Desire and negotiation

[kaberett]

A model of social interaction I am chewing over: the trade-off between the background assumption that "well, you're a right-thinking person and we agree on a lot so clearly you'll want what I want" and explicitly-negotiated compromise.

Humans are good at pattern-matching, and we're social animals, and we're prone to forming in-groups based on shared characteristics, and it is actually useful to be able to shorthand shared desire (from "pizza for dinner" to "political whatever", because I am very aware that social situations where "I'd rather not have pizza for dinner" cause major friction and insult are not Unheard Of).

It occurs to me, then, that a lot of the ways in which social interactions have blown up in my face might be usefully modelled as a mismatch of expectations as to how the balance gets struck.

From my perspective, I have a long-term relationship with someone wherein for some time it is the case that I am happy to compromise toward prioritising their needs, because I think that position of compromise costs me-and-therefore-us less than it would cost them; I tend toward the background assumption that when that shifts, when that compromise would cost me, when I end up needing something, they'll be similarly willing to accommodate me.

From their perspective, it seems probable that I've spent a long time being right-thinking and in-group and having wants that align with theirs, and when that's abruptly and inexplicably no longer the case I get shifted to out-group, or to unpredictable threat -- and that's not helped by my utter bafflement and own threat-response at how badly they're reacting to me wanting something that's in conflict with their desires.

Negotiation versus alignment, versus mirroring.

There's a framing in which this is "allistics are sometimes weirdly bad at recognising that not everyone they consider a good person wants what they want all the time in all circumstances"; in which recognising that fallacy and actively and explicitly negotiating instead is a skillset I've learned through negotiating with myself, my own present-versus-future wants, the way BPD affects my timescales of desire and means that it is painfully obviously in my best interests (and the best interests of those around me) for me to examine what I think I want, and why, and make sure I'm comfortable I'm making ethical choices in seeking comfort.

There's another framing -- and please admire the fact that I pay a trained professional £40/hour to access these insights, and that's very much sliding-scale rates -- in which, just maybe, how much space I make for people to want things that aren't what I want... is related to my incredible resistance to the idea, my reluctance to believe, that actually, sometimes, other people's desires do align with mine, even if I express mine first, and that doesn't mean that other-desire is coerced or insincere.

Comments

[alexseanchai]

♥

[alexseanchai]

Also directing your attention https://alexseanchai.dreamwidth.org/1982550.html --it isn't related except that something in this post pinged me about asking you? idkkk

[ewt]

Incredibly useful insights for me here, as is often the case; thank you.

For me, compromising my own needs is so much a reflex that even the act of discussing boundaries later (never mind negotiating them) can be wildly misunderstood. I can think of several examples where thought *everyone* was compromising their own needs for the sake of the good of the group, whereas most of the group assumed that doing X or Y or Z was innately low-cost for me. (Often it is in fact higher cost, because disability.)

[kaberett]

<3

Yeah.

This weekend I did a thing where I successfully identified that I was pattern-matching and going spectacularly wrong about it! But I decided that because the pattern-matching was erroneous I couldn't ask for help!

... next time I should start asking for help BEFORE I hit the point of taking sedatives. But actually getting to want things that are unavoidably in direct conflict with the desires of others...

[sfred]

This feels like very useful thinking. Thank you.

[kaberett]

<3 You're welcome. Thank you for saying.

[highlyeccentric]

There's a sort of combo fallacy between these two that I've seen in action before. It goes like this:

Person A: actually I don't want to X
Person B: but you liked Y, which is very like x?
Person A: I didn't really like Y, tbh. it was okay but mostly I did it because you liked it

Person B's logic: PERSON A DIDN'T REALLY LIKE THING Y. PROBABLY NOT ANYTHING. ERROR ERROR ABORT.

And then they sort of... rather than internalising that they lash out. Fine, you liked that y made me happy? YOU HAVE TO DO THE SAME FOR X. YOU OWE ME. Or they just.. completely blank the 'didn't like y all that much' part and viciously try to enforce X, because it's better than embracing the cognitive dissonance and possibility of BEING A BAD PERSON AS PER SECOND LOGICAL FALLACY.

[kaberett]

Yeppppppp. I recognise that.

[sebenikela]

i think i'm so used to assuming that what i want is less important than what other people want (or just... not relevant?) that the signaling mechanism for "I want this" is really, really tied to "people who are important to me want this" and it takes some careful effort to even be sure enough of what _I_ want to ...have a place to start negotiating or compromising FROM? Or to recognize when I really shouldn't just be going along with whatever to avoid conflict?

