Body language isn’t “playing games” - it’s just part of how many people communicate. Not doing so isn’t evidence of “playing a game” but neither is communicating that way evidence of it. It’s just a different mode of operating. You really shouldn’t assume that because people think or act in different ways than you do in this world, that they are all “playing games” with you or being intentionally deceitful. They most likely aren’t doing that. It’s not part of your mode of communication and you should work to express that to people so that they can better understand and work with you in order to create better understanding between you.
In any conversation, you are half of it, and it’s just as much on you to express yourself clearly and to take the communication styles of others into consideration as it is on others.
I was well into my 20s when I realized body language was a thing. Even then, someone had to tell me about it. Up until then, I had assumed it was inadvertent and not an actual intentional mode of communication. Communicating through body language made as much sense to me (and still does) as communicating through farting.
I come from a culture in which communication is as oblique as humanly possible. Direct expression of feelings is considered incredibly rude. I think people who communicate this way are playing games to an extent, because they are not being direct at all and are instead making the other person guess at what they want to say. I say only “to an extent” and not “yes absolutely they are playing games and being intentionally deceitful” because we are conditioned to be nonconfrontational and pleasant and Midwestern Nice ™. We immediately shrink back from directness, as a rule. This is a huge problem for me, because I only know how to communicate directly.
My point isn’t to assign meaning or morality to any form of communication. Rather, it’s to point out that people communicate in different ways at different times. Not being direct isn’t necessarily playing a game, as there may be reasons for doing so that has nothing to do with that sort of evasiveness - politeness, wrong time or place, fear of retribution, attempt to make someone feel comfortable. Being direct isn’t always the best or most moral mode of communication, for any number of reasons that has nothing to do with an individual attempting to play a game.
I have no reason to expect that everyone communicates the same way or that one way is better than another. It just is and assuming that people who communicate in a different manner are just being disingenuous isn’t helpful in getting over our individual barriers we might have in expressing ourselves and making ourselves understood. Sometimes, one needs to ask for clarification, and I think that’s fine to do so. Just assuming that everyone who communicates differently from you is the problem doesn’t help anyone (not that I’m saying you do that, just making a general statement).
I agree with you now, but I didn’t used to. I think direct communication is the best form of communication because it’s the most efficient and I can parse it easily and without much stress. But because many people are conditioned to be indirect, my directness comes across as insulting to them.
I do think indirectness crosses the line into disingenuousness a whole lot. For example, whenever someone says “I don’t think [XYZ]” but everyone knows they really do. It would never occur to me to do this, even though it’s commonly done.
Not all the time, but it does happen quite a bit, and for many reasons. When it does, it’s pretty much foreign to me. It would never occur to me to tell little white lies, or to say I don’t believe something I do believe, etc.
So if someone had a haircut and they loved it but you thought it looked terrible, and they said to you “doesn’t my hair look great?” - you’d say… “Yes” or “No, it looks terrible.”
If someone asked me if their haircut looked okay and I didn’t look good to me, I’d say no, it doesn’t look good. If they don’t want my opinion, they shouldn’t ask me for it.
Ah, but they didn’t actually ask for you opinion, they asked for validation of their opinion. There is difference between “doesn’t my hair look great!” & “what do you think of my hair” and that difference is crucial.
If I asked you “doesn’t my X look great” and you said “No, it doesn’t look good” I’d a) be fucking crushed and probably go home crying and b) never ask you your opinion ever again and c) would think you were rude and insensitive.
So no, “direct” is not always the best way to communicate.
Sure. I’m not great at reading when people are lying to me, either. The reasons for indirectness can be any number of things that doesn’t include playing games, though, which is my point. There is nothing wrong with being frank and asking questions for clarification. I don’t think it helps you or the person you’re communicating with to just assume they’re being indirect for some sort of mind games. The other person might have a very good reason for being indirect that has nothing to do with you at all.
It takes years of training for most husbands to be able to tell their wives that they need a different hairdresser without causing offence. But generally I suggest that there is a golden rule that is easy to apply - well, actually two rules:
If someone asks you your opinion of something that relates to them, be complimentary or agree.
