288. The Distorted Memory of the Emotional Moron

The Distorted Memory of the Emotional Moron

Some emotional morons seem to have a very specific distortion of their memory.     They store every blame, grudge and devaluation of a woman in their memory as carved in stone for eternity.   But they store the explanation and information in favor and defense of the woman as if written with chalk on a slate, that gets washed off by the next rain.    She has no chance to ever counterbalance his wrong perception and opinion of her, which gets from bad to worse as a consequence of the distorted memory.   

When a woman experiences something distressing, some disappointment, something hurting, no matter if caused by the emotional moron himself or by someone else, and he does not understand, what is going on, he automatically jumps to the conclusion, that she is a drama queen, hysterical, flawed.  
As an emotional moron, he is oblivious, that someone can experience anything, which he does not know of or which he would not be affected by at all.  In his simple mind, what does not exist for him, cannot exist for her.   An emotional moron not only lacks empathy, but he lacks any knowledge of the fact, that other people have very real and valid feelings and experiences, even though he himself has never even heard of them and they are beyond his imagination.    He is completely oblivious, that he cannot evaluate other people's behavior without sufficient information about their invisible emotional reality, and this information can only be obtained by asking for and listening to their introspection.   
Instead, he believes in his wrong assumptions based entirely on observations.  As a result, he observes the woman's incomprehensible distress without the shade of a doubt as an indication of her flaws and he stores this observation and interpretation in his permanent unmodifiable memory.    It just does not even occur to him to wonder, what really is the matter with her, let alone ask her a respectful question about her subjective experience.  

The woman wants a relationship to be a bonded intrinsic commitment based upon sharing the innermost feelings and understanding each other.    When she gets aware of his unfavorable evaluation of her distress, she makes efforts to explain to him everything she has experienced, felt and thought, in the hope to gain his understanding and his appreciation, that her distress was an appropriate reaction to her experience.  
Being an emotional moron void of any understanding about intrinsic commitment and such abstract needs of her, he has no clue, why she is so anxious and driven to explain herself to him, why it is important to her at all. 
If he finds no way to avoid it, he sometimes does listen with reluctance, he even tells her that he has understood her explanation and her introspection.  
But the next time, when he finds a new blame to put on her, when he starts another rant about his new and all his already accumulated grudges and blames, he is back at repeating his original claim of her being a hysterical drama queen, just as if she had never attempted to make him understand her feelings and her reality.    His grudges and blames accumulate, her explanations disappear without any effect.  

She might even write her explanations down, print them and hand them over to him to read.   This way she wants to give him a chance to make an attempt at his own speed, ease and convenience to understand her better.   It is all futile.  There is no way to influence him.   Her distress in previous episodes will forever be in his mind as an indication of her being flawed, and he will again and again repeat this to her.   

The question remains, why then did he claim at one moment to have understood?    There are several possibilities, and they are probably all of them sometimes valid.
1.   He temporarily understands but does not store this in his memory but forgets it immediately or very soon as if she has never said anything.
2.   He pretends to have understood, because he is not at all interested in her explanations, he is bored and wants to end the discussion.
3.   As a narcissist, he appreciates every indication allowing him to believe in her being flawed, but her explanation is not welcome, so he only pretends to listen and to have understood. 
4.   His ability of abstract thinking and of understanding mature emotions is so impaired, that he is unable to understand her explanations, but does not admit it.    He only pretends to have understood.
5.   He does not take her for serious or does not trust her to tell the truth.    He believes his own interpretation of his observations more than he believes her introspection and explanation.   He pretends to have understood, because he did not value her enough to listen.

This accumulation of unfavorable interpretation of more and more instances of her behavior has a very detrimental long term effect upon the relationship.    Events, that are incomprehensible only to an emotional moron and make the woman appear in an unfavorable light, happen in every relationship and cannot be avoided.    The longer this goes on, the more he devalues her, and she has no chance of stop this process.

She has no influence on what the emotional moron thinks of her and as a consequence, she also has no influence, how he treats her.   Since his opinion of her determines how he treats her, devaluing her serves to him as his justification for domination and bullying.   Along with the accumulation of grudges and devaluation, his treatment of her deteriorates.      

Every once in a while, when something pushes his hostility and anger button, he starts to declaim his whole database of blames and grudges like pouring a flood of mental diarrhea over the woman.    It is a known psychological fact used in commercials, that the more often something is repeated, the more people start to accept it as true.  The emotional moron obviously believes, that by repeating his claim of her alleged flaws often enough, she will finally agree to be flawed.    But as long as the woman's self-esteem remains undamaged, his repetition of his same old grudges and blames is just a painful nuisance for her and the harm done by it is indirect.   His ranting about her deficiency has the effect of convincing himself, and with every of his repetitions, he believes more in her flaws.  