The example I'm thinking about is when I moved home last year and it took literally months for me to be able to tell my parents "actually, going to church is bringing up a lot of exhausting and difficult feelings so I'm not going along with you anymore." After multiple teeth-gritted near-meltdowns at church and much hand-holding from my therapist, the thing that finally did it was a friend going "mo, your trauma is more important than their discomfort." This was not a thing I could parse in my own head.

Anyway, just my usual tangential rambling :) your posts always make me think <3

[kaberett]

OH BOY THE LEARNING-TO-WANT-THINGS-AND-IDENTIFY-THOSE-WANTS ADVENTURE.

(A is getting much, much better at Identifying Wants, but the tedious gentle coaxing of "well I suppose X sounds actively bad and Y doesn't, so, Y?" is something that I am wheedling him through having Also Done It Myself, so, sympathy.)

[sebenikela]

IT IS SUCH A DUMB ADVENTURE and also one of those things that trips me up: I start convincing myself I'm Fine Everything's Fine We're All Fine Here and then someone asks me what kind of things I like to do for fun and my entire brain goes blue-screen-of-death and I'm like ...........right, just because I can pass Personing 101 on a good day does not mean everything is working as per spec.

BRAINS they are difficult to wrangle

<3 (and thanks)

[kaberett]

<3 you are welcome (for this, and also here)

[silveradept]

I think I might have a similar thought process - I generally don't have (strong) opinions about certain things, and will tend to go with what the person who had the strongest opinion about it wants, because happy group is good group and so forth. Which makes it very fun when I do have an opinion on something, and others do not do the same thing, even when they profess not to have a strong opinion on the matter.

[zasu]

Same here. I so rarely have a strong “want,” usually go along with others desires or ideas, but don’t understand why I get such pushback from people, especially the ones I’m closest to, when I DO want something.

[silveradept]

Yes. It's very much "I thought we'd all agreed beforehand that we would go with the person who has an opinion on the matter, if there's only one person who does?" and the other people are NO NOT HAPPENING WE DON'T CARE BUT NOT WHAT YOU ARE SAYING, NOPE NOPE.

[kaberett]

ye-aaaaaaaaaaah I think you got a Particularly Bad case of the this-as-control-tactics; I think (though I may be extending too much good faith) that most of the places I've run into this has been where my desires have actually meaningfully been in conflict with the other party's and, with the best will in the world, they don't know how to handle that, rather than straight-up blocking what I want because I want it and therefore it must be bad...

[silveradept]

That's true, it wasn't a normal situation for me.

[naath]

I have very mild opinions about food, I will eat nearly anything (that my dining companions will eat, and thus must be food) and like finding new foods above almost all other preferences; but there is a point at which I have eaten too much pizza and no longer want pizza, and I'm still not sure how to say 'I ate pizza lots because it is OK and you like it but now I need to eat something I actually like' and not piss everyone off. Especially if 'everyone' includes people who can only eat pizza (that is valid, and it is important that you don't eat poison-to-you but I don't actually have to eat what you are eating)

[silveradept]

A thing I have found useful in a situation like that is to do a little research beforehand and be able to say "I've heard this be is really good, and I know they serve pizza." Sometimes it's being able to respect what someone has to have while also getting to try and experience new things.

[vass]

I have no useful thoughts on this but am reading <3

A life on bended needs

[hairyears]

Interesting.

And yes, there are some insights there, that I should come back to a couple of times, to re-read and re-examine.

Here’s what I get right now:

At work, I know that I am a servant: it is *explicitly* the job of everybody on a trading floor to subsume everything in and of themselves, and all the resources of the Bank, to the whims and the requirements of the traders and of trading.

I would say that I do that skilfully and convincingly.

At home, I have the extraordinary and bewildering good fortune to live in a relationship of mutually-attentive service and mutual dependency: and making someone happy, even in the smallest things, can be the most beautiful life that you can ever live if you are both doing it for each other.

Very few people are so fortunate, even temporarily.

Elsewhere, I'm socialised differently to you - as you say, and as you would expect - but the focus isn't on confidence and dominance games; although I can play them convincingly among neurotypicals. It's all about a distracting and defensive façade, and I simply don't consider their needs at all until I have established what it is safe for me to be and do around them.

So the outcome is that, for some, I am willingly and even eagerly putting their needs before my own, mostly; and for others, I am very careful to align their perceptions of my attentive generosity to whatever might be safest. And that's far, far more transactional than a social interaction ought to be.

Is there some of that going on, for you, too?