You know, I"m kind of bored and pissy, so I have to ask you Ben:
Why is it so easy for you to make fun of him?
Well, I thought he and I were joking around a bit - apparently the joking got lost in translation which is the motivation behind me telling him if he thought I was getting too serious than to say so.
I'm sure the return post to this will be something like "You really should be more careful with people's feelings" and "try being more sensitive next time and think about how others might interpret your actions". The reality is that my response would be "people ought to stand up for themselves more often and declare their opinions directly - if something I'm doing is bothering people, then tell me".
I'm starting to show my opinions more on this board, and it's my personal observation that people have a tendency to become more on the defensive to me when this happens because they interpret my direct style as being a jerk. I find people with direct styles comforting because I don't miss their real intentions and don't have to spend hours breaking down their inner meanings or what-have-you before I get at their real purpose behind something. I'm sick and tired of beating around the bush with things and I think it leads to more anxiety than it prevents. I talk to people directly, and give my opinions and my self directly - I accept (but don't get bothered) if you don't like it and move on.
Unlike some of the guys you've known Person3 (since you compared my arguing style to that of one of your boyfriends in the other thread of discussion), I'm not here to fool you and I'm not here to trick you or toy with your head. I have a job, I'm successful and damn happy with it - I'm not interested in spending more time than is basically necessary to respond to posts on this group in the hopes of helping someone get out of this disorder, and I absolutely have no interest in making a fool out of anyone. It serves me absolutely no goddamn purpose at all. If someone acts in a manner I think is dumb, I'll say "that's dumb" if someone acts in a manner that I think some is smart I'll say "that's smart" and will respond fine to people saying I'm doing something dumb - in fact, I'm typically my worst critic.
That's one of those personal soul searching questions so I won't need an answer.
I search my soul quite often. You do deserve an answer as my intentions are being lost on this board, apparently. Perhaps I'm being dumb thinking that being direct is the best way to be, or perhaps this board doesn't like people like that, I'm not sure. All I know is the more direct and open I became, the further I got from DP - the more I wallowed around in myself and just posted depressed ramblings, the worse I became.
What i'm saying is that I have been through similar things where I would really get a kick out of making fun of someone/torturing someone because they had an attitude that either was embarassing to see or weak or a little too honest...
I was asking for honesty. I'm giving honesty. For me to make fun of someone for honesty doesn't make sense.
Or it could even be something I USED to do so when I see someone else say it or write it...once again, I would get so embarassed or angry that I would have to mock them.
Point taken and understood. We do have a tendency to be uncomfortable witnessing things we have gone through in the past and we do have a tendency to make fun of things when they make us uncomfortable.
Your points all make sense and are very solid in their meaning and, I think, I'm interpreting them accurately. The main point here is that I wasn't trying to make fun of him - I was trying to get a bantering with him which ( I thought ) was the motivation behind his threads. Perhaps I have an odd sense of humor, but if someone names a thread "Scroll of dispair" or whatever and then asks you to do nothing but post about all things you hate in the most highly articulate and well sentenced manner possible, I see it as a possible joke and someone teasing around.
But then again I don't know if that's really maturity
I don't know what maturity means to this world - there are so many different variations of someone defining maturity from another that it really has lost any structure as a state. XEPER has the writing style os a very intelligent person - age means nothing to me, he seemed like he could handle the jokes and was playing around with the words to make jokes.