If someone asks you for your honest opinion, see (1) unless doing so will have serious consequences as in “In your honest opinion do you think if we drive over this cliff at a hundred miles an hour we will be rescued by angels?”
In that case, there’s a lot of gray area, most of which is covered by “'s ok”. If I really honestly truly liked their hair I would say so. If I thought it was a fucking war crime, I would say that as well, and maybe in as many words. But most of the time, it’s okay, not bad, alright, looks fine, etc cover it.
Knowing I’m under no obligation to agree with anyone’s opinion makes it all the more meaningful when I do.
There is, but I would probably not be able to parse that distinction in real time.
a) Really? Seems like a bit of an overreaction.
b)
c) I would actually think it was rude to not offer my honest opinion. If I thought your haircut was something that would cause you embarrassment, I would say so because I wouldn’t want you to feel embarrassed.
So… that seems stubborn, unneccessarily stubborn.
I mean unless your goal is to actually ensure that no one talks to you ever again, if thats your goal then go to town!
If they don’t talk to me again, then fine with me. I don’t need fragile mentally unstable people in my life, and I don’t need people who will lie to my face or, even worse, insult me by treating me like a little baby (or dry drunk) who needs to be coddled and can’t be told the truth about anything.
I am not a psychologist. I don’t even pretend to be one on the Internet. But I’m now being extremely serious. I’m responding to a complete stranger not to try and put one over on you or to feel superior but, I hope, out of common humanity.
The behaviours you describe are not “fragile mentally unstable people”. They are cultural norms. These norms differ from society to society. In Japan you’d be an outcast. Perhaps there is another society where your behaviour would be completely acceptable. Most societies are in between. Language - oral, verbal, body, symbolic - is not a set of rules of simple article-adjective-noun-verb-noun type. Words have meanings and shades of meaning. I have two dictionaries of a particular language; one gives the basic meaning of words, the other gives meanings and shades of meaning and weighs twenty times as much. Words like “honest” have different meanings according to the transactional situation, the relation and status of the users, and other factors. In an engineering meeting if someone says “I want everybody’s honest opinion on this” you have to take into account the relative status of the person doing the asking and the people being asked; the reputation of that person; the sensitivity of the matter being discussed, and so on. There is a whole different set of rules for the same question between lovers, between parents and children, in a school situation and so on. Honesty is often an extremely subjective, emotive abstract noun. The people using it in “sophisticated” ways are not usually fragile or mentally unstable; they participate in a particular culture and follow certain rules.
Trying to explain this to people with a tendency to linear thinking, I use the example of a software design to send a message. The simplest example is to grab a socket, talk to a server, send a suitable header, get an acknowledgement and send a message. But nowadays we need to think about things like encryption, authentication, encoding, retries, proof of receipt, proof of opening. Someone may wish they could simply send, say, a plain email. But doing so will get you nowhere. It’s no good cursing the environment; the caravan has moved on since 2000. To communicate we must play by the rules, even though we dislike the rules.
It is context, it can also be subject, it can then contain information.
In many relationships, having one partner expect the other to understand unspoken feelings can be disastrous, not only is it tiring for some, it can get pretty confusing if you’re just not that good at reading emotion.
I say this to point out that there really is no one way, or one best way to communicate. I really do think you can learn to pick up on some of the things that people try to express non-verbally using audible cues, some people are said to talk with their hands, and they’ll raise their voice as they raise their hands, they’ll express frustration as they close their hands into a fist, and if you ask them to keep still as they talk, they’ll have a hard time expressing the full range of their emotions as they speak 1. It’s not as if non verbal communication is an alternate channel for communication, it is part and parcel of the whole message and you may not be missing out on much in most conversations when people rely on them, but I’m pretty sure you will not get the full message if someone tries to communicate in a style they are not comfortable with.
I understand what you mean about yourself and about how you like to communicate, but then you must extend others the same courtesy, to accept that they believe what they mean. I know you believe that people who uncritically accept their communication style as, not just normal, but “the right way” to communicate are incapable of communicating optimally but that is simply not the case, they communicate their wacky ideas quite well, its just their justifications that are suspect.
1(Sometimes when I’m writing I need to read a sentence out loud just so I’m sure it comes across as intended, I’ll even exaggerate the facial expressions I’d use when speaking.)
