pondering

[aroraborealis]

Do you think it's important to let people in your life make their own mistakes? If you see someone going down a "dangerous" path (or one that seems so to you), do you talk to them about it, or steer them in another direction, or just try to be there for them if/when they get hurt or make a mistake? Why do you think you do what you do? And how does it relate to the position you take in relationships?

Comments

Is this a repost?

[agaran.livejournal.com]

I'm having a strong sense of Deja Vu reading this journal entry. :) If it appeared before, I didn't reply before.

If I see someone taking what appears to me to be a mis-step, it depends on my relationship with that person. If I'm in a caring relationship with them, and not just a nodding friendship/acquaintanceship, I will make known what is troubling me, carefully using non-judgemental language, always owning it as my concern, rather than their problem, and make sure they realize that if they decide to proceed, I'll be around to help should it go awry (unless the choice they're about to make is damaging to someone else).

Well, that's the ideal, anyway. :) Sometimes I just yell and stomp and cry and act out.

Re: Is this a repost?

[aroraborealis.livejournal.com]

No, although I suppose it seems related to my recent thread on how do you respond to someone doing something you think is doofy? (ie, change your opinion of the person, the thing they're doing, etc)

I have a friend who has a tendency to do something of a "You're doing X, which I think is imprudent, so I'm going to do Y, for your good," and I'm struggling with it: trying to figure out what the motivation is, and see the positive of it, rather than just prickle at feeling patronized. I'm also curious to hear other people's coping mechanisms for this sort of thing.

Re: Is this a repost?

[agaran.livejournal.com]

Well, if this person actually *does* something, "for your good," then I have a real serious problem with their boundaries, regardless of their motivations. I, too, would feel patronized, too, and probably a bit trampled, to boot.

sometimes?

[dbang.livejournal.com]

If I'm very close to someone, and I'm concerned for their physical or mental health, I will usually try to have a sit-down chat with them and let them know of my concern. And certainly if they ask for my advice I'd be happy to give it to them. And while I usually try to stay silent unless asked, I'm not very good at it, and will usually let them know my opinion anyway, but I don't make it a point to do so unless I am worried about them.

Sometimes if I think someone is "stuck", or headed the wrong direction, and looks to me for support/sounding-board duty during their process, I may challenge them, presenting sure-to-be-unpopular points of view. But only if I know them well, and have a solid base of un-judgmental support previously on which to draw. (Or if I don't know them well and am feeling it is more important to help that person than it is to build our relationship, because critical support without a base of trust is likely to result in damage to the relationship.)

On very rare occasions, I've been moved to actually intervene in a friend or lover's path. It would take something close to life-threatening for me to do that.

Re: sometimes?

[dbang.livejournal.com]

PS: It probably goes without saying that if I advise someone to leave their current course, and they choose not to, and have exactly the dire consequences I predicted when I originally advised them, I try very hard not to say "I told you so". But I have to admit that if this seems a pattern in our relationship, it gets harder not to.

[sarahshevett.livejournal.com]

For me I don't give unsolicited advice unless it is going to affect me.
I figure I don't have a manual for life so why should I think I know better than the person doing the driving of their life.

Unless the person is very very close to me ( close personal relative) I don't give advice unless asked. Or until they start talking to me about it, complaining about what is going on, or something to that effect

I think the key line in your question is "or one that seems so to you"

[aroraborealis.livejournal.com]

This is pretty much where I am (or where I try to be) on this sort of thing. I feel like it's almost high-and-mighty to make decisions "for" someone else, especially because you rarely have the whole story. But then there are times that I can imagine I'd have a hard time NOT saying/doing something (ie, someone is clearly hurting him/herself)... but that seems like a different category, somehow, although I'm not sure why... I'll have to think about that more.

Friends

[hawkegirl.livejournal.com]

Yes. Atleast for me one of the things I value most in a friend is someone who will tell me when I'm being a fuckup. :> Ofcourse, saying it with tact, is a plus. *grin* Sometimes too it might not be the wrong thing for them to do, perhpas you don't know the whole story or something so comming at it from that angle might be good.

I feel like feedback is important, not just in Relationships, but in relationship that are important.

