Hyper-pedantry?

I have discovered an unsuspected flaw in myself.

In the course ofsome recent unpleasantness, I found myself very upset that a matter was not settled but rather declared no longer a matter to be discussed.

I was having trouble sleeping anyway, so I wound up thinking about it.

It finally came to me. Unlike what you'd expect, it wasn't a matter of who was right or who was wrong. Instead what was bothering me was that incorrect statements were being treated as correct and that was being ignored.

I've been accused of being far too pedantic in the past, but this seems to go beyond that.

Normally, it doesn't even matter if I wind up being wrong, as long as I've been shown that the facts I was working from were in error or incomplete.

But in this case the facts in question were what I had said or what what I had said was intended to mean.

No wonder I couldn't let it go. And why the other person wanting to drop it was so frustrating..

I'm not sure this would have helped if I'd realized it sooner. But it has caused me to be a bit more careful about how I present things in the future.

The perniciousness of "hinting"

I'm incredibly bad at reading hints. It took me the better part of an hour to figure out that a former girlfriend was hinting that she wanted to have sex. She hadn't *quite* gotten to the point of rubbing herself all over me...

I'm not very good at hinting either. After years of alternating between too subtle to be noticed and blatant enough to suffer much embarrassment at when people reacted to the lack of sublety, I try not to try hinting anymore.

Alas, I'm finding that other people are quite ready to read hints where none were intended which can lead to some real messes if they don't approve of what they thought you were hinting.

This constant looking for subtexts gets really old and I wish there was a way to train it out of society.

And yes, I fear I do it myself upon occasion. But more often my problem is being overly literal or fixed on "proper" (as opposed to common) usage of the language.

Miscommunication

Popular belief has it that miscommunication is almost always due to failure of one party to express themselves clearly.

In my experience, quite often it is due to the person receiving the communication reading things into it that are not there.

In a way, this is to be expected, as we can only interpret words in terms of our experience and expectations.

The real problem comes when we fail to ask "Did you really mean to say X" but reply with our [false] certainty that we have correctly interpreted things. And that they are not as we would desire.

And things are compounded when after the other party reacts in shock to our mistaken interpretation, we become upset with them for being upset at us.

Worst of all when repeated "That is not what I said" or "I specifically that that was not the case" results in the other party repeating the same mistaken interpretation.

Some of this can be due to people imputing motives to the other party. Or assuming that they are deliberately trying to talk around something. Some can be attributed to people having triggers that they react to badly, and anything that looks like an attempt to go into that territory is assumed to in fact be an attempt to push that button.

Often, it can go on on both sides of an interchange.

Alas, nothing short of a disinterested third party willing and able to force both parties to listen to each other's statement of "when I said that I intended this" or even the "moderator's" statements of. "I'm sorry but that word does not mean that, regardless of the fact that you are used to people misusing it that way" will deal with many such situations.

Politically incorrect humor

72 Virgins Awaiting Martyrs in Heaven