Aug. 5th, 2019 11:42 am
Talking feelings
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muckefuckYesterday ended up being a busy day emotionally. At one point, I found myself dealing with the demands of three very different men for very different reasons all at the same time. (Wonders of technology and all that.) But how did I get there?
Let's start with the simplest: Saturday night's daddy. I spied him at the rail with an old bar buddy and shameless zoomed in to peel him away. We chatted and made out and exchanged phone numbers. He wants to do some roleplay, which I've been know to do, and made contact Sunday morning to chat about possible scenes. Which I'd've been totally into if I weren't already trying to handle two fires, one of them in a floating dumpster.
Out of the blue, the awkward geek guy from that one party messaged me and was all like, Is This Relationship Worth Saving? And I was all like "What relationship?" and "Seriously, we're doing this now?". But because I'm invested in not coming across as too much of an asshole, I felt like I had to make an effort. Unfortunately, the conversation confirmed for me all my impressions of his social awkwardness.
As I said before, it's a warning sign when someone thinks you should be great friends just because you like some of the same things. As I summarised to our one mutual friend, "We have common interests, it’s a common language that’s more of a challenge." Yeah, he loves languages but not in the same way I do or for quite the same reasons. Worse, he thinks that purely aesthetic judgements, unfettered by politics or social conditioning, can exist in this world. And that kind of attitude is bound to bring you into contact with the third rail sooner or later.
He also can't take a hint. That's as much my problem as his, though. I was raised to appreciate subtleness and indirectness in communication and it's taken me years to realise (a) that's not necessarily a positive and (b) it is difficult for some people to the point of near impossibility. Reclassing him into the category of "people I just have to be blunt with" should help, because he responded better when I leveled with him about my issues (even if he really didn't understand why they were issues for me).
So negotiating with him would have been challenging regardless, but it wasn't helped at all by the fact that I was trying to squelch a flamewar on my Facebook. I posted a somewhat emotive response to the El Paso Wal-mart massacre and the one racist troll on my flist decided to start some shit. Normally I deal with that by simply deleting his nastiness, but FB wasn't cooperating and he kept reposting.
So, after giving him several warnings and looking into the possibility of blocking him from posting, I unFriended him. It was long overdue. Really, the only reason I kept him around was for a peek into the morass of alt-right thought, but there are other ways to get that that don't talk back.
At least the weekend did give me a break from the further drama in my gaming group. I was back to dealing with that today, DMing with JB about how he feels he needs a break and with Big Red about what interventions are likely to work. The actual dispute doesn't matter, it's just me and Jiggly knocking heads again and both being too stubborn to back down. I tried to DM him, too, and he was unreceptive. So maybe one more attempt before Thursday and then we'll consider our other options, which could include anything from me running a game to disbanding the group.
Let's start with the simplest: Saturday night's daddy. I spied him at the rail with an old bar buddy and shameless zoomed in to peel him away. We chatted and made out and exchanged phone numbers. He wants to do some roleplay, which I've been know to do, and made contact Sunday morning to chat about possible scenes. Which I'd've been totally into if I weren't already trying to handle two fires, one of them in a floating dumpster.
Out of the blue, the awkward geek guy from that one party messaged me and was all like, Is This Relationship Worth Saving? And I was all like "What relationship?" and "Seriously, we're doing this now?". But because I'm invested in not coming across as too much of an asshole, I felt like I had to make an effort. Unfortunately, the conversation confirmed for me all my impressions of his social awkwardness.
As I said before, it's a warning sign when someone thinks you should be great friends just because you like some of the same things. As I summarised to our one mutual friend, "We have common interests, it’s a common language that’s more of a challenge." Yeah, he loves languages but not in the same way I do or for quite the same reasons. Worse, he thinks that purely aesthetic judgements, unfettered by politics or social conditioning, can exist in this world. And that kind of attitude is bound to bring you into contact with the third rail sooner or later.
He also can't take a hint. That's as much my problem as his, though. I was raised to appreciate subtleness and indirectness in communication and it's taken me years to realise (a) that's not necessarily a positive and (b) it is difficult for some people to the point of near impossibility. Reclassing him into the category of "people I just have to be blunt with" should help, because he responded better when I leveled with him about my issues (even if he really didn't understand why they were issues for me).
So negotiating with him would have been challenging regardless, but it wasn't helped at all by the fact that I was trying to squelch a flamewar on my Facebook. I posted a somewhat emotive response to the El Paso Wal-mart massacre and the one racist troll on my flist decided to start some shit. Normally I deal with that by simply deleting his nastiness, but FB wasn't cooperating and he kept reposting.
So, after giving him several warnings and looking into the possibility of blocking him from posting, I unFriended him. It was long overdue. Really, the only reason I kept him around was for a peek into the morass of alt-right thought, but there are other ways to get that that don't talk back.
At least the weekend did give me a break from the further drama in my gaming group. I was back to dealing with that today, DMing with JB about how he feels he needs a break and with Big Red about what interventions are likely to work. The actual dispute doesn't matter, it's just me and Jiggly knocking heads again and both being too stubborn to back down. I tried to DM him, too, and he was unreceptive. So maybe one more attempt before Thursday and then we'll consider our other options, which could include anything from me running a game to disbanding the group.