i’ve been thinking a lot about compliments, since that seems to be one of the most popular forms of verbal affection
well, that’s something i’ve been thinking: is there verbal affection that isn’t implicitly a compliment? is it the same thing? it’s at least almost the same thing (in this culture?? how to get any distance??), but, why?? that doesn’t feel like the implicit message of physical touch affection, always or as often, physical touch is just like me give you soft nice feeling.. shouldn’t there be ways to give that verbally other than saying you’re good, does it depend what people want to hear, could you change it
anyway understanding compliments through the touch lens has been really helpful to me because there’s endless parallels, like the way rape culture fucks around with boundaries, the withholding and love bombing in the various social manipulation strategies, um probably something positive too
one thing i’ve started to think the past week or so is to relate how i feel about compliments to how i feel about eye contact: in both cases it’s this awkwardness and like wtf is this and it bounces off of me, and what i realized longer ago about eye contact, oh and also like that brief upper arm caress gesture for another instance, is that what feels wrong about them to me is that they’re too short, it’s not enough for me to enjoy it, and so i just started to think about that in terms of compliments also and maybe that’s the same thing, the standard complimenting is less than i’d enjoy
i’ve been imagining getting more intense compliments and that seems more right to me, it feels most sensible if i imagine streams of hyberbolic silliness, in one imagining i imagined someone telling me i’m the best person in the universe and that seemed reasonable, and then i imagined them telling someone else the same thing and i felt compersion, but then i imagined being play jealous anyway, anyway, hyperbole seems to work for me, i just imagined someone saying to me how it’s awesome how i’m a million miles tall and that also feels very reasonable
i’m vaguely reminded of some concept of compliments where they’re supposed to actually be critiques of your real-life activities which seems invasive somehow
what is it about the compliment that makes it like a touch? what other words are like touches? is it like a touch at all? does it just play a similar social role maybe?
a compliment says “you’re included”, because it’s in the context of violently rejecting everyone inadequate to whatever violent standards, if you’re in a situation where everyone’s always included and supported then you can say the same thing by making reference to that shared context, “ahh, look at our shared context” you can say and everyone feels safe and included because that’s the context
idk maybe like make up weird complimenting cultures and try them for a week and see what about it you can change, i can’t tell what about it can change
