15 Things: # 13 Redux

Okay so I've been doing a lot of thinking lately, prompted by this whole "Am I an Alpha Dog and if so is it a bad thing?" question.

And one of the things I've had to face is that I am extremely, overwhelmingly impatient, and I am very uncomfortable with ambiguity.  So this whole crock of "Things Happen In Their Own Time" as a life lesson I can sit here and preach about is just that -- a crock.  It is a lesson I need to learn, not one that I can say much about.

Here's how my impatience manifests.  Suppose we're all going to go out to breakfast -- you, and me, and maybe Turboglacier and 517 and Housemate.  And we know the day and now we've got to figure out the place.  I don't care, you don't care, nobody cares all that much.  A normal situation includes some kind of, "Where do you want to meet for breakfast," "hmm, I don't know, what do you feel like eating?" "Gee, I could go anywhere -- is there a place you really like?" back and forth conversation.  I hate those.  I find them tedious and wasteful and stupid and I almost unconsciously work to avoid them at almost any cost.  So even when I don't particularly care, I tend to try to cut off those conversations by just naming a place.  I am very flexible, but I am also pretty decisive and pretty self-aware.  If you ask me what I want to eat or what I feel like doing, it'll take me about 10 seconds to consider it and then I'll give you an answer.  "This is where I feel like eating, actually."  I tend to expect that anyone else I talk to operates the same way.  If I suggest something that you don't like, I assume you'll say so, and will make a counteroffer.  And so again and again in social situations I dominate even when I'd prefer not to, just because I step forward into the void and by doing that I don't let quieter voices have a chance to emerge.  People rarely override my preference.  I wish they would, more.  That's something I need to recognize.  The back-and-forth "I-don't-know, where-do-you-feel-like-eating" conversation isn't just dead space and wasted time.  It's important social signalling.  It signals, "I'm flexible.  I care about what you want.  I want to collaborate with you on a decision that will be mutually satisfying."   I also need to recognize that other people, faced with someone who speaks up like I do, assume my preference is a very strong one, and will accomodate it.  Sometimes when I am decisive it's because I care a lot.  But a lot of times it's just because I figure that someone's got to lead, or else we'll get stuck in an endless loop of "I-don't-know, what-do-you-feel-like?"

So that's one way in which my impatience is sending the wrong signal.  I speak up just to avoid a conversation that I think of as wasted, but when I do so it appears that I want to take charge, that I have a strong opinion, that I don't want to collaborate, that I'm not all that flexible.  None of those things are true about me, I don't think, at a meaningful level.  But I see how the signal I'm sending can be interpreted that way.  All because of a fear of the void, of the process of making collaborative decisions, of a waste of time.  Time for a reexamination of why those conversations make me so crazy.  They're not that bad.  I've got to get more comfortable seeing what emerges if I don't step forward and take charge out of habit.

On a grander level, I do the same thing in relationships.  I can take my own pulse pretty quickly and figure out what I feel.  I imagine that other people can, too.  So waffling, or ambiguity, or indecision, makes me crazy.  I force a decision, just to avoid hanging out in the open, unnamed space.  Usually that means I leave, and then I add the relationships to the column I count as rejections of me.  I don't think the impatience or avoidance of ambiguity here is motivated by the same thing as the where-should-we-go-to-breakfast alpha dog signalling.  That's an attempt to avoid tedium.  In relationships, I think it's an attempt to avoid the pain of uncertainty.  In both cases, though, I step into what I see as a void, and I act under the assumption that other people are just like me: just as decisive, just as comfortable being vocal, just as quick to identify and process what they want.  If I know, they must know, and if we both know, there's no reason for ambiguity or waiting.  Again and again I cut things off because I can't stand ambiguity.  I'm not going to audition for you, I've said.  You have all the information you need.  If you still don't know how you feel about me, that sucks.  I'm out of here.

Things happen in their own time.  This is an aspiration for me.  There is richness in ambiguity and in the undecided.  There is information about people and process that comes from the where-do-you-feel-like-having-breakfast conversation.  Not everyone is like me, ready to decide everything right away.  Maybe I'm not even like that, but have gotten into the habit of acting like it.  You have to let silence settle if you want to hear the quieter sounds, if you want to make room for things that grow slowly.  Wait and see.  That's going to be my project in 2006.   Wait and see. 

