firecat

I have a problem with people who are emotionally extravagant.

(I consider this my problem and not theirs.)

I wonder why.

Is it because I wanted to be that way myself and had my emotional extravagance suppressed somewhere along the way?

(I do remember having occasional bouts of emotional extravagance suppressed when I was a teenager, but I don't remember wanting to be that way as a general rule.) ( I also remember learning that I had to be invisible in order not to attract tormenting from other kids. Maybe that was a form of suppression that I still resent now.)

Is it because I have a problem with all extravagance?

(I do have a problem with many, but not all, kinds of extravagance. But not to the same extent as emotional extravagance. Material extravagance sometimes fascinates me and sometimes makes me roll my eyes and sometimes bothers me on an intellectual level because of the unfair distribution of resources it implies. Emotional extravagance offends me personally.)

Is it because I think it uses up limited emotional resources?

(Yes, this is definitely part of it. But emotional resources, while finite, are not finite in the same zero-sum way that physical resources are. So I think this belief is based on some inaccuracies.)

There are elements of jealousy and envy in this problem.

Based on my understanding of the way my jealousy and envy works:

--The jealousy means that I believe I deserve something and someone is taking it away from me, so I want to erase them.: Do I believe I deserve not to have to witness or deal with people's emotional extravagance? (Yes.) Do I believe I deserve to be emotionally extravagant myself, only I can't because other people have taken it away from me? (Yes.)
--The envy means that I want (as opposed to "deserve") to be emotionally extravagant and feel that others have appropriated all the resources.

Disclaimer: Not a roundabout way of being catty, or an attempt at indirect communication with anybody

Do you have any confessions to make today?

Current Mood: curious

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From:

firecat

UGH!!! That's exactly what I can't stand! People who think they're always right (and often, better than others), and think they're even above having to say anything.

If I knew that was what the little smile was about, I'd be annoyed. But I don't tend to assume that's what a little smile is about. So that's why I have more of a problem with more "obvious" forms of smugness.

If someone says "Well, I'm just the greatest," I have a problem with it.

Examples of people acting smug in obvious ways: The OH used to have a habit of blowing on his fingernails and buffing them on his shirt as a way of saying "I'm smug." (I know it was meant semi-ironically, but I made him stop doing it around me, because I wanted to throttle him whenever he did it.) Some people just come right out and say "I'm smug because I did X or I have Y." Or in the poly community, I've heard people brag about how many partners they have or how many people come to their parties or how often they get laid, not just as a fact about them, but as a way of implying that they have more knowledge than someone else or they're more evolved or whatever.

I've found that people who are comfortable being emotionally expressive - in a sincere and honest way - are also comfortable being direct and clear *about* their feelings (ie, it's not just the physical expressions of emotion that I'm talking about, but also the ability to verbalize about feelings - in fact).

I haven't found a correlation myself. I know a lot of people who will express one set of emotions and really have a hard time expressing another set. (For example, some people will be free with praise but less free with criticism. Other people are the opposite.) So I don't assume that open expressions of one kind of emotion means openness about emotions in general.

But it's not the intensity of the emoting that turns me off, it's the insincerity.

I'm sometimes turned off by intense emoting even if it's sincere. I just thought of another reason: my early experience with drunks. When a drunk emotes, zie's often very sincere about it, but all of it is gone when zie's sober again.

I also feel manipulated and drained by people who go from one crisis to another, where everything is an emergency that demands all my attention and support. People like this aren't necessarily insincere, but they lack perspective and self-awareness, and also often lack respect for my personal limits. But even here, it's not the emoting itself that bothers me - it's the fact that the person is unable to stop making choices that cause all these crises to keep happening.

The emoting bothers me here because I feel internally compelled to respond to it in kind. And the Nth time someone is upset about a crisis and I feel internally compelled to offer an outpouring of sympathy, I also feel incapable of offering the sympathy, and I don't like that state of mind.

I think the internal compulsion to respond might also come from my experience with drunks. When they emote, IME, they want a response, and sometimes get scary if they don't get the correct one.

PS - would someone please tell me why I can no longer copy and paste excerpts from the post I'm quoting? It has suddenly stopped working, and I had to type the quoted excerpts in this post by hand.

I don't know. Have you tried quitting and restarting your browser?

From:

bastette-joyce.livejournal.com

If I knew that was what the little smile was about, I'd be annoyed. But I don't tend to assume that's what a little smile is about. So that's why I have more of a problem with more "obvious" forms of smugness.

That sounds more like an attitude of "what you don't know won't hurt you." And sure, if someone successfully keeps their negative feelings to themselves and you never know about it, then why wouldit bother you? That wouldn't bother me, either! :)

If someone says "Well, I'm just the greatest," I have a problem with it.

