Do you remember the other day when we were talking and we started going “emotional daaamage” at each other? I’m not sure if you caught my remark about never getting to know the goofball part of you, and I think that’s what a lot of the comments here may be pointing to.
You’re so brimming with ideas and concepts and patterns and when you start talking, it tends to be only that. You want exchange of ideas as a way to shield yourself from others. There’s a playfulness in conversation that has nothing to do with the heaviness that you often display that you maybe should explore more. I think, from my own experience, that it also helps a lot more for the other when they’re going through difficulties (as your gf is currently doing).
There may be something particular about @Andrew, of course, but I believe that there is an issue that I recognize as especially masculine (both in my own actions and in those of my male friends in couples with women -and from the testimony of my female friends with respect to their male partners-). Without being a rule, I perceive that men tend much more to “want to be right/to win” and to spout a verbiage of concepts and ideas when exchanging (my wife points this out about me).
What’s more: I think this behavior is revealed right in this forum among the males, for the “dominance” that some female participants have noted on our part in the discussions here, is not only due to our tendency to “nerd out too much” (as @Srinath warned): it seems to me that we instinctively keep on bumping horns like antelopes or spreading our feathers like peacocks! Here the forms are intellectual, but I think a lot of it is backed up by similar instinctively fed emotions.
Perhaps other males who have enough experience in relationships with women can confirm if they have experienced the same thing (or have had this noted to them!).
Actually, you might be right. I’ve only ever noticed it as something like what I was describing, but I don’t think I could ever understand what it’s like for a man.
I don’t think that’s it at all! In fact I’ve come up with an exhaustive 13-point list as to precisely the ways in which these two similes (simile: “a figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind, used to make a description more emphatic or vivid (e.g. as brave as a lion ).”) miss the mark. But before I get to the first point, I’ll need to convey the entire context of what I’m trying to get at by properly defining where this word ‘simile’ came from.
late 14c., from Latin simile “a like thing; a comparison, likeness, parallel,” neuter of similis “like, resembling, of the same kind” (see similar). Both things must be mentioned and the comparison directly stated. To Johnson, “A simile, to be perfect, must both illustrate and ennoble the subject.”
At similar (adj.) we have:
“having characteristics in common,” 1610s (earlier similary, 1560s), from French similaire, from a Medieval Latin extended form of Latin similis “like, resembling, of the same kind,” from Old Latin semol “together” (from PIE root *sem- (1) “one; as one, together with”). The noun meaning “that which is similar” is from 1650s. Related: Similarly.
The entry for *sem- (1) states:
But before we can even unpack this we have to first establish just what language in and of itself is… …
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With the joking hat off (but the seriousness hat not on ) – I have noticed there are two sides to it. The ‘man’ may ‘want to be right’, and the ‘woman’ may ‘want the man to listen’.
However ‘wanting the man to listen’ is often code for ‘I want the man to agree with me’, i.e. it’s simply the ‘feminine’ form of “I want to be right”.
I put ‘man’ and ‘woman’ in quotes because it goes the other way too – sometimes the roles are reversed. But maybe stereotypically the male fills the ‘man’ role and the female fills the ‘woman’ role.
I’ve certainly had it happen with my partner that we start talking about a topic, and we are having a discussion – as far as I can tell – and my partner gets (all of a sudden, to me) defensive and believes that I just want to argue/want to be right. Whereas from my side I was not even saying things with having a strong belief or opinion, or even necessarily thinking I was right at all, but rather discussing and exploring ideas. So this comes as a surprise to me, and then I have gotten upset in the past for my partner thinking I just wanted to be right when I didn’t (another layer of identity drama on it lol).
There’s another aspect also of ‘I just want to be understood’. That is there are times when I don’t want to be ‘right’ per se, but I want the other person simply to understand my idea and where it’s coming from, without necessarily agreeing with it. Often though it happens the other person seems to be arguing against it without understanding it first, and this is upsetting to me – and the other person interprets it as me wanting to be right, which it isn’t in these cases.
Then of course there are those straightforward cases where I just want to be right :D. So that perception of it doesn’t come from nowhere.
