Conversations No One Had

I got an angry(lite) emal from one of the artists we're working with on creating a DVD saying that she was sorry nothing had come of her DVD, that it had been almost a year since filming, and I guess she would have her lawyer contact us about who owns the rights to the footage.

Yes we told her it would take four months, and it's taken almost a year. Yes we've done a bad job communicating this with her. Yes the DVD is almost finished being edited, and we don't have a good communication structure set up for this. (All of those thing btw Z and I have been trying to fix for years and every time we were close we were totally fucked by my parents. End side note.)

There's this really interesting thing in human behavior...and I see it more so in female human behavior... is the strategy to say nothing until the negative emotions build into a super offensive explosion. And it often is the direct result of time dredged down by purely defensive behavior.

It's hard to say what we need. It's hard because first we have to understand ourselves well enough to know what we need. Then we have to look out into the world and define how the current situation isn't giving us what we need. Then we have to do the very hard task of figuring out if we can change it for the better and how to go about taking those steps.  

*Hypothetical example:
Let's say I don't like that Z leaves his dishes on the sink. (And any of you who know us will realize just how completely hypothetical THIS is.) Every time I see the dishes in the evening I get mad. I get mad and say nothing. Each and every time it happens I just get more and more angry. I try and tell myself that it's fine and that I can just do the dishes. But even though I think I've decided this, I still get mad. This continues on and on until I explode at Z and tell him that he doesn't uphold his fair share of chores and he's taking advantage of my good nature.

Or I could have thought about it and realized he does dishes in the morning, but I want to wake up to a clean kitchen. Or I could ask him to change his schedule of washing. I could mention that it bothers me. All sorts of actions could have happened before the explosion. But they all would have taken me SAYING SOMETHING. (And passive aggressive comments don't count.)

But people don't like this time of vulnerable conflict. They don't like saying, "I had this expectation and it isn't being met." It's easier to let the frustration build. A frustration that builds through the often fictitious idea that you're being taken advantage of. (No one likes that.) And in the end there is an explosion. An explosion of make believe conversations that never actually happened.

It's easy to see it when it's through the email of an angry artist. It's harder to see through the frustrated sighs we make as our loved ones leave the room.

*I realize that this becomes a whole different issue if the topic has been discussed but the person doesn't change their behavior. I think though that so often women (men too) think they've had a discussion with a person but it was really just a series of unclear passive aggressive comments. Or maybe I should say that often I think I've had a discussion with a person but really it was just a series of unclear passive aggressive comments.