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Boundaries and personal space, trust, commitment, respect -- all are just as important in cyberspace as they are outside of it. But here, recognizing them, naming them, making them clear to others is far more difficult and risky than hanging back and allowing someone else to define them for you with what may or may not be intentionally intrusive behavior. Gettiing angry and rigid because someone else appears that way is understandable, but it is not useful.
Perpetuating a situation by colluding, with others or with your own fear and anger, does nothing more than reinforce and deepen the original distress, entangling perception and creativity in the process. LunaMoth's hilarious visceralism about beating yourself over the head with a hammer so you can enjoy how much better you feel when you stop is a good metaphor for just how illogical it is to ignore your resources, undermine your dignity and sense of self, and reinforce and layer old hurts because that's what the other person is doing. Or worse, what you suspect the other person is doing.
Self-righteous? I'll show you self-righteous! Accusatory? You are! Dishonest? Don't expect me honesty from ME then! Stubborn? You'll never have my respect! Patronizing? If that's the best you can do, I feel sorry for you! Argumentative? Fuck off! Incapable of admitting a wrong? Well you asked for it! Fault-finding? Don't be such a fucking jerk! Dismissive? Like you'd know!
I have two big dogs who love to act like idiots and bark and jump up and carry on when someone new appears in their world. If I let it gets to the point where I am yelling out commands and apologies and grabbing their collars, it's far too late to expect that I'm doing anything more than reinforcing, with the commotion and attention, uindesireable habits.
To ensure that this kind of scene never gets the chance to unfold means setting things up for success. Each dog has a kennel, a wire crate with a cedar mattress and a blanket and a door/gate that shuts securely. Guests expected? Into the kennels they go. Listening to new voices from the security of a den acquaints them. Later they can come out and be warmly praised and petted.
People are not like dogs.
You don't explain what you want from people, you expect them to automatically know. You don't praise others for meeting your expectations, you punish them if they do not. You don't anticipate potential for joy in fellowship, you evaluation the risk of being disappointed or misunderstood or discomforted. You don't ask before or during, you wait and desconstruct afterward.
If you oppress yourself or someone else to avoid conflict, all you will achieve is isolation.
When a friend of mine, a mentor and advocate, committed suicide earlier this month, jen reminded me of the power of clarity: don't doubt the value of your own life just because because your friend doubted hers.
There is a simple and useful model for maturity that I learned a ways back that helps me a lot. Three levels of social interaction correspond to three levels of maturity. At the most immature is DEPENDENCE. The next level is INDEPENDENCE. For most of my life I mistakenly believed that independence meant maturity. It does, but only to the point that you recognize your ability to be responsible for yourself. This is not all that hard to do.
The highest level of maturity, and the most difficult kind of interaction to master, is INTERDEPENDENCE. How to rely on someone, how to allow someone to care for you, how to deal with expectations, how to have expectations. How to tell the difference between what belongs to you, and what belongs to someone else. How to communicate what that difference is, and where your boundaries lie.
"Keep taking the hard road, it is the only one with the rewards...and sometimes it leads to an easier path, which only those who have taken the hard way may travel."
Opting for change, taking a new tack, reevalutating a set of circumstances, asking a question -- these things do mean "blame me" or "i am guilty." They mean flexibility and responsive, creative intelligence and capacity for joy.
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