't like *them* anymore. They might have a medical issue going on, or a family member dying. Two months isn't very long to be out of contact with busy people.

I'd give them the benefit of the doubt. They may still care, still enjoy your friendship. I don't think you can tell based on only two months; I gave up a friendship once, but it was more like a year where the other person never initiated contact, but was happy to spend time with me when I asked. (Of course, anyone who keeps saying no to your invitations and never suggests an alternative, nor initiates contact, is clearly rejecting your friendship. I actually use Miss Manners' "three consecutive nos means stop asking" rule.)

Some people are better at initiating contact than others. I've spent my share of time feeling unworthy of others' attention, unwilling to interrupt their lives for my wants because they surely had better things to do than spend time with me. Or busy with a stressful life, or ill. I'm glad my friends haven't given up on me when I was going through a rough time and wasn't reaching out. I don't see anything wrong with sometimes being the one who starts stuff, who issues invitations and arranges meetings, even if it's all one-sided for a while, so long as you still value the friend and the friendship and there's reason to believe the situation is temporary.

According to a story at the Washington Post (probably requires registration), because we subconsciously mimic other people's faces we can acquire their emotional states as well. Or maybe it's tone of voice, they're not sure yet.

In a study at Uppsala University in Sweden, researchers exposed people to pictures of happy or angry faces for 30 milliseconds, immediately followed by neutral faces. Even though the participants didn't realize they'd just looked at a happy or angry face, they responded with distinct facial muscle reactions of their own that corresponded to the emotion they'd just seen.

Those incremental muscle movements then trigger the actual feeling by causing the same neurons to fire in the brain as if you were experiencing the emotion naturally, according to Hatfield. In other words, the mood feedback loop can travel in both directions: Normally, when you feel happy, your brain might send a signal to your mouth to smile. With the mood-contagion effect, the facial muscles involved in smiling might begin to twitch when you're with a cheerful friend and those tiny muscle movements then send a signal to your brain, telling it to feel happy.

But there may be another mode of transmission: In the course of conversation, people have a tendency to match the emotional tone of their word choices -- particularly when it comes to using negatively charged words such as "hate," "worthless," "anger" and "sad" -- with the tone being used by whomever they're talking to, according to research presented at the Midwestern Psychological Association's annual meeting earlier this month.

Over at Bitch Ph.D., Dean Dad asks about the appeal of bad boys. I only know why they appealed to me, in high school, so that's what you get.

Bad boys wouldn't be scared off by my badness. I was a wild child in my own way, and I lost at least one boyfriend in high school because I wanted more (sexually) than he did at that time. (Granted, we were only 14.) And my family life fit in perfectly with the kind of society wanna-be bad boys were looking for--drug dealers, thugs, partying at all hours, teenagers and all the other kids left unsupervised, sometimes overnight even.

Bad boys would understand that sometimes we didn't have food, or a phone, or that while I had a curfew, it was a reverse one: I wasn't allowed to come home before midnight when something criminal was going on until then. And they didn't expect me to buy a nice prom dress, or to spend the weekends skiing with them and their other friends.

And finally, in high school at least, bad boys were *far* more likely to share some of my interests, like science fiction and fast cars and leisurely sex on Saturday afternoons. (And to have had enough experience to make that last one possible and pleasurable.)

It's not nice guys versus bad boys. It's just plain hard to figure out what you want, what you can give, what compromises you can make, etc. And it all changes over your lifetime--at least, it has for me.

Do you ever lie?

I do. I lie all the time. (Skip meta about what constitutes a lie. I intentionally misrepresent the truth.)

I lie when I act respectfully toward someone who is owed that respect, even though I don't feel it.

Really, that's the sum of it. All the ways I lie are about according respect to another person, whether I personally respect them or not. Sometimes I recognize my fault in not respecting them, that is, I'm somehow wrong not to respect them; sometimes I don't have enough information to decide; and sometimes they are repugnant in some way, but as human beings or in a particular role they still deserve my respect, and I try very hard to comply.

At least one of those lies is a good lie. It's a civilized, mature lie. I think maybe all of them are, but then, I think choosing when to and when not to act out your emotions is a mature behavior/skill, and not everyone agrees with me on that. (Not that I'm always successful at it! But it's one of the things I'm aiming for, unlike being nice, which is not one of the things I'm aiming for.)

Sometimes repugnant behavior tests my ability to lie well. Sometimes the struggle must be visible. I wish I were better at it; I hope I'm improving with practice. I'm not intentionally showing the struggle to prove some point about how I'm going to show you respect even though I don't think you deserve it.

A couple of really good posts I read this morning at The Outer Life:

First, the story of neighborly sanctimony and choosing to drive a Prius: The Genius of Prius

Excerpt: For instance, when we moved into our community, my wife drove a minivan. We quickly learned that, according to the customs of our community, minivans are driven by nannies and maids. Wives drive big luxury SUVs or Mercedes wagons. After a few months of answering questions such as "¿Habla inglés?" and "How much do they pay you?" my wife broke down and bought a Mercedes wagon.

Second, a heartfelt thank you letter to a friend who makes you look good by comparison: Thank you, Drew

Excerpt: Your daughter’s first birthday party – remember that day? You probably don’t, what with all the beer you were drinking with your buddies while you watched the game and avoided the kids. But I remember that day, will probably never forget it, for that was the day my infant daughter needed a diaper change and I asked you where the changing table was and you claimed not to know, adding, in a loud voice aimed at your buddies, that changing diapers was women’s work.