The communication thing.

[boxofdelights]

[In which I am talking to my husband about my reaction to the latest communication from the housepainter.]

Me: "Fine! Here's your money! And keep an eye out for my essay, 'How to turn a disappointed customer into a customer who is VIBRATING WITH RAGE, in five easy emails, each with its own special fauxpology!'"

Hugh: Is that what you wrote back?

Me: ...No. I'm not going to waste a line like that on him. He wouldn't enjoy it.


I should write that essay for you, dear readers, because you would enjoy it, but it'll have to wait until I can look back on it and laugh, because with me, VIBRATING WITH RAGE is more like vomiting with rage, and I would prefer not to.


Earlier, I told Hugh, "The human communication thing. I suck at it. I should stop."
He said, "You can't stop. Well, there's one way you could stop."
I said, "OKAY FINE. I should MINIMIZE my exposure to it."

Not seriously. Except for the fact that I suck at it.


Hugh reads my public LJ posts, and sometimes reads the comments. He is impressed by my kind and helpful friendslist. When I write about a problem and get reams of kind and helpful advice, he is incredulous. "Why don't you respond to them?" he asks. I say, "...."

It's the communication thing. I have some deficiencies there. After I write, I am spent. There is a significant refractory period before I can compose anything new.

Terrible metaphor.


Are you offended, disappointed, or hurt when I don't respond to your comments? Would it help at all if I said something perfunctory like 'Thank you'? Can you suggest anything that would help?


I do appreciate you. I do wish to become better at expressing it.

Comments

[redbird]

Is it, then, too late to send a note saying something like "Dear Housepainter, I will send you a check when the job is done. The job, as agreed, was to paint the house in the colors I selected and showed you, including dark green trim. When will you be over to finish the work?"

[boxofdelights]

Not physically, but emotionally it's way too late.

There's the guy who says "I'm sorry," and then there's the guy who says "I'm sorry you feel that way."

There's the guy who says "Yes, I should have made sure that the numbers I had written down corresponded to the colors whose names you read," and then there's the guy who says "Yes, I have lots of experience. Unfortunately, this time, that didn't help either of us."

There's the guy who says "I take pride in my work" and means "If you're not satisfied when I'm done, I'll work with you to get you satisfied," and then there's the guy who says "I take pride in my work" and means "If you're not satisfied when I'm done, you are insulting me. You are disappointing me. You are threatening my livelihood."

That second guy, I don't want him touching anything I care about.

I subtracted the $600 he estimated it would cost to repaint the trim and sent him the rest.

[loligo.livejournal.com]

Whenever people post polite little replies to my comments, I always think, "Oh, damn, should I be doing that too? Am I rude for not responding unless I have something substantive to add to the conversation?"

Which is to say, my natural inclination in these situations is much like yours. So your communication style suits me just fine!

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

I'm always boggled by bland little no-content replies to my comments. I feel kind of embarassed. If what I said didn't deserve a real reply, then at least zie could have politely ignored it. ;-)

[frumiousb.livejournal.com]

I used to think like this, but then learned that I had offended a long-term LJ friend by not making those little polite acknowledgements of comments. And when I asked a similar question as boxofdelights it turned out that quite a few people like to get them. I never mind it, myself. But tastes do apparently vary.

[jesse_the_k]

I'm the worst of both worlds. I hesitate to comment, but am despondent when I don't receive them. /runs & hides

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

Wow. You know, it's clearly the housepainter who is failing at the communication thing ...

To continue going with him sounds as though it is a recipe for stress. I think live with it for now and repaint the trims the next time there's spare cash. Let's face it, you'll more often be inside looking out than outside looking in (and I learned that from a friend who owned a HIDEOUSLY purple house, as it turned out, it's true!) When the time comes, play around with test pots, have swatches, do whatever it takes to be absolutely certain that you have the green you want, then have two identical bits of paper with that colour on it, keep one, give one to the painter, and have the painter sign off on both. That way any failures are the painter's fault with no debate ;-)

And for the moment, eh, so the house has spearmint trims. It has a roof! And windows! And all sorts of good things!

As to comment replies, I think that I am officially the worst person on LJ in that regard from a mixture of ineptitude, vagueness and procrastination, so you need never worry about me! Your next posts always update on how things have gone with you, which is all most of us care about.

[supergee.livejournal.com]

"Are you offended, disappointed, or hurt when I don't respond to your comments?" No.

[lookfar.livejournal.com]

So sorry about your paint trouble. Or color trouble. I've been on the receiving end of that myself, but usually due to my own error, since I was the painter; shell pink, when applied over a whole room, turns out to be Pepto Bismol pink.

