Thanks, Jennifer–that’s great advice that has to result in not turning anger inward, owning one’s reality, and protecting boundaries. I should send you a check

“No, I’m afraid I cannot do that Sir, for it seems too emotional a point of view to me … However, if you were to refer objectively to the situation, independent and detached from you ‘gestalt’, I might begin to understand you.”

My advice is is someone ignores your “emotions”, you should also ignore their emotions. Two can play at that game. Keep demonstrating that your position is utmostly rational and logical and that you are not interested in their emotional investments in their position, you just want to know where you stand.

A.F. – that’s a rich comment, I’m trying to absorb it! For now: I’ve had this problem not just in romantic relationships but in platonic friendships, including with women, and I have it rampantly in academia and in particular, here in Abu Ghraib:

“If I bring up a problem that could easily be solved with some honest communication, it’s brushed off as “one of [my] moments,” “[my] having a meltdown,” etc. When such relationships have ended, the other parties have been clueless, as though things were over without warning. That has always baffled me: no, I said what was wrong over and over and…(sigh)”

I made a post on a similar topic to this on Pandagon. Basically, my feeling is that if people are abusing you, you need to defend yourself in as clean a fight as possible.

Part of fighting a clean fight seems to me

1. to be able to realise that you are, in fact, being attacked.

2. To realise the difference between a defence and counterattack, and to use both in ways that are self-disciplined, skilled and proficient.

–That way, you minimise any feelings that you are being turned into a barbarian by being attacked.

I was in only one romantic relationship (and I’m 40) with a man who really listened to what I said, and he was for many, many reasons, a bad partner but was always, up until his death, a friend, precisely because, despite all else, he did listen.

As for the rest of my relationships, there seems to be a pattern that is immensely troublesome–my not being listened to because I am a woman. If I bring up a problem that could easily be solved with some honest communication, it’s brushed off as “one of [my] moments,” “[my] having a meltdown,” etc. When such relationships have ended, the other parties have been clueless, as though things were over without warning. That has always baffled me: no, I said what was wrong over and over and…(sigh)

Ahem, anyway, I have noticed that there is at least one advantage in being stereotyped. Those who stereotype become so predictable as to give thinking others an advantage since they are always responding to preconceived notions rather than to reality, and it’s easy to see what those preconceived notions are. I know that’s not a profound conclusion, but it has worked for me a few times for me in professional situations, though not without my feeling a tinge of regret that perhaps I’ve been a little sociopathic in dealing with the abusers.

I really enjoyed this post.