approach to arguments=nurture, not nature?

[cimorene]

when i'm angry i have very good posture.

you know, when we were children kitten_head and i used to be confused by the behavior when angered of the third cousin our age.  she'd move around with carefully and deliberately, and not necessarily leave you alone, but she'd be eerily almost silent.  she wouldn't speak to you.  you'd talk to her and she'd go 'mm' and shrug. 

'are you mad at me?'
shrug.
'are you?  why aren't you talking?'
shrug.
'but what did i do?  i didn't mean to make you mad.'
no response.
'i won't know what the matter is if you won't talk to me.'

we'd get exasperated.  sometimes when she was perfectly garrulous--which was often;  she's incredibly sweet and forgiving and not at all easily angered, compared to, for instance, me--it'd come up.

'and what about how she won't talk at all when she gets mad?'
'why do you do that, p?  that drives me CRAZY.'
and she'd smile mysteriously and without venom and pawn us off with something-or-other.

kitten_head and i agreed with no trouble that such an approach made no sense whatsoever.  if something was the matter, how were we to fix it if she wouldn't confront us with it?  it wasn't like it would make her feel better.  it was unnatural.  it seemed to be, like, a trait that would count against the survival of the species, so illogical did we think it.

but i understand now.

that's how you respond to anger when you can never win--when you come away frmo every fight having lost more than you've won no matter WHAT it's about--when nothing will ever be resolved in the open, and certainly not in any kind of heat.  when the person who pisses you off holds all the cards.

one thing my parents and kitten_head's had in common, among many, was a relatively "equal" treatment of their kids' opinions, conversation contributions, wishes... choices of mismatched clothing, pets, pathetic boyfriends, college dropping-out, fuel-inefficient cars.  you get the picture.  it wasn't like that at p's house.  her mother, the third sister of all our moms, is not cut from the same cloth as ours.  it's not a bad cloth.  it's a very organized cloth, and it's very nice.  it's maybe soccer-mom tinted.  it bakes for fun.  but it always makes you clean your room, and the kitchen too, even if you're only visiting for the day. 

p's household wasn't a democracy.  now i think about it, maybe she wasn't allowed to argue with her parents.  they never let their kids see them fight, whereas i've been given to casually taking sides in my parents' squabbles since before i can remember ("yes, he did tell you"--"don't be mean to my mommy.  she's tired.")

dear p (when i find your e-mail address):

i understand.  i'm sorry.  i'm impressed greatly at your restraint.  i never saw (heard) you slam anything that i can remember.  could i have some pointers, maybe?

love, cim

Comments

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

hiding is how she reacts to her anger AND to other people's.

Yup. I'm one of those, too. It's odd, too, because I don't come from a violent family -- but I gather that my father did (not that we talk about that), and evidently his discomfort with anger has just been passed along.

In my family we're never angry. We're irritated. We're disappointed.

And then I married a hand-waving Italian-American drama king ...

[cimness.livejournal.com]

i wonder how 'nurture' it really is and what kinds of correlations there are. i bet there's information about that somewhere.

wax says that she was always withdrawn. her family weren't violent, but her parents did believe in spanking, i think.

my mother's father was quite violent. she thinks spanking is horribly wrong, but as a result of his abuse is somewhat neurotic, and loses her temper, turns red, slams things and waves about sometimes. i think three times in my whole life she's been angry enough to smack me in the heat of the moment, never hard enough to hurt at all, more like a sharp pat. but the psychological hurt was great. the shock! :)