Hmm...I don't think I noticed that you didn't reply to my comments, but now that you mention it, I guess you don't, very often.

The effect it has is not to make me any of the above (offended, disappointed, hurt), but now that you mention it, I don't quite feel that we are having a conversation. A friend of mine who works with very young children who have communication difficulties uses the Floorplay phrase, "closing the circle of communication;" you speak, I reply, then if you reply to my reply, I know that you heard me. Otherwise, it's as if my words went off into space.

Again, I don't feel in any way upset by that, but if you did reply to me, I'd feel that we were engaged in an active endeavor together, and I'd feel closer to you.

I know that you are pretty far out there on the introvert scale, so it takes energy out of you to communicate with people. Do you feel that you must reply before you've finished your refractory period? I don't mind hearing back from people weeks later, really; but it does make me feel real to them.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Are you offended, disappointed, or hurt when I don't respond to your comments?

No. I can't say I've ever felt that you didn't reply to something that actually needed a reply. Furthermore, I know you well enough to know that you're reticent about communication in general. So I wouldn't expect little acknowledgment notes from you. (Some folks I know on LJ, yeah, sure, I'd be worried about them if they didn't write the little acknowledgment notes. But that's a matter of personality.)

[redbird]

Not the least offended, disappointed, or surprised when you don't answer my comments: you write something interesting, I respond, that's often a complete interaction (though it could go back and forth more).

For me to expect a "thank you," well, then I'd need to leave a "thank you" every time you or another friend posted something interesting, informative, or particularly amusing.

I don't mind if someone thanks me, either individually or, as one friend sometimes does, collectively for my replies, but I don't expect it. Either I'm commenting because a friend can use help or because I enjoy doing so, or both. And it comes around: my friends leave me useful comments too.

[schemingreader.livejournal.com]

A lot of the time I'm commenting on posts that have heavy emotional content, and I often think it might be difficult to reply to comments on those. And, sometimes you have replied, actually.

It took me awhile to get the hang of LJ commenting. Some places on the internet expect more responses and some fewer. Sometimes on LJ also, people can respond to comments by writing more posts on the subject, and that counts as conversation.

I don't think it's a communication problem if you pick a paint color and the housepainter buys a different one and uses that instead. Unless you only told him the color family or something. I can't imagine you did that.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

I sometimes try to reply politely thanking people, especially if their comment is long, but often I feel too fragile about the issue to return to the post, and don't. When other people do the same, I tend to assume they're experiencing that. I think I *do* expect thank-yous or comments back if the thing I wrote was really long or difficult for me, but usually I forget about that within a day or so, and it doesn't create a lasting impression about the person.

In other words, I wouldn't worry about it too much.

perhaps this should have been e-mail?

[lcohen]

first as a general statement--i don't think that you suck at the communication thing when you are communicating. i think that you and i have always had good clear conversations and emerged from them with a feeling of closeness--of the communication having brought us closer together? what you tend not to do is respond in the first place--maybe out of this very fear? i think of you as an introvert where communicating drains you so that you tend not to do it, rather than an inept communicator once you get going. and i've never been sure how much of the draining was due to us tending to communicate about things that are very emotionally fraught--we don't have many "hey, how's it going?" interactions to use as a baseline.

to address how you communicate with your flist--i think that the majority of my flist doesn't do those little "thanks for the hugs" sorts of responses so i never noticed that you don't. if someone says something of substance, i really try to get back to respond, but if i say something and someone leaves me a hug--i really appreciate those hugs and sometimes i'll do a group thank you, but i usually don't do an individual response to each comment like that unless i am just overflowing with the need to do so, somehow, and that's something that comes from me, not from feeling that it is required.

[pennski.livejournal.com]

I don't expect replies to my comments. I was shocked to find an lj friend stressing about the fact that she hadn't replied to her comments!

I really like it when a post turns into a small group conversation but I actively avoid reading the comments on friends' posts when they go over 100.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

Are you offended, disappointed, or hurt when I don't respond to your comments?

No, I'm not. Because (a) I know as well as anyone that for many of us Internet Girls, there is only so much communication-brain available on any given day, and you may well have used all that is available by the time you're done posting something; (b) also, you have things to do besides sit at the keyboard and respond to comments, even if you'd rather be doing that; and (c), the Curse of Chit-chat.

