I meant I was willing to talk to you by PM and I thought you understood that since we were talking by PM when I said it, Pyraxis.
Okay. Yeah that was me pushing buttons (my own and possibly yours), to bring stuff up in public instead of sticking to PM. I tend to do that to myself because it helps me get over things quicker. And I was contemptuous that you wouldn't join me, but I'm aware that's biased and unfair.
However I did answer the question you asked me on the board when I realized it actually meant something to you.
Yeah I saw you were trying. That whole thread meant a lot to me. But I was unable to find the connection I was looking for in your answer, and so I felt betrayed.
I am in general a private person, but I am a good listener and I'm willing to share my own life to help someone. I am less willing to share just to be a lab rat in someone's maze or to be the butt of someone's joke.
Well, I don't think I've ever tried to make you the butt of a joke. As for lab rats, that's just part of how I think. It's a defense against caring too much. I wish people didn't find meaningfulness and manipulation to be so much at odds, because for me they are hand in hand. I can't escape it when I try, but I still know that the person on the other side is a human being and so am I.
I don't think you're a good listener, though, at least for me. It's hard to model the healthy resolution of emotion with somebody who is more reserved than oneself. I would have ended up doing all the scary legwork myself, which I'm capable of, but don't see much point - it's something I could do on my own eventually, so why go to the stress and effort of talking honestly to another person?
When you said that you think I am "stubbornly oblivious to the effects of your words, to the point of stupidity" I was not sure what words you meant.
I mean your overall pattern of denying the subtext behind words. Your comments to Ozy are one example, but by far not the only one.
I still can't see why what I said to him was any worse than what he said and I certainly can't see how it constitutes "stabbing him in the back" as he said it did. Maybe you could point it out to me.
I was not comparing your words to his. I hadn't made any judgments about his, or about whose were "worse" (as if there is any objective "worse"). That is an example of subtext you have read into my words.
Ozy read an attack into the subtext of your words. He liked and respected you, and now felt "stabbed in the back" - a common phrase to use when one feels betrayed by a friend.
Subtext is subjective of course. People read things that were not intended. But some people communicate deliberately through subtext, knowing that their words will be misconstrued in a particular way. Ozy admits to using passive-aggressiveness
here (I won't quote it because it's in a journal, but the bit I'm talking about is midway through the third paragraph).
It is possible to try to avoid subtext, but not to avoid it entirely. It is my belief that it is unethical to do so. Because so many people use it - especially traumatized people who are too afraid to be direct - repeatedly denying that it can have any impact is like denying their pain. Not supportive, not helpful, and not likely to lead to resolution. (Of course, if one doesn't care about resolution, that's another matter, but then it's closer to an eye for an eye, and not moral high ground.) But to be so caught up in defending oneself against accusations of wrongdoing that one cannot step outside it and acknowledge that one's words have hurt the other person, even before understanding why, is unethical.
That is why I said that you were either stubbornly oblivious to the effects of your own words to the point of stupidity, or else were quite aware and just pretending you weren't for some reason of your own.