274. Men's Worst Urban Legend - 1

Men's Worst Urban Legend - 1

There is an urban legend between men:   When a woman says no, she means yes.   

 
I as a woman consider a man, who consciously believes this, as a moron.  If his behavior is determined by this belief, while he consciously believes to respect a woman, he is an emotional moron.   He is too immature and stupid to understand, what this belief really means and implies.   

If a man does not take a woman's statements for serious, he does not take her for serious, he does not respect her at all, he does not perceive or consider her as an equal.   

It is not only an outrage of disrespect, but it also impedes any solution of conflicts and any healthy development, if a woman makes a statement, and the man cannot be influenced by her statement and continues to behave, as if she had never even opened her mouth or as if she has said something very different or even the contrary.   Constructive communication requires both partners to react verbally and in their behavior as precisely as possible to what the other really says and does.   

When a woman says 'no', a mature and decent man, who respects her as an equal person, accepts it as a 'no'.    He has the choice to leave it as this and not insist any further, or to ask her, what he can do to gain her 'yes'.   After she has told him her conditions, he either accepts to comply or he acknowledges her 'no' as valid and final.  

Emotional morons, who never take a woman's statements for serious, are usually clueless about the emotional consequences of this.    A woman with self-respect and self-esteem expects to be respected and taken for serious as an equal partner.    Asking a man, if he respects her as an equal is not enough to find out the truth.   An emotional moron my sincerely believe to respect her, even if he does not.    His true amount of respect or lack of respect can only be experienced by his behavior in reaction to her statements.    When a man takes her statements for serious, this indicates that he takes her for serious.  
When being respected as an equal is a woman's crucial need in a relationship, every experience of the man's disrespect hurts her very much.    But the emotional moron has no clue, that his disregard of her statements hurts her at all.   

There are several kinds of how an emotional moron hurts a woman by his disrespect

1. She says no, and he behaves, as if she had said yes.   She says something, and he behaves, as if she had said something different or the contrary.    She says something, and he does not react, as if he were deaf.
2. She tells him her condition, when he wants something from her.   He continues to pursue his demand as if she had never told him her condition.
3. He accepts a condition or agrees to fulfill a need of her.   He does not comply, but he feels not as if he is breaking a promise or breaking his word, because he just did not take her statement for serious, that the condition or the need were really something of vital importance to her.   He believes his breaking a promise as omitting an insignificant trivial.    He had mistaken her condition for a suggestion.
4. She asks a man not to do or not to repeat some painful, disturbing or annoying behavior.   He continues the same behavior as if she had not said anything.    He even continues the behavior after she has asked him dozens of times to stop.
5. He does not believe her statement of feeling pain, when she attributes the pain to his behavior.
6. When he accepts her statement of feeling pain, he refuses to accept her attribution, that his behavior was the cause.   He denies her to have a sound judgement to perceive, consider or define his behavior as inappropriate in her subjective reality.  
7. He does not react, when she attempts to convince him of something with rationality and logic.   He does not attempt to convince her.   Her agreement and consent are irrelevant and insignificant for him, he does, what he wants, no matter what she thinks about it.   If he is able to interact rationally and logically, he reserves this to those persons, whom he respects, while he dominates the woman.    Respect impedes domination.    Domination is an expression of disrespect.
8. When he dislikes her behavior, he begrudges her without any reaction to, consideration of or interest in her explanations of her reasons, her perceptions, her needs, her subjective reality.   He considers only his own subjective reality as valid, but he does not concede any value to her subjective reality.
9. His disrespectful opinion and attitude translates whatever she says automatically into something, that confirms his prejudice of her.   While his ear hears the sound of a 'no', his mind receives 'yes' as the expected message.   
10. He himself does not honor others by expressing his true meaning in his own statements.   He makes statements verbally or by his actions, but he does not really mean, what he expresses and he projects his own game on others.    He sometimes says 'no' but wants the other to take it for a 'yes' and assumes the same from a woman.    He sometimes expresses things for the purpose of extorting and manipulating.    He projects this on the woman.

I am a woman, who says, what she means and means, what she says.   If a man is not able to take my statements as true at face value and myself for serious, then he cannot be my mindmate. 