Comments

[Marcin]

As to conversations that go around and around, I like to deal with those by phrasing my suggestion as a suggestion - something like "I don't really care - how about the Hobbit? What do you think? Prefer anywhere else?"

In general, in relationships or in trying to fix a place to go out to, there's nothing wrong with telling the other people involved what would be a good solution in your eyes, and then suggesting that you're happy to wait for their input, but if the process drags on suggesting that maybe you can proceed on some sort of provisional basis, or just make an arbitrary decision, or that you'll be checking out alternatives or whatever you want to do to cut down on uncertainty. That said, in a relationship you'll need to have some sort of patience, or leave people with options if you don't want to cut things down.

Or you could try to restrict your interactions to decisive and emotionally mature people only. If you do, let me know how you managed it.

[Weeble]

I agree with Marcin's comments. I think you can influence such situations and help bring things to closure with the proper delivery. By offering suggestions with a positive tone, others will not view your decisiveness in a negative light. The tone of your message is just as important as the words you choose to utter, in my opinion. I've run across many people in this world that haven't got the slightest clue why they have such trouble communicating with others. Often their issue is that they fail to comprehend what messages are conveyed with their tone. What is equally interesting is while they can't hear their own tone, they are very attune to others and become quite annoyed when they broadcast similar messages through tone.

[turboglacier]

I find it's pretty rare that the "where should we go to breakfast?" conversation becomes so unresolved that breakfast gets canceled altogether. But on the rare instances when that occurs, whatever happens instead is bound to be more interesting anyway.

[MT]

Charm and tact cover a multiple of sins. Miss Manners would have no trouble with this at all. I suppose at the end of the day you don't want to have to be charming with an intimate, so to the extent you aren't instinctively charming, turning on the charm is a temporary fix. But I think habits of interaction can become instinctive, especially with a particular person. My spouse and I certainly work on changing our habits.

[Elfie]

Leave room to get rejected. Yeah, horribly painful, I know. But you KNOW it is a problem, and have been so proud of yourself when you can do this. The subtext of what you said you do -- and how you VIEW it once you have backed out (as rejection) tell you what you have to work on. Give somebody the space to reject you, and just let it ride. If they don't, you get to be happy; if they do, you keep right on living and the terror involved in the fear of the unknown is gone. I really understand how hard this is, believe me, but I also believe that taking a chance on uncertainty (even where it means hanging out in it with your heart over the blender) is the only way to really live. And yes, I've had my heart ripped out and handed to me. I am still here. You are stronger than I am, and will still be here, too. Keep trying! It takes practice to stop plotting and planning for 15 minutes at a time. We alpha types must learn to examine a little less at times.

[Carolyn Elefant]

The "I don't know, where do you want to go" isn't necessarily a sign of concern or a signal of accomodation. It also reflects a lack of self-confidence in asserting an opinion or a fear that you'll offer a suggestion that will be rejected. I engage in that "I don't know where" much more than I like, though I am trying to break the habit - but my hedging often comes from fear of my ideas being rejected and only sometimes out of concern that I'll pick something that the other person won't like very much. I would much rather be like you and I think most people feel the same.
As for the relationship aspect, I don't think there's anything wrong with the decisiveness. You can give someone a chance or give a situation a chance to develop but really, after 3 or 4 months, you either know it's going to work or it won't. There's not much in between.

[wab]

I see the breakfast example in a much different light than the other writers. This is a negotiation in which the prize (picking the restaurant)is very small. (The reward of having breakfast together is already established.) Therefore most people are unwilling to pay the price (appearing bossy, pushy, etc.) for no gain. In that case they devolve into the "nice guy" negotiator personality. The "datacrat" personality will start asking what is good a which restaurant. It remains for the more decisive types to break the deadlock. That person may be the "bulldog or steamroller" type who loses patience quickly and wants to get to a goal. Or it could be the more everfescent butterfly type who wants to land getting ready to contemplate the next adventure. I like Marcin's suggested way out of having to deal with such low impact negotiations.

When it comes to negotiations the prize is much bigger. Why not pay the price and encourage resolution. You will never have "all the information,' not until you've lived a lifetime together. In that case I find that "there is no time like the present" is a better approach than "everything in its time." Why? Because it is not "its" time, it is our time.