[LMB] OT: Validation-seeking and defensiveness

[Azalais Aranxta]

On Thu, 29 Jan 2009, Margaret Dean wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 12:58 PM, Judy R Johnson <jrj at fidalgo.net> wrote:
>
> > Once in a while you will see people at restaurant parties
> > whose preoccupation is with being seen to have made the
> > better choice.  Sad little lives...  People with real lives
> > choose and go on, and don't try to validate their choices by
> > forcing others to conform.  Interesting the way this group
> > isn't doing that, just puzzling about why others do.
>
> I've also been on the receiving end of people who seem to
> =assume= one is playing this game even when one isn't ...

I've been in the position of being the person who did this and
being the person that it's been done TO.  It sure is annoying to
be blamed for something you're not doing, and I am really really
NOT the sort of person who needs others to live the way I do in
order to validate my choices (actually I'm glad most people
don't, my life is often a bit of a mess).

But having also been the person who bites back with a defensive
reply, I can also honestly say that this is the result of having
been judged often enough and harshly and painfully enough that
you come to expect it, so if someone does this I *try* to be
patient.  (This is also why some people see racism, sexism, &c
where they *genuinely are not present*, sometimes; because
they're just so bloody used to it.)

I don't always succeed, because I have hot buttons, like everyone
else.  (A big hot button of mine is, for example, Other Feminists
Who Assume I'm A Bad Feminist Because I'm Such A
Girrrrrrrrrrrrrrul And Happy With That.)

So, try to be patient?  There is a reason, for instance, that
most child-free people under 35 are so obnoxious, and that's
because nobody under 35 is used to having people believe they
mean it.  Once you hit 35, if you haven't had or sired a baby,
people start to think maybe you're serious about this, but if
you're 21, not only can you not get fixed even if you have
medical problems, you are also swarmed by hordes of well-meaning
smiley people telling you "but it's different when you have your
own" and you turn on the TV and find out that all you have to do
to get your own TV show and tons of attention and unsolicited
financial aid is really be fertile and serious about not using
birth control, and you get kind of nasty.  (And yes I realise
that having 17 offspring is a lot of work, but at the same time,
Michelle Duggar has not cured cancer or made peace in the Middle
East, nor is she the only person I know of who has a lot of
kids, and the others get less help and attention.)

People who think they know what you think better than you do are
always obnoxious but *usually* well-meaning.  I only wish that
made them less annoying, whether they are trying to get you to
shed your unconscious racism (when you actually know where your
baggage is) or feel sure that if you just started wearing short
sleeves and blue jeans you'd feel liberated.

Detoxing from a lifetime of people who think you can't be serious
about your choices is hard work for anyone who's made a long
series of non-mainstream choices and suffered the consequences of
being committed to them (I often want to say, 'yes my life would
be easier if I didn't X, but that's because people are mean, not
because X is bad').  If you haven't done it, you really don't
know what it's like.

And the person who makes a lot of non-mainstream choices that
don't normally go together gets it from all sides, because what
happens is that you are part of a lot of groups where you don't
completely fit in and they don't understand why you're (from
their perspective) not "all the way in" yet.  I have more or less
given up on being "all the way in" anywhere.

~malfoy :/ *shrug*

****************************************************************
Azalais Aranxta (~malfoy)
ataniell93 on LiveJournal and Vox
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/malfoymadness

"I know the true world, and you know I do. But we needn't let it
think we all bow down." --Christopher Fry