Depending on the seriousness of the comment, that might bother me a lot, too. Actually, it's hard for me to imagine someone saying that without irony. Someone who said something like that without any irony would come across to me as pretty clueless and not especially bright. People I've known who have considerable smarts, talent and/or skill and who believe that this makes them superior to others are usually not quite so blatant about that attitude... not that that improves things much.

I'm sometimes turned off by intense emoting even if it's sincere. I just thought of another reason: my early experience with drunks. When a drunk emotes, zie's often very sincere about it, but all of it is gone when zie's sober again.

Heh... yeah. Well, OK, let me add drunkenness to the list of reasons not to like strong expressions of emotion. I guess you could call a drunken confession of feelings "sincere", but I would not call it *honest*, because honesty requires more than just sincere intentions, or saying whatever's at the top of one's head. It often requires self-awareness and the willingness (and ability) to engage in some deep and probing thought. It can be hard work to be truly honest! I wouldn't expect drunkenness to be a very conducive state for doing that.

So far, I've established that I don't like the kind of emotional expressiveness that comes from people who are insincere or manipulative, clueless about themselves, or in a chemically altered state. I'm sure there are more...

What I think about this is that I simply have problems with people who are insincere, manipulative, clueless, and chemically dependent (or just high a lot). When such people express themselves with a lot of intense emotions, those problems become highly visible (and audible :)). But it's still those issues that I dislike. If someone had one of those problems, but was much more circumspect about expressing it, I'd be less likely to be aware of it so might not be as bothered by it. However, if I were aware of that person's underlying {insincerity, manipulativeness, cluelessness, addiction}, I would be bothered by it no matter how discreet they were. Again, it's not emotionalism itself that bothers me, but the underlying characteristic (in these cases) that turns me off. When someone is honest, respectful, self-aware, clear-headed, kind-hearted, and genuine, and is also emotionally expressive - WOW!! I love that!

The emoting bothers me here because I feel internally compelled to respond to it in kind. And the Nth time someone is upset about a crisis and I feel internally compelled to offer an outpouring of sympathy, I also feel incapable of offering the sympathy, and I don't like that state of mind.

Hmm... ahem... <<>> I know, because you posted a disclaimer, that your comments on this aren't meant to be an indirect communication to anyone in particular, so I don't think you're trying to drop any hints here. But if you truly feel this way, then I can't help but wonder how this relates to some of our interactions...

From:

firecat

That sounds more like an attitude of "what you don't know won't hurt you.

I think of it as an attitude of "I won't assume the worst without specific evidence." The person might be feeling smug/superior, but a little smile doesn't tell me that in particular.

Again, it's not emotionalism itself that bothers me, but the underlying characteristic (in these cases) that turns me off. When someone is honest, respectful, self-aware, clear-headed, kind-hearted, and genuine, and is also emotionally expressive - WOW!! I love that!

I'd like to be there. Sometimes I am - rather a lot more than I used to be - but sometimes even emotional expressions I believe likely to be genuine in all those ways bother me if they take certain forms.

I think sometimes what happens is that I compare myself to the person expressing themselves in a genuine way and I think "I can't do that," and feel bad about myself.

I don't feel cognitive dissonance about your emotional states. You're very clear about what you want, and you don't seem to expect effusiveness from me. The kind of responses I naturally offer seem to be within the range of responses you want, most of the time. (As opposed to when someone is upset and I try to offer support and I am left feeling like they think "Well, that wasn't good enough.")

PS: I also read some of what you have been writing here and think "How can J like me? I'm exactly all the things she says she doesn't like - cramped, silent, etc. etc." :-)

From:

bastette-joyce.livejournal.com

Unfortunately I don't have time to respond to this in depth at the moment - I'm trying to get ready for Elderflower, and at the same time I'm dealing with that stupid virus (which by the way, explains why I couldn't cut and paste text). But I couldn't ignore your comment about wondering how I could like you!! :-O

I do like you a lot. We share a lot of stuff, and I respect your thinking and intelligence a lot. I would like to discuss this in more depth later (probably when I get back, but maybe I'll have time later tonight). I think we should take it to email for (1) privacy reasons, and (2) because this discussion is getting way too indented! :)

But the important issue is that, just because I happen to like a certain trait a lot (emotional expressiveness, verbal openness about feelings, inner life, etc), doesn't mean I can't like someone who doesn't have those traits. ALso, it's a contiuum, not a binary. You do talk about emotions - more sometimes, less other times. Right now seems to be a time when you feel pretty strongly that you don't want to talk about your feelings very much at all. That can be frustrating for me at times, but it doesn't mean I can't appreciate other things about you.

More later!