@seriousflightrisk replied to your photoset “princessfalene: cantcontrolthegay: where is the lie Yes, but what...”
I mean it varies situation to situation. I feel like with posts like this everyone has specific kinds of situations in mind but they might be different from one another. For example sometimes you might be sorry you worded something but not sorry for the fact that you spoke up. This still isn’t the best way to apologize, but it’s true that you shouldn’t have to walk back everything you said or did just because you hurt your friend’s feelings. There have been times where I have been gaslighted This way but there have also been times there was a fight made over a misunderstanding because of bad delivery.
But even in your example, you would apologize for how you worded something. Not for how the other person feels. And I didn’t say that you have to walk back everything. I said stand by your actions or don’t.
It’s a holiday and I’m tired from family stuff, so maybe I’m not being clear. The point is, apologizing for someone else’s emotions is how people shut down a conversation rather than talk about what actually happened.
There is a middle ground. There is allowing someone to express their emotions and work through conflict without one person being right and the other person being wrong. If you do care about this person and they care about you, then it should be safe to engage in a conversation about their feelings.
Dismissing someone’s emotions either means you are terrified of them expressing themselves, which is a bad sign about how they treat you. Or you don’t care enough about them to hear them out on the situation which is a bad sign for how you treat them.
You’re right, I have multiple scenarios in mind. And quite frankly there is not one in which I was shut down or I shut someone else down that it was healthy to do so.
If you love and care about someone you respect them. Which means you at least want to know how they feel if not why they feel that way so you can avoid hurting them again. Even if the end solution is that you don’t speak about that subject ever again, then at least you’ve resolved it so that both parties feel safe continuing the relationship.
And that should ALWAYS be the end goal. Conflict sucks. But conflict without resolution will end up destroying that relationship anyway. And there is no resolution when one person feels like the other does not respect their feelings.