Re: Friends

[aroraborealis.livejournal.com]

Okay, that makes sense. I think what I'm struggling with is less in the saying, "I think what you're doing doesn't make sense, and here's why," and more in the actions that (attempt to) keep me from doing the thing s/he thinks is "bad". Or, in fact, even the suggestion of such a thing.

So, in a totally made-up example, I want to borrow a friend's car to go visit a lover. Another friend says, "I don't think it's a good idea for you to visit your lover because X," would probably be hard to hear, but might be useful. A different friend says, "I wouldn't lend you my car for that because I think visiting your lover is a bad idea because of X," would be more intrusive-feeling because it starts to feel like an attempt to assert control over my actions. And the friend saying, "no you can't borrow my car because visiting your lover is a bad idea because of X," is the worst because of the sense of patronizing "I know better than you" that goes along with it.

Does that make sense?

Re: Friends

[hawkegirl.livejournal.com]

If I'm understanding now in your example above, I would lend my friend my car (assuming it was a reasonable thing to do in my life) and mention seprately that I'd like to talk to them about about their lover if they're up for hearing what I have to say, or interested in having a discussion about it. Maybe even go as far as to say I have some concerns too.

Re: Friends

[aroraborealis.livejournal.com]

Right, it's the framing that's important.

Re: Friends

[dbang.livejournal.com]

This example gives your question some meat. It also makes it more complicated.

My first reaction was: I'd give them my opinion of their lover, AND I would let them use my car if they still wanted to see hir.

Then I started thinking: doesn't it depend on why I disapprove of the lover? What if the lover is abusive? What if I'm afraid my friend will be physically or psychically hurt by the visit? What if I let my friend use my car, s/he visits the lovers, and the lover kills hir. Am I still okay with my decision?

Or take it from a moral angle. What if the reason I think seeing this lover is bad is because my friend is in a supposedly monogamous relationship with someone else and is cheating on hir partner? This has the potential to hurt the partner, and my friend's primary relationship, and I may not want to be complicit in this "immoral" behavior. If I actually know the wronged partner, I might even intervene (or at least present obstacles) even more pronounced than not lending my car to help prevent an "innocent party" from being hurt.

Put it in an even greyer area. What if I so disapprove of my friend's path that, if they continue on their current course, I won't want to continue being their friend -- should I take action to help them continue their course (or fail to take preventative action), or even give tacit/assumed approval on them moving in that way? For instance, what if their lover was so repugnant to me, or their relationship so dysfunctional that I was afraid I'd end up sucked in to something nasty.

Re: Friends

[sarahshevett.livejournal.com]

Well this example shows more of your decision making, and conditions placed on friendships.
Do you only do favors for friends if you agree with what the result of the favor will be?
Would you let them borrow your car if they were doing something else?
I think manipulating what you will do for a friend because of judgments you are making about their behavior, independent of the original request, is a dangerous place to be in a relationship.

[dbang.livejournal.com]

One more thought on this...

It feels bad when someone is "patronizing" to me. And certainly I try to steer away from being patronizing to others. But there is a fine line between patronizing and care taking, and the same action might be interpretted differently by different players. Sometimes I am concerned enough for a friend that I am willing to do something that I know they will see as patronizing.

If I think a friend should see a doctor about some issue, and they aren't seeing the doctor, and I call their doctor for them, that is probably pretty patronizing...

....until you put it in the recent context of my friend Mary whose depression got life threatening and was not seeing a doctor. At which point I stopped caring if she felt patronized, and decided that I needed to take some action, even if it risked alienating her.

Real life often turns theoretically discussion like this on its head. :-/

[sweetmmeblue.livejournal.com]

This is essentially the question that I asked on channel the other day. I have a friend whom I think is on a bad path. The responses I got were that I can't help someone unless they want help and that I shouldn't give unsolicited advice/opinions. I'm still working on this as my friend has a history of having a blind spot when men are concerned.

In college we had a friend who lived on the edge when it came to men and alcohol. She was 19. We couldn't get her to see there was a problem. We just backed off until she crashed and then we were there to help pick up the pieces.

We had another friend who was anorexic and refused to admit it. She said she looked best when she weighed 86 pounds (she was 5' 6"). We finally got through to her. She loved to take quizzes and we found one that asked the anorexic questions without ever saying the word. She answered yes to 11/12 indicators. She finally went and got help.

