who only by moving can balance

I love the non-compliance is a social skill design so much that I have two of it -- one t-shirt, one hoodie -- and it's in part because it keeps tripping me up.

Pretty much every single time I think about it I have the mental stumble over the euphemism of "social skills", the ways in which I lack social skills by having boundaries and advocating for myself and trying to honour my discomfort and to speak up--

-- and that jolt, that small shock, when I make myself remember that saying "no" to someone else is an inherently social act, that being able to say no instead of collapsing into obedience is a skill -- the reminder that being disagreeable doesn't, actually, come naturally, and is, actually, something to work at and practise --

-- well, it is worth a lot to me.

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.

... clarified by engagement with Captain Awkward #807: he who is selfish in bed should probably sleep alone from now on.

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(or, Alex reinvents entire subfields of psychology in an extremely half-arsed fashion, Part N in an ongoing &c)

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