As a child I was wrong. Regardless of whether or not I was right, I was still wrong. We weren't allowed to have opinions, much less express them. I learned very early that dispute ended in a hand slapping whatever portion of my person was most convenient to reach. Therefore, I avoided arguing.
This attitude toward conflict affected my brother and I in opposite ways. I became excessively passive, and he became excessively confrontational. Daniel would start a fight just to have the fight. My parents fought a lot and since he was older, he saw and heard the fighting more. He was on familiar ground. Oddly, this was one way my brother tried to protect me. When he would hear them start fighting, he would try to take me away from the fight, so I wasn't around it a lot. Maybe that's why we developed differently in this area.
I refused to fight with anyone except Daniel. Even as a teenager I didn't argue. The discipline went from slaps to lectures and grounding, even though I really don't know what they expected to ground me from since I didn't do anything. I remember that I wasn't allowed to talk on the phone, but I don't remember much of anything else they could take away from me. (They had given up grounding me from reading by then.) I learned that nothing was worth the fight I would have to go through to have my rights. I watched my mother concede to anything anyone demanded of her (except when I wanted something) and learned to do the same thing. I saw what happened when she argued with my step-father--how much she cried and how much it hurt her, and I came to believe that regardless of who won, the fight wasn't worth fighting.
It seemed to me, that anything that could be gained by conflict, should be able to be gained without it as well, and I went about finding ways to do so I let go of my own rights in the interest of finding better ways to help people. I focused on making the right decision that would hurt the least amount of people. NO CONFLICT.
I'm not sure when that broke, but it did. I really don't know what triggered it. One day I'll sit down and analyze it. I have my suspicions, but that's another blog. At some point, the pattern of fighting back developed. But not in the usual way. I usually chose my battles wisely. I only argued about things I was absolutely sure of. In fact, I would usually hesitate to express my opinion at all if I hadn't thought of every possible alternative. As a result, my arguments tend to come across as being very cold, logical, impersonal, and (as I have recently been told) condescending. Not to say that I mean them that way, but it seems a general consensus that they sound that way.
It's not such a far cry from the way I used to be. Instead of filing the issues away for me to find a way to avoid them later, I pick which ones I feel are important. Apparently I pick some strange ones.
This attitude toward conflict affected my brother and I in opposite ways. I became excessively passive, and he became excessively confrontational. Daniel would start a fight just to have the fight. My parents fought a lot and since he was older, he saw and heard the fighting more. He was on familiar ground. Oddly, this was one way my brother tried to protect me. When he would hear them start fighting, he would try to take me away from the fight, so I wasn't around it a lot. Maybe that's why we developed differently in this area.
I refused to fight with anyone except Daniel. Even as a teenager I didn't argue. The discipline went from slaps to lectures and grounding, even though I really don't know what they expected to ground me from since I didn't do anything. I remember that I wasn't allowed to talk on the phone, but I don't remember much of anything else they could take away from me. (They had given up grounding me from reading by then.) I learned that nothing was worth the fight I would have to go through to have my rights. I watched my mother concede to anything anyone demanded of her (except when I wanted something) and learned to do the same thing. I saw what happened when she argued with my step-father--how much she cried and how much it hurt her, and I came to believe that regardless of who won, the fight wasn't worth fighting.
It seemed to me, that anything that could be gained by conflict, should be able to be gained without it as well, and I went about finding ways to do so I let go of my own rights in the interest of finding better ways to help people. I focused on making the right decision that would hurt the least amount of people. NO CONFLICT.
I'm not sure when that broke, but it did. I really don't know what triggered it. One day I'll sit down and analyze it. I have my suspicions, but that's another blog. At some point, the pattern of fighting back developed. But not in the usual way. I usually chose my battles wisely. I only argued about things I was absolutely sure of. In fact, I would usually hesitate to express my opinion at all if I hadn't thought of every possible alternative. As a result, my arguments tend to come across as being very cold, logical, impersonal, and (as I have recently been told) condescending. Not to say that I mean them that way, but it seems a general consensus that they sound that way.
It's not such a far cry from the way I used to be. Instead of filing the issues away for me to find a way to avoid them later, I pick which ones I feel are important. Apparently I pick some strange ones.
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