The added layer of course is when my partner isn’t doing these things that upset me but I merely am perceiving them to me. The most funny of it all is when both of us are perceiving the other person to do it but neither is intending to lol.
The nub of it though is I find when I am in a better mood, no matter how my partner may react or respond or in what manner, it doesn’t bother me and the conversations just continue in a felicitous way. So really it is just about getting back to feeling good first, and then just not taking myself so seriously .
I think the source of that activity is wanting the other to see us as ‘good,’ and ‘understanding us’ or ‘hearing our argument’ is an important step of getting to that.
We don’t do well when we’re hated and avoid it at all costs, even though it’s an equally inevitable part of the response package as loving is
For what it’s worth, Andrew, I think you are doing just great. I don’t know the particulars of your situation but from what I see, you are a model human being in my eyes. I didn’t dedicate my journey to the people I did for nothing (you know what I’m referring to). Keep on keepin’ on, sir.
At rhe moment, it’s about not panicking, and going into “mummy’s boy” mode in life.
Apparently i am a cunning entity. But my career is looking like i was waiting for everyone else to rescue me. Nothing even vaguely cunning about those choices.
@emp
Yes, regarding being a goofball, that is something that text does not convey, unless crafted and edited to be so. Spontaneity isn’t a feature of text.
And you are right ().
I feel exposed on the forum these days. Which is cool. It does make me more sincere when i am in day to day life. That vulnerability has a reminder built into it.
No, I mentioned that I only CAN speak in Spanish .
My written English could not be relatively good if it weren’t for online translators and/or or it would take me even longer to write something (which is already long enough), but my fluency in spoken English is terrible as I have never bothered to improve it (maybe this year I will try, but I haven’t wanted to further diversify in the things I do).
The next word has to ask permission from the previous one to come out. If this were all, I would only test my interlocutor’s patience, but I also test his comprehension, as I can’t even slowly put together interesting ideas on the fly (on the other hand, I have invested a lot of time to understand it well -especially to read it, of course-).
Then, my hat, if i wore one, if off to you. Because that is amazing written English.
I would promise to learn Spanish, in the spur of the moment. (With my over-active optimism in play).
Seriously though. I would love to “read” via google translate, you thoughts in Spanish.
Have you considered typing out your journal in Spanish?
I think it high time actualism broke out of English and had a foothold in other languages.
Does Felipe speak Spanish? I assume so. Heck, if i were not so enamoured with Russian i would learn.
Funny personal history story. My actual grandmother, who gave my father up for adoption, eventually married a man with the last name Pizarro. Yes, descendent from the conquistador. I met him as a teenager. .
I don’t know whether he spoke Spanish. However, in a parallel universe, my name is Andres Pizarro.
Believe me, although I am geeting better at writing in English, I am not being modest saying that online translators do wonders and help me a lot (the only merit I could be credited for is that I write very well ni Spanish -I write articles and essays, I was a proofreader, I teach technical writing, etc.-)
No, I think it’s better to share translations here (when/if they were ever ready ) to get more feedback, more chances to be found by engines, to reach more readers whatever their nationality, etc. I was thinking about publishing the Spanish versions on my personal site, though.
I have been thinking about this for many years now, working a bit in translations of some actualist words/expressions, and I believe it would not be a problem to have a Spanish category here (like many blogs have).
Remarkable.
To reciprocate with a story of my own in a kind of “opposite direction”: when my parents were choosing my name, my father proposed Ernesto Fidel (after “Che” Guevara and Castro, of course). My mother said: “If we won’t name him Juan Domingo [after Peron, of course] he will not be named Ernesto Fidel either”. So she decided that I’d be named after my father.
I was really lucky: in either case my life in Argentina would have been even more problematic!
We are probably five with @Felix, @Felipe, @jesus.carlos and @milito.paz. I was considering meeting with them to get the best translations for some actualists words/expressions with which I am having problems (or just for consensus).
) – I have noticed there are two sides to it. The ‘man’ may ‘want to be right’, and the ‘woman’ may ‘want the man to listen’.
).
) to get more feedback, more chances to be found by engines, to reach more readers whatever their nationality, etc. I was thinking about publishing the Spanish versions on my personal site, though.