Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Gossip vs. venting

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On 12/25/2002 12:54 PM, "Jayne Kulikauskas" <cml [at] mmalt.guild.org> wrote:

> One issue that has come up is determining when
> and how it is helpful for people to discuss negative feelings.  People do
> not always immediately want to talk to a person they are upset with.
> Sometimes they want a sounding board or a second opinion on the validity of
> their complaint.  Sometimes they just want to vent. Sometimes they just
> don't want to confront even though they should.

Talking to someone else about the problem, in my experience, is not only
normal and natural but helpful. It is not always helpful to talk to the
person with whom one had a conflict and is often impossible. More often than
not if you could talk to the person, there wouldn't have been a conflict in
the first place. Expecting the upset person to talk to the person directly
is rarely a good idea. "If they coulda, they woulda."
 
> We have seen cases in which the person being complained to has felt the
> problem required action and proceeded to tell others.

This is the problem.  First actions by anyone should be to clarify the
situation, this of necessity means including all the parties.

I can't count the number of times someone has been deeply and audaciously
hurt by something I never did or even intended to do. Since many people are
intimidated by me (I am told) they do not approach me when they feel
offended, ignored, or excluded. Since one of my major faults is believing
what people say, this is a deadly combination.

They say "I hate parties with no dancing, don¹t invite me" so I don't. Then
they go ballistic. Since they won't call and say "Why didn't you invite me
when you invited all my friends" it  helps a lot that a third party does.
But it does not help if instead the third party starts a campaign to defend
the "injured" party without clarifying what happened.


Sharon
-- 
Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
Where we are having a rare white Christmas, the nice kind where all the
roads are melting while everything else is white. My son, however lives in
Upstate New York where they are getting 18-26 inches.



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