Neil Hopcroft

A digital misfit

Theres something depressingly cyclical about the kinds of arguments you have at this time of day:
(I’ve pre-watershedded the language a little, add your own colour if you feel it necessary)
Her: I can’t believe you asked anuver girl for er number, why’d’you ask er for er number?
Him: She was a policewoman, I was taking the micky

Being that one of the few emotions I understand is anger, this is something that gets to me, I find it especially difficult to sleep through.

All has gone quiet now, but I’ve ended up in this loop where I’m thinking “if someone NT can’t tell the difference between a joking around and something their girlfriend would be deeply upset and worried by, I don’t really stand a chance”.

And this is one of the big problems I have with relationships…nearly the only emotion I get from them is anger, and that anger is normally directed at me for not understanding the thing they’re upset about. Hearing this from the outside just reinforces that feeling.

Now I’m going to make hot chocolate and try sleeping again.


Categories: Memories.

/ 9 Comments

9 comments

  1. sciamachy

    It does depend to a great extent on the relationship, and who’s involved, but I find there are some pretty good rules of thumb that anyone could keep to, like, if you’re in a non-open relationship, don’t go round openly flirting with other women in front of your gf. That guy was a first-rate idiot, assuming he wasn’t in an open relationship.

    Anyway, you find our what works largely by making mistakes. I made a hell of a lot of mistakes before I met Susan. Granted, what works with one individual isn’t guaranteed to work with everyone, but if you do the same thing 3 times with 3 different people & get the same or similar response, you know it’s got a good chance of getting the same response a 4th time with someone else.

    Reply
    • neilh

      Yes, of course, and I’m reasonably sure I wouldn’t fall into the same trap – I rarely get the chance to flirt with policewomen – but I have a different trap, and its one I can’t learn not to fall into. My solution has to be finding someone who can cope with my emotional blindness.

      Reply
  2. rubian

    Thanks for sharing this, it must be hard to struggle with this. There are many possibilities to this story you told, one is that he wasn’t even trying to avoid upsetting his g/f, but that he was doing it to wind her up. I think what your saying is your stuff is unintentional, you wouldn’t be doing it to purposefully wind someone up.

    I once was told that the 5 steps to stress reduction in management are to thank, praise, communicate, consult and confirm. The last of these i think is very important, for all of us there are many ways communication goes wrong. Confirming what both people mean / want in a relationship helps a lot I think.

    I read a guide on the web by someone who was talking about getting on with the nural normal, he said to never give up on finding someone as a partner. I think there are some people who naturally check out more what each person in a relationship thinks, they may be naturally like that or get it from family or life experience. I person who naturally checks out and confirms may naturally be less likely to take things for granted / make assumptions.

    I think there is hope for you. (you asked)

    Reply
    • neilh

      Agreed, I only came in halfway through the story, I was having a dream about requirements capture (which in itself is a little worrying). I don’t really want to place any blame anywhere because its not my place to do that, and because I don’t know the people concerned, or what happened last night. I just got caught up in the end of it because it was quite a loud end.

      Certainly I would not intend to annoy someone in that kind of way and I can’t tell if someone is intending to annoy me or doing it accidentally.

      Whether there is hope depends a little on your definition of hope – there is an expectation within society that people settle into couples, leaving a few oddball eccentrics single, in this context the hope that my mother, for example, has is that I settle into a nice happy relationship rather than be the oddball.

      My hope is that I don’t have to suffer unnecessary arguments. One of the ways I realise this hope is to not get myself in a position where such arguments are inevitable. I have yet to figure out a way of acheiving the hope of my mother without destroying the reality of my hope.

      Reply
      • rubian

        The hope I meant was the answer to your question, what hope is there for me to work out how to avoid annoying someone……(the nural normal)
        I was thinking that the hope was that you would find someone who didn’t make assumptions and habitually clarified / confirmed things, thus lessening the chance of arguments /anger.

        Thank you for your further explanation of your aims.

        Reply
  3. neilh

    I get caught by different traps, to the point that I don’t do the kinds of things that make me fall in those traps because I can’t tell if a particular action will or will not be problematic.

    Reply
  4. neilh

    They’re perhaps not set as such, its more like encountering a mine-field, I can see other people walking through quite safely but know that I’ll be making quite a mess of trying to dance around the explosions.

    Reply

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