The Sanity Faerie's Primer on Guys

[sanityfaerie]

There's this strange thing that happens in a lot of relationships. Very subtle people and very unsubtle people get together all the time, and hilarity ensues. The subtle people can't understand why the unsubtle people aren't reacting right, and the unsubtle people (we'll call them "guys") don't understand much of *anything*. Thus, Sanityfaerie's

Comments

[spacehawk]

/amused

a few thoughts

[sanityfaerie]

with respect to unsubtle and unclueful people thinking that they are subtle and clueful, and ways to inflict clue on these people, well, that's what clue-hammers are for (also known as clue-bats and clue-by-fours

Re: a few thoughts

[spacehawk]

I am well acquainted with clue-by-fours and how to use them. I have had to use them in the past. There are ways of doing it that are not insulting, especially if you know the Guy.

However, in order for a technique like this to be successful, the person to be clued in has to understand the parameter over which he is not behaving properly (i.e., to know that body odor exists and that it smells bad and that people react badly to it, and to have a sense of smell so that he knows what "to perceive a scent/to smell" means). At the very least, the person to be clued in has to be aware, or even able to be aware, of the existence the parameter (i.e. "I may have no sense of smell but I know it exists, and that 'smelling bad' is something that bothers everybody else, because they can smell things. I'm the outlying case

Re: a few thoughts

[sanityfaerie]

Ah. I had misunderstood. My intuition would be that such things *could* be fixed, in some cases, but would be more a process of slow education than anything else. Throwing graduate studies at someone who hasn't gone past high school fails to function regardless of the field, especially if they have little natural aptitude.

On the other side, it would seem that attempting to lift up someone to the point that they could understand the issues you have with their behavior would be not even remotely worth the time/energy investment in the majority of cases. I simply note that it is possible to improve one's actual understanding of subtlety, and that this improvement can be induced. Certainly, having to first break through a false self-image of subtlety would make an already difficult and inefficient task even moreso.

[zathrus]

I read this a while back, and found myself nodding in amused agreement. I reread it just now, and found myself thinking, Wow, this totally matches my future sister-in-law's description of my brother! (My first brother, Ed, who is getting married a week from Saturday, not my second brother, Douglas, who remains.... well, your description of yourself as an incoming college freshman probably applies very well to him, except that I'm not sure it's strong enough, and he's entering his senior year of college in the fall.) Mandy does the most amazing job I've ever seen of dealing with the Guy-ness of her intended husband -- largely, I think, through really understanding herself incredibly well, and being able to recognize when she's wanting something from him that she hasn't articulated yet. I agree in principle that it's totally unfair for a woman to expect her guy to pick up on the differences between "Nothing's wrong, I'm just tired" (literally true) and "Nothing's wrong, I'm just tired" (I'm tired because a whole bunch of little