223. Dominance and Transgression

Dominance and Transgression

In the entries 19 and 82 I mentioned, that forgiving needs to be earned, in entry 152 I explained, how grudges because of unearned forgiving are disruptive, and entry 128 was about the importance of taking responsibility for transgressions.  

When one person causes material, physical or emotional harm to another, they need to restore harmony, which requires some or all of these steps:

• restitution and amends of the damage
• justice by an agreement on the evaluation of the harm and why it has happened
• prevention of a repetition

1.   Disasters and accidents
When both parties involved agree on having the same basic values, then a harmful event often can be considered as a mishap or a disaster.   

• When the harm is done by accident, inadvertence, oversight, blunder, carelessness, then restitution is enough.  
• When the harming person is ignorant or unaware of his actions being harming, but being a caring and responsible person, then in addition to the restitution, prevention is required.  He needs to learn, what behaviors are harming, so he can avoid them in the future.

2.  One-level-transgressions
When both agree on having the same values and they agree on the judgement of what is right or wrong, and the transgressor knows, that he is doing something harmful, which he rather would or should not do, then it is a one-level-transgression.  He can be under stress, in a situation of conflicting requirements, he can be too weak to have self-control or be intoxicated 
He already has his independent own insight, that he has done harm, he feels guilt, contrition, remorse. His initiative to make amends and and his need to earn to be forgiven creates justice for the transgressee.  As he already is motivated not to repeat the transgression, there is no further need of prevention.

3. Two-level-transgressions
When the transgressee is harmed by a behavior, that she perceives as not correct, unethical, outrageous and defective according to her own value system, then from her perspective it is a transgression, but in the perspective of the transgressor it is not.   At the moment of committing the transgression, the transgressor believes to have reasons justifying or sufficiently excusing his behavior at least in his own eyes, if not in those of others except the transgressee herself.   He either disagrees with her value system or he feels not obliged to adhere to it.    The transgressor either knows or has the opportunity to know, that the transgressee experiences his behavior as harm.

This is a two-level-transgression.   One level is the actual harmful act, which has a direct impact upon the transgressee.  The other level is the attitude triggering, enabling, justifying this act.   The disrespect, disregard and devaluation expressed by this attitude is the indirect harm.   The harmful act can be observed, the indirect emotional harm is hidden from all, who do not share the transgressee's value system and evaluation.

The transgressor can be motivated by different psychological mechanism and attitudes:

• He is selfish or feels entitled to his harmful action as collateral damage to fulfilling his needs.
• He knows, what the transgressee considers as morally correct behavior, what obligations other consider him to have or what harms the transgressee.    Behaving in accordance with this knowledge would be a sacrifice for him, that costs effort, self-control and consideration.  He disrespects the transgressee, he attributes her as having little value, not worth any sacrifice.   He believes, that the transgressee does not deserve any better treatment than his defective harmful behavior.     
• He avoids by wilful ignorance and denial to gain awareness of the impact of his actions upon the transgressee.
• He acts in defiance and malice.  

An example of a one-level-transgression is someone yelling an angry 'shut up' to another person.   If he is under stress trying to concentrate on something important, but respects the other as an equal, this can be regulated with a simple apology.   Because they both agree, that this act was impolite and should be avoided.
But if a man disrespects a woman, whom he does not bother to ever listen to, then this outburst as a repettion of a frequent event is a two-level-transgression and not a case for a simple apology.   The outburst itself is a trifle, but his general disrespect and disregard of not taking her for serious is causing serious harm.   Justice and prevention would require, that he changes his attitude and learns to listen to her, to respect her and to take her for serious.  


Wikipedia gives a very good overview over the definition of relational transgressions:

"Relational transgressions occur when people violate implicit or explicit relational rules. These transgressions include a wide variety of behaviors. Scholars tend to delineate relational transgressions into three categories or approaches. The first approach focuses on the aspect of certain behaviors as a violation of relational norms and rules. The second approach focuses on the interpretive consequences of certain behaviors, particularly the degree to which they hurt the victim, imply disregard for the victim, and imply disregard for the relationship. The third and final approach focuses more specifically on behaviors that constitute infidelity (a common form of relational transgression) "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_transgression.  

When a man dominates an egalitarian woman, in her experience all behavior expressing domination is a two-level-transgression, therefore domination itself is a transgression.

Example 1 in entry 215 demonstrates this, when the man changes the scheduled departure for a trip in favor of a visiting friend without first consulting the woman.   

Seen by itself, postponing the departure by two days is a trifle, it can hardly be called harm.   The man, who feels entitled to do what he wants, has no clue, that this is an act representing a very fundamental transgression in his attitude to the woman.    

