Saying "NO"
I have always had an extremely powerful "NO." My current circle of friends and acquaintances might not know this because I don't tend to need to exercise it much these days, but that's because I've deliberately surrounded myself with people who want me to do what I already want to do. When I say no these days it's because I can't.
I had precious little autonomy in my life as a child and teen, but some things couldn't be forced and required actual voluntary participation: TPing houses in the middle of the night. Worshipping. Parties. Dating. Drinking. Dancing. Sports. So I withheld that participation on principle. The more peers or authorities tried to pressure me, the more I dug in my heels, pooped the party, and became a hermit.
I've started to make some friends in the past couple of years, and I'm open-mindedly looking for new experiences. But when I make up my mind I don't like something, either give me reasons to do it or else give up. I love reasons for things and I'm very receptive to that approach. By contrast, "Please? Are you sure? Please? What about now?" and "Because [fill in authority here] said so" are effective ways to close my mind permanently to an avenue I might otherwise have taken.
Comments
twoofdtm on Jun. 28, 2004 5:36 PM
But but but but!! matt~!! PLEASE!! PLEASE!! Oh won't you now? No? Well what about now?
Laughs sorry honey it had to be said!!
netmouse on Jul. 6, 2004 5:24 AM
Visiting with my sister this week highlighted for me one of the ways in which I've changed through living away from my family and especially living with Bill - I'm much less wishy-washy about decisions. This makes me much less tolerant of the "how about now?" requestioning behavior.
My mom and my sister are the types who always want to know all the options before deciding what to do. Since options are often quite literally infinite, this can really slow you down, and sometimes actually prevent you from doing things when you miss the window of opportunity.
I still do some of this bevaivor, but much less now. At least twice this past weekend, Sarah absolutely amazed me with it:
First, she wanted to go to Savanah, GA. We had discussed this before we even arrived, as an option for Sunday night as a place we could go together and have fun which would also get Bill and I some distance back north toward home from Jacksonville. I told her in our first conversation that we could think about it, but I hadn't looked at a map yet and we needed to consider it. Next time I talked to her, I mentioned we were coming south by Atlanta partly because it sounded like we might go to Savanah on the way back and I didn't want to go the same way twice. She responded "I thought you didn't want to go to Savanah." My mom is the same way, interpreting "need to think about it" as "don't want to do it." So we were back to thinking about it. During the first day of our visit, we talked about it with enthusiasm. On Saturday we were talking about it as an option, while also discussing what we would do if we stayed in jacksonville instead. Late Saturday night, Sarah said she wasn't sure if she wanted to go and pointed out that she'd need to find someone to feed her two cats if we went. During this whole time she kept emphasizing that she only wanted to go to Savanah if we got an early start on Sunday (like around 8 am) while I was saying we could leave around 10. Savanah is only 2 hours from Jacksonville.
Sunday morning we still hadn't decided, but I got up early and put our laundry in and Bill and I got up and dressed and packed the car so it was an option. Sarah was still going back and forth. She did talk to the neighbors, and they could feed the cats, but as of 9 she still hadn't packed. It was amazing to me. She kept doing things around the apartment while I kept taking tasks from her and saying she should shower and pack. From 9:30 to 10:20 Bill and I were basically idle, waiting for Sarah to get ready. and still twice during that time she kept asking me if this was what I wanted to do, or would staying be better?
The second thing had to do with choosing a hotel in Savanah. Being the fourth of July, Double rooms near the riverfront were getting scarce when we started looking. Sarah called around and found a hotel that had five left but was only taking walk-ins, not reservations. We went over there, and she wanted to see the room first, so we did. She was looking at ads in a guidebook and this place across the street looked much better in their ad picture, had a pool, etc. For about the same price we could get a suite with a bed and a couch. We were all close to heatstroke, and a decision needed to be made. sitting in the one room, she was very emotional about small things she found wrong with it, like she could just barely stand it. (it was a fine utilitarian room, not very historic or anything). While I was signing us up for that room, she actually went across the street to look at the other place, just because she had to know - it turned out that the place we were at was much better. This was good. But the process of picking the place was very stressful, especially for her, and took at least 40 minutes.
I am very glad that Bill's influence is training me out of this kind of behaivor.
Sarah has lived in Jacksonville for over half a year, and when she moved out there, my mother, who had been to Savanah, pressed upon her that she would love it there and should go. She did love it there, she had a great time. I'm glad we got her to go.
matt-arnold on Jul. 6, 2004 7:26 AM — Firmly Resolved to Procrastinate
At different points in this story indecision was interpreted as decision, and decision was interpreted as indecision. Are these mutually muddled in a vacillating mind? But at some mistaken level it makes a twisted kind of sense to become less resolved the closer a decision looms. Urgency and importance are too easily conflated, aren't they?
Didn't you tell your sister that you needed her to choose? It sounds like she was not peer-pressuring you by constantly asking you to change your mind about a dead issue. So, it could have been worse. That's the attitude that gets my goat: the belief that if only I understood how much somebody else wants me to do it, that factor alone would change my decision. Or, then again... you must really value being around her to have gone so far out of your way to accomodate her faltering. You'd know better than I if she were using this tactic.
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