nerdygirl wrote:
Most of my social improvement has come from learning to keep my mouth shut. I tend to not share my opinions with others unless I trust them and know they sincerely want to hear them.
I also find that issues of honesty/abruptness come from people asking and answering the wrong question.
For example, I am a piano teacher. I went to another teacher's recital one night to listen to some kids I knew. Most did not play well, but I still had an enjoyable evening. Being blunt (and rude) would be to point out the mistakes/bad performances. If someone asked me, "What did you think of the recital?", I would say, "It was very enjoyable. I had a good time." And this was the truth. I *did* enjoy myself and I was there to support the kids and the other teacher, not necessarily to hear excellent music. There was one student who performed excellently, though, and I did go out of my way to praise her performance.
The key is to be very judicious about when to share and when not to share your thoughts. For me, I do not share them most of the time and do not share them with most people. I don't have any more or less close friends than I did before, but I am more generally liked and get along better in social situations than before.
I hope this helps.
Starting to think this is the right avenue. It's just a matter of discerning what is worth saying and what isn't.
I am also suspecting that you can learn to convey these sorts of things in such a way that they seem neutral, but I haven't found any reads on the matter yet, and advice from friends smells strongly of sugarcoating and diluting.
The word 'abrasive' has come up in two different gaming communities I've joined, and I realize it's a weakness I need to work on. It's even a bit of a sore word now since I met that important person in one such community.
League_Girl wrote:
You normally tell those things to someone when you don't like them and don't respect them. Plus they are judgmental terms and no one likes to be misjudged or misunderstood and be read wrong. not saying you are misreading them or not or misjudging. If they're your friends, that may cost them.
What would be a "Respectful" version of those things...?
Boring context alert: This person was someone I loved very deeply, but who wouldn't communicate with me in a direct/honest manner (not even when asked, because of baggage/ he preferred to avoid conflict) , and his actions would often be at odds with his words. He would never ever start a conversation or ask questions of his own volition or present his own mind in any way rather than being a passive princess (If he didn't want me around, he never made it clear and never confirmed/denied when I brought it up, which always made me stick around just in case, gradually feeling led on...)
At some point I blew up on him over something meaningless, apologized, but the damage was done and from then on he pulled a complete 180 in terms of disposition. Essentially I'd put out all this effort to connect with him and he'd just brush it off, the excuses and lies tripled and I began to get ignored. This essentially led to my becoming fed up, listing every single shortcoming I felt he needed to work on, and sending this information to him over every medium I was in contact with him in. This got me blocked off of Steam and Facebook but at the same time I felt the weight of the world fell off my shoulders. In my mind he had it coming for a while, and he definitely needed someone to tell him these things, but in my mind the delivery was neutral and honest. It seems I was wrong.
He always expected me to blow up again since that first incident, and apparently he was right because "People never change according to his experience" . If that is true, I'm pretty much screwed.
21 Sep 2014, 6:38 pm
