River: Quote of the (yester)day

[mdlbear]

(15:11:26) ***mandelbear sighs. Relationships are hard. _People_ are hard. There are times when I miss not trying to understand them.

 

Believing that I wasn't "good with" people, and shouldn't bother trying to understand them because I couldn't, was a rather dysfunctional coping mechanism in a lot of ways. But I was coping, sort of. I'm doing better in many ways now, but sometimes it's more discouraging to know that I'm just not getting it.

Comments

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

No one understands everything. Sometimes people don't even understand themselves!

{{{{hugs}}}}

[mdlbear]

I hardly ever understand myself. But I sort-of know a little bit about how to go about starting to.

[phoenixpdx.livejournal.com]

First, *hug*. Relationships ARE hard. For EVERYone. Except for folks who simply don't bother to think or to relate.

Second, yes, our old coping mechanisms are there because they WORKED, or we wouldn't have developed them. We can bless them and thank them, and choose else now. I do miss some of mine, I must say (and then I remember that I started learning new ones because those old one *weren't working*, or at least not working as originally promised).

I would note that "understanding" requires action on both ends of the line of communication. Other people are also not understanding YOU, right? Sometimes the coping comes by way of education...teaching others how you communicate, what your lexicon is, what you need in terms of interactions and space.

At least, this is what John and I have learned over the years. His introverted Aspergers stuff and my extroverted normie stuff have a hard time interfacing, some days. But it's not that he's wrong and I'm right. The difficulty is in the intersection. So we've asked and learned, taught and communicated and mostly, it works out OK.

[mdlbear]

Yeah. Actually, this particular quote was brought about by not understanding a lot about someone else's relationship, but... yeah.

I'm not an Aspie but I played one for 20 years on the Internet? Something like that.

*hughug*