That is, if someone makes a comment that sparks further conversation, well and good (and I know I've seen you respond to comments when that happens). But when the post-and-comment make for, as it were, a complete conversational unit -- say, complaint-and-rueful-sympathy -- it makes for a natural stopping point. In RL, the conversation would meander in other directions from there; in comment threads, there's nowhere for it to go that doesn't lurch off into a desultory exchange of what the linguists call "phatic" communication. Somebody has to be the one to call a halt before that happens, and I've occasionally been downright grateful when someone else does it for me.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I like getting replies to my comments, but it isn't a big emotional deal if it doesn't happen.

[bunnyjadwiga.livejournal.com]

It's ok not to post a reply to my comments, unless there's something substantive you want to say in response. It's basically a case of 'here's my advice, use it if you want, otherwise *sympathetic noises* and *supportive vibes*

[aedifica]

I generally try to reply to comments people leave in my journal because I'm happy they chose to comment and I want to encourage that behavior. That said, I'm not offended not to be replied to. (Minor exception: if a person has replied to all the other comments on the page and not mine, it does make me wonder why not. That's not the case with your entries, though.) Though I do agree with lookfar's comment about whether it feels like a conversation.

[dracunculus.livejournal.com]

Are you offended, disappointed, or hurt when I don't respond to your comments?

Nope!

[beaq.livejournal.com]

I am in fact slightly disturbed when someone responds back to every comment people make, and will often avoid commenting in those threads.

If I was offended by silence, I would be the most large hypocrite of them all. Once in a while, if I've been particularly whiny or otherwise emotionally obtrusive, and people have been supportive, and I'm more distant from the issue, I'll go back and thank people. Especially if one or two people made a particular effort. Otherwise, a nod of acknowledgment can be assumed.

I feel like my LJ friendships are peripheral to my personal relationships to those people. The value of LJ interactions is something like 1/20th that of in-person interactions. Probably less.

[ljgeoff.livejournal.com]

I am in fact slightly disturbed when someone responds back to every comment people make, and will often avoid commenting in those threads.

Exactly this. I feel a little awkward when someone replies to every single comment. Though sometimes I reply to posts simply because I get very few replies, and am feeling communication-deficient.

[beaq.livejournal.com]

Also I would like to pummel your painter.

[rozasharn.livejournal.com]

I'm always pleased to find a response to my comments, but I'm used to more than half my comments not generating a response. Pray don't sweat it on my account.

And five fauxpologies sounds less like communication troubles and more like the painter is a jerk.

[bheansidhe.livejournal.com]

Actually, I routinely suffer hideous guilt-throes because I don't respond to comments that my friends leave (especially those filled with encouragement, advice, or general kindness). Like yourself, I find myself emotionally spent over the issue, and/or sometimes overwhelmed by the volume of response.

Hm. Crowded boat! Thanks for posting this.

I will occasionally be irked if someone does not respond to a really long comment of mine if it is made in response to a "What should I do in this situation??!" post. But those are few and far between, and I generally resolve the feeling by emailing the person directly. I don't believe in passive LJ games and try to avoid them.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

No. I am occasionally disappointed when someone doesn't respond to a comment, just because I would like to know what they think about it, but I am not offended or hurt.

When people give my good wishes and such in comments, sometimes I try to post "Thanks" to each and sometimes I edit the original post to say "Thanks to everyone who responded" and sometimes I just let it go.

[pyrzqxgl.livejournal.com]

There are never enough hours in the day to keep up with everything -- I always think it's going to be kind of hit or miss whether any particular thing gets replied to. You definitely have a wonderful friends list and some great mutual communication going on.

[jodawi.livejournal.com]

communication should make itself easier for us instead of making like it's our problem that it's what it withness is am are

[boxofdelights]

Yeah, what you said!

Um... what exactly was it that you said?

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

I didn't answer right away, partly because it's an interesting big question, and partly because I'm reluctant to write anything that might seem like criticism or ganging-up on a friend, and in particular I didn't like the idea of seeming to side with your husband against you, in a venue where he might see it.

But I remind myself that you are not me, and you asked. Like lookfar, I do sometimes wish that you would respond to what I wrote, because without it I worry that I'm being too pushy or inappropriate, and because I would like to be closer friends with you. You write about really personal hard stuff sometimes, and it's good to hear that you appreciate our responses and don't take offence at our well-meaning intrusions.

On the other hand, I remain ridiculously flattered years later by the fact that you called a comment of mine "insightful" in 2003 and went to the trouble of re-posting it.

I like you a lot. I will keep reading your journal and commenting, whether or not you ever comment on mine or respond to my comments. And I'll keep doing my best not to say hurtful or pushy things.