• He does not value her as a partner, whom he respects enough to consult and share decisions with.   His friend is more important than the woman.   He has more consideration for the needs and wishes of his friend than for the woman.   
• He is selfish, because he chooses the benefits, which he expects for himself from complying immediately and without hesitation with his friend's wishes.  He values these benefits as more important than any consideration for the woman.   
• He commits a breach of trust and obligations.   The woman has entered physical intimacy under the condition of creating a bond of commitment including the obligation of sharing decisions, of being equal partners and of being reciprocally the most important person.  

The result is a very difficult situation.   The man believes to have done a trifle of little importance, while the woman feels excruciating emotional pain because of being humiliated, devalued, disrespected, betrayed in her trust.  
She wants to be able to forgive him and to repair the damage to the relationship.   She needs justice and prevention as a condition to forgive him, but he has no insight in the necessity to earn forgiveness for what he perceives as a trifle.  
The real conflict here is not the postponed trip.   The real conflict is that he feels as entitled to dominate as she feels entitled to be valued, appreciated and treated as an equal partner. 
He takes his entitlement to dominate so much for granted, that his changing of the plans was an automatic, spontaneous reaction without hesitation.   Consulting her just did not occur to him. 
She wants justice and prevention, and to her this means to hear from him the expression of a radical change in his attitude.   She needs his sincere statement, that she is more important than his friend, that he owes her to share decisions with her and to consult her about everything, that concerns her.   
But he is unable to do this, as it is the contrary of what he feels and believes to be right. There is no justice or prevention for her, unless he would give up his entire dominance.  

Here he is caught in a vicious circle.   Only by valuing her very much would he be motivated to make any sacrifice for her including the one of giving up his dominance.   But this dominance includes precise this lack of valuing her.   So he would have to give up the dominance first to value her enough to be motivated to make a sacrifice for her.  

This example has a continuation.    In the man's value system, the dominated woman's duty is obedience, reverence and absolute loyalty to whatever he does.    No matter, how outrageously he had treated her, in his expectation, she was to make the friend welcome.   But in need of a valve for her outrage, the woman tells the friend the truth, making him feel uncomfortable as the trigger of a conflict and as not really welcome.    In the man's perception, this is a serious transgression.    In his perception of justice, she would have to earn his forgiving by her acknowledging his right to dominate and to impose his decisions upon her.   Prevention in his understanding means, that in the future she would not resist his dominance anymore.  

Thus, they both have a grudge, and they both can neither forgive nor earn the other's forgiving, because their different perceptions and definitions of justice are mutually exclusive.   There is no common justice between a man feeling entitled to dominate and a woman feeling entitled to be treated as an equal.    
Justice for her means, that he needs to adjust his esteem of her by raising it up to the level of her self-esteem.   Justice for him means, that she should lower her self-esteem down to the level of his low esteem for her. 

 

 Domination is Abomination! 

152. Blaming and Grudges

Blaming and Grudges


When one partner disagrees with how s/he is impacted by the behavior of the other, then this is a conflict.   

When both partners are wise and mature, they perceive conflicts as tasks, they give each other feedback of how a conflict effects them, and they solve it together by constructive communication.    They know, that conflicts destroy the relationship, when they continue unresolved for too long.    They are aware, that if they value their relationship, they need to invest whatever time it needs, until they reach an agreement, that is convincing to both.  

Blaming and grudges indicate an unresolved conflict, which causes suffering or discomfort to at least one partner.  

There are two varieties:  
1.  The suffering or discontent person wants, suggests, attempts to embark in the conflict solving process, but the other refuses.    The person blames the other with justification for whatever is the conflict and for the refusal to solve it.   
2.   The suffering or discontent person has so little consideration and respect for the other, that s/he does not perceive the trouble as a conflict requiring to be solved.  S/he denies the possibility of any improvement.  Instead s/he devalues the other as flawed and defective, the person is not worth any effort or any effort is considered as futile.  

Obviously, if one partner considers the other as not worth to invest time in solving conflicts and improving the relationship, then they are not compatible.   Blaming instead of conflict solving is destroying the relationship.

My mindmate is someone, who is willing and able to solve all conflicts with constructive communication, until a consent is reached and both feel that harmony is restored.    For him harmony, agreement and consent in the relationship have a high priority, they are more important than his selfish interests and benefits for himself.  

A jerk, who does to me, whatever transgression he feels entitled to do, and who then refuses to solve the conflict, is not suitable for me.