The Mandelbear's Musings

I believe I've mentioned that I don't do subtle. Whether sending or receiving -- I'm no good at recognizing hints, and even worse at hinting. In an IM conversation last night I had the vague feeling that the other person wanted to flirt with me, but I had no idea how to confirm it. No idea what I could possibly say in response that would indicate a willingness on my part to continue.

Instead, my mind veered off in largely irrelevant and in some cases potentially dangerous directions; it was an hour before I decided it was worth asking for calibration. Which prompted a more serious discussion, at the end of which I realized that, even on those rare occasions when I can recognize that I'm being flirted with, I don't know what to do about it.

Sometimes, to be sure, someone feeds me a straight line with an obvious response, and in that case I can usually be counted on to make it. But I still don't know where to go from there. As is usual in dealing with humans, flirtation seems to be a foreign language that I have little talent for and would be too embarrassed to practice in public.

I don't mind the fact that my response to some flirtatious remark is likely to send things off into a deeper conversation -- I like deep conversations, and know how to handle myself in them. To strain a metaphor, I don't mind diving into deep water; it's hitting the rocks on a too-shallow bottom that I worry about. How does one keep the conversation shallow and playful?

I don't mind things getting silly, either, though I tend to be overly serious, and my brand of humor tends toward dry, wry, and often self-deprecating. I might be able to be silly. The thing I worry about is going in the other other direction -- saying something unintentionally offensive or hurtful or inappropriate, or simply stupid.

(Hmm. This is a tricky one to phrase. I've mentioned before that I have very few limits on how deep a conversation or a relationship can go. Even when I know that someone is not available and/or not interested, how do I avoid damaging a valuable friendship by exposing the fact that I might be happy to fall madly in bed with them if they were? That's a topic that probably needs a separate discussion; I've been close to stepping over that line, or maybe stepped well over it without even noticing, a couple of times in other situations.)

The whole thing seems to rely on being able to walk along some invisible line that only humans can see.

Still, it sounds like fun. I'd be open to giving it a try, provided I could be reasonably certain that the other party wouldn't mind the occasional digression into linguistic, psychological or interpersonal meta-analysis. That's probably asking too much on either side.

This is an expansion of a topic I raised in this post, where I wrote:

We never did get to do any wine-tasting (though the wine at the wedding was excellent, as one might expect, and made up for the lack). This occasioned an argument, too: I could hear the disappointment in Colleen's voice, but she said "no" when I first asked her whether she was disappointed. A lifetime of social conditioning will do that. But it's disastrous for someone like me who can't read people very well, and has to get accurate feedback when I try to confirm my guesses. I think the normal expectation is that somebody will understand the tone of voice and interpret the polite denial as a subtle request to leave the subject alone. I don't do subtle, and don't trust my ability to "read" people.

In other words, my ability to perceive moods and emotions in other people -- even in myself -- is highly unreliable and inaccurate; I need to calibrate it by getting feedback from people, to see whether my guesses are correct. My ability to understand implicit communication and hints is practically nonexistent. As I've often remarked here, I don't do subtle.

Most people -- "normal" people, as opposed to geeks like me -- appear to rely heavily on one another's ability to read emotions and recognize implied communication. This leads to a social convention whereby a short, polite answer to a question establishes a polite fiction that is often contradicted by an emotional undercurrent that people like me usually miss, leading to total lack of real communication.

So, in the preceeding exchange, we had Colleen giving what I'll call the "social answer" to my question, relying on my (nearly nonexistant) emotional perception to supply the "real answer". Which I still don't fully understand. I understood that she was disappointed, but have no idea what the implied message might have been. "I don't want to discuss it"? "I want to discuss it but only if you want to as well"? "I was disappointed but don't want to get into an argument"? All of the above? Something else? Probably. But I don't think Colleen herself knows, or could give me any help understanding it. It was hard enough calibrating my reading of her mood.

I may never get any good at all at understanding -- or even detecting -- implied messages, but my ability to read emotions is improving, largely because I'm getting a little better at calibrating my readings.

The trick, for me, is recognizing when I'm getting a "social answer", and framing a question or two that will elicit the "real answer". So,

"Are you disappointed?"

"Not really."

"I thought I heard disappointment in your voice. Are you disappointed?"

"Of course I was disappointed. You told me..."

Similarly, take a common social greeting:

"How are you doing?"

"OK."

"You look a little down."

"Well, ... "

What follows the "Well,..." could be anything from "I just haven't had my coffee yet" to "My mother died yesterday" -- the social convention appears to be to give a noncommittal answer and let the other party follow it up if they really care about the person and want the real answer. Or something. I'm still not really sure; all I know is that I have to follow up if I want to get the real answer.

As I say, I'm getting better at this. In other cases I'll try to paraphrase a response that seems to be ambiguous, or request further information when the response seems incomplete. I think that most people find this annoying and perhaps even offensive, but I can't help that -- I need my calibration, my feedback, or I won't understand what they were trying to tell me.

It would be unrealistic and totally unfair of me to ask people to give me a real answer to an ordinary social question. The social answer is what almost all of the people they communicate with are expecting. The social convention serves them well; I'm guessing that it lets the conversation drop before getting into realm of real emotions unless both parties are prepared to go deeper. Basically, it's up to me to figure out when, and whether, I need to follow up.

Similarly, I'm far enough outside most people's normal range of experience that they're almost certain to misunderstand me -- they misinterpret my tone of voice, or look for an implied message that isn't there, and find something I didn't say. They don't follow up, of course. It's up to me to notice when they're misinterpreting what I said, and try to correct it. Often it's too late: I've made them angry or distressed, and they've stopped listening to me. Other times I simply don't notice, and they go off thinking I said something totally different from whatever I actually said.

Public Service Announcement #1: When I say something to you, there is no implied message or hidden meaning. The words I used said precisely what I meant to say, at least if I was at all careful about framing them. If you don't believe me, or don't understand me, or think there was some implied message, ask me.

Public Service Announcement #2: I don't do subtle. If you want to tell me something, use words and say it explicitly and in detail. Don't rely on my ability to pick up hints and hidden assumptions -- I don't have that ability.