{"id":47694,"date":"2022-08-15T10:01:26","date_gmt":"2022-08-15T10:01:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/?p=47694"},"modified":"2022-08-15T10:01:33","modified_gmt":"2022-08-15T10:01:33","slug":"playing-the-blaming-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/2022\/08\/15\/playing-the-blaming-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Playing the Blaming Game."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I used to have many, many passive-aggressive traits.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of the time I felt wronged, mistreated, unappreciated and unseen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course I constantly collected \u2018data\u2019 to confirm this (which was quite easy) and build my cases, and once every couple of months the shit hit the fan, and I totally lost it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Completely out of nowhere, mostly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now I\u2019m very happy to say that a lot of that shit has gone overboard in the last couple of years, but there\u2019s still some of it left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So let me share one of my fucked up, older habits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To start, it\u2019s helpful to know that I\u2019m an absolute sucker for punctuality and keeping my promises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I tell you I\u2019ll come back to you about something, tomorrow at 12.15, I will let you know, tomorrow, at 12.15.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or 12.14.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m always early for appointments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d rather wait for a bit than let people wait.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I like the idea of letting others know and feel they matter enough, by respecting their time and honoring our agreements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many people are not like that, at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many people are incredibly preoccupied and they don\u2019t really care too much about their promises, and when they do, it\u2019s not nearly as important as it is for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When they tell you they\u2019ll let you know tomorrow, their tomorrow could just as well be next week or the week after that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And what I\u2019ve seen is that those tomorrows very often turn into nevers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People forget stuff, easily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe they don\u2019t want to and don’t intend to, but they do, because life goes on and new important things arise all the time and promises easily fade away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not even personal, really, just sloppy and nonchalant, or simply a case of shifting priorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now for my particular passive-aggressive notion around this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When a person makes a promise about responding to an offer (for example) and tells me they\u2019ll DEFINITELY let me know by the end of the next day, I expect them to let me know by the end of the next day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s not rocket science for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it happens very often that I don\u2019t hear anything the next day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s where my rocket of agony and frustration gets created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I don\u2019t hear from them at or a little over the time they told me they\u2019d respond, AND they also don\u2019t inform me that they need more time (which changes everything and diffuses the situation), I automatically start blaming them for that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then the next day comes, and now this weird other mechanism kicks in, like clockwork.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because now there\u2019s this experience where I sort of hope they also won\u2019t respond the next day, so their ‘crime against me’ gets even bigger, and I can blame them even more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I already feel hurt that they didn\u2019t keep up with the initial agreement, and now I want that to be even worse, so I can feel even more wronged and disrespected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is, I guess, pure victim mentality, or at least something that comes close, and it feels like I want to dwell in the fact that they have fully ignored me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I\u2019m probably not important enough (or some other deep notion that every single person on the planet suffers from), and they don\u2019t give a shit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The days go by, and my sense of anger and frustration grows, and I long for the moment when I can confront them with their utter ignorance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I even start writing emails in my head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Long ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then, after 4 or 5 or 6 days, it all starts to come down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The urge to be wickedly angry and let them know about it, to be passionately right and deeply disappointed, and let them feel guilty about it, becomes smaller and smaller.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a week there\u2019s nothing left, and the tendency to milk this totally unfair and messed up situation has completely gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m left with nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No answer or response from them, but also no twisted sense of satisfaction for being ignored and feeling unseen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Arch of Righteousness has dissolved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the explosives that used to grow inside of me, are gently detonated before they can do any damage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s so amazing about this, I guess, is that it shows how deeply people can change, and that default habits can either diminish or disappear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Life is much better without this Blaming Game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Photo by @devasangbam, for Unsplash)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I used to have many, many passive-aggressive traits. Most of the time I felt wronged, mistreated, unappreciated and unseen. Of course I constantly collected \u2018data\u2019 to confirm this (which was quite easy) and build my cases, and once every couple of months the shit hit the fan, and I totally lost it. Completely out of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47695,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[97,117,100,116,113,107,103,112],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47694"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47694"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47696,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47694\/revisions\/47696"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}