My thought is that if you can find a way to say it w/o damaging the friendship tell them your worries, let them find their solutions.

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

In general, I think people do have to make their own mistakes. You can't protect everyone you care about from everything bad that could happen; even if you could, you would be preventing them from learning how to make their own judgment calls. There are some important exceptions, as others have noted above.

In practice, sometimes it's hard for me to clamp down on my inner Jewish mother and not try to steer a situation as I think appropriate. Also, when the path being taken has the potential to harm me, I will probably speak up sooner and more loudly, simply because I'm tired of getting hurt because of people doing things that they haven't really thought through enough.

This whole issue is something that became a problem in a previous relationship. He was the kind of person who takes on a whole lot of responsibility that isn't necessarily his to take, and it made him arrogant, IMHO, so much so that he couldn't stand to be called on that behavior when it hurt people he loved. It has made me stop to think about the fact that I tend to date oldest siblings or oldest sons, who are likely to have positions of greater responsibility within their families for whatever reason, and to look for warning signs of "I know best" behavior cropping up. This is especially important for me because I have a habit of giving up my own power in relationships, something I'd like to avoid hereafter.

[(Anonymous)]

This gets more complicated as factors get added. In the abstract if someone is doing something I think is a mistake I'll tend to let it go, unless I think it's going to have an impact on me or on someone else I/we both care about. I may judge the impact likely to be bad enough that I want to say something. Or in the extreme, do something.

Simple example: if someone I'm dating, S, wants to date another person, P, I might say "I think if you start dating P that's going to be a problem for me" (or "a problem for ).

Complicated example: I told a friend that I could not promise her I would not interfere with her attempt to end her own life, if it ever came down to it.

Then we throw in the factor of not respecting boundaries by going out and doing something that you think is right for the person, even if they don't want it or it's against their wishes. I'd say it would have to be a pretty extreme situation before I'd do something like that and if it was done to me I'd be pretty upset, regardless of the outcome.

Finally, there's the example of what I'd call "enabling" the behavior. If you want to borrow my car to do something I don't approve of or that I think is bad then I'm probably going to decline. I may not say something or intervene, but that doesn't mean I'm required to facilitate your train-wreck.

Simple example: I once refused to vacate a shared room so that my then-roommate could have sex with a woman he was cheating on his g/f with. I didn't feel that I should facilitate his cheating.

Not sure if any of this helpful
--wex

[aroraborealis.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's definitely complicated. For the sake of my pondering, I'm actually ignoring the cases where what someone is doing is harmful to me, because, well, if it impacts me, then my standing to intervene is completely obvious and, if that's a factor, it's probably a no-brainer that I'll raise the issue. And that's probably true if it'll impact someone else I care about, too.

And, yeah, there's a certain level of not wanting to enable. But, again, to me, framing is important. Do you say, "I'm not going to let you use my car because I don't want to be party to cheating (or other immoral behavior)?" or do you say, "I'm not going to let you use my car because I know this relationship is bad for you and I'm going to protect you from your own bad judgement?"

[(Anonymous)]

if it impacts me, then my standing to intervene is completely obvious

Ah, it's not so completely obvious to me. There are times when I will (for lack of a better term) take a bullet that I could have dodged because dodging might not have been all that simple. If the harm is likely within my current cope level I may just decide to suck it up. This is very hard to talk about in the abstract, unfortunately. For me, it all comes down to specific cases and details.

This gets doubly tricky when you throw kids into the mix, because there's this ongoing tension between the desire to let kids make their own mistakes and learn from them and the realization that it's you (the parent) who's going to have to clean up the resulting mess.

Do you say, "I'm not going to let you use my car because I don't want to be party to cheating (or other immoral behavior)?" or do you say, "I'm not going to let you use my car because I know this relationship is bad for you and I'm going to protect you from your own bad judgement?"

I would never say the latter, unless the person was obviously immediately incapacitated (e.g. drunk) or otherwise incapable of making even vaguely informed or reliable decisions. I might say something along the lines of "Wow, I think that's a stunningly bad idea and I would really rather you didn't do it or at least didn't involve me in your doing it."

But then again, maybe I'm being P-A :)

--wex