Trying not to hurt people's feelings

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I've occasionally worried that I might accidentally say or do something to hurt the feelings of someone I respect, or want to respect. I think that this worry is intensified by the length I have gone to comfort people in their sorrows and serve their community. If I've built up trust, am I in more danger of hurting someone than I used to be?

I've studied a subject called sexual selection. This theory offers a biological account of why some people appear more attractive than others. What I want to do is find a way not to hurt anyone's feelings on the subject of physical attractiveness. I don't want to end up breaking any hearts by accident.

Does anyone know what I mean? I'm sitting here typing and feeling like I'm in this... what should I say? Is there any solution? ... Oh, now I'm ... wait, not anymore ... I just wish I could feel nicer around people. Maybe a sense of comfort in talking to people I find 'less attractive' would be nice. Because, as my avatar shows, their feelings matter to me (along with everyone else's).

I don't know what else to say anymore. I tried.

By the way, if anyone wants to read my new essay, Christianity as a Tool of Oppression Against the Romantically Unsuccessful, it's finished.

I, unlike you, admittedly note that I don't care much about others feelings (and don't necessarily care if they get hurt by that) as much as many people, partly because of my lack of empathy and partly because that's simply who I am. However, the easiest thing to do is think before you speak; whenever you find yourself in a place by which someone delicate could be hurt, speak mroe slowly, and before you say something, ask (yourself) whether or not it could hurt them. I do not reccommend thinking whether or not it would hurt you; aspies, ore those with other ASD's, oftentimes can appear "robotic" or "emotionless" to others (I myself have been called robotic for the way I speak, but this is irrelevant), so words we take no mind to may offend others.
This, however, is much easier said than done. You may want to simply practice on an inanimate object, or talk to a neurotypical about what hurts their feelings.
By the way, I may read your article sometime.

That is what I hope to find in my future love partner.

You want someone who doesn't care if they hurt your feelings all the time? OKAYYY.

!OVER-GENERALIZING STEREOTYPE ALERT!

Fickle_Pickle, aren't you the one who's always posting on WP about all the crap people give you and you wish you could stop caring? Looks like you'll have your pick of future love partners then. Seriously though, it's not that you should stop caring, instead you need to stand up for yourself and realize that it's wrong for people to give you that crap in the first place. You need to take control of your own situation.

... anyway, to MikeH106, there really isn't an easy answer to your question. We can always bend over backwards to make sure we don't upset anybody, but there will be some people who will get upset no matter what you do. The way I see it, the more effort you put into it, the more people you won't upset, but at a certain point you'll get diminishing returns, and it may not be worth it to you to invest more time and effort into it beyond that point. That threshold varies from person to person, so it would be up to you to decide how much energy you want to invest in it, and what you're willing to live with. As for your trust question, I think that when you build trust, people who trust you have a higher expectation of you, and perhaps in that respect you become in more danger of hurting a person. If they trust you, they drop their defenses around you because they think you won't hurt them. Thus anything damaging could hurt them even more than if they had their defenses up. On the flip side, with their defenses down you have the opportunity to help them in such a way that you never could, had you not earned their trust to facilitate that. So it's all a bit of high risk, high reward. If you never earn their trust, sure you won't have the potential to hurt them as much, but you also lose the potential to help them.

Too late. My self-esteem is hitting low levels. And no, I don't have my pick, for one, it's always my FAMILY giving me crap (and they try to pin it on ME, that I'M giving them crap they don't need), I wish I could just stop caring about their opinion and be more independent, but it just isn't in me also, three guys are after me, and two of them are too caring, and one is completely oblivious and has no idea what he's talking about. But I find all three of them too caring for my taste, so I should just start a relationship with a stuffed toy.

Last edited by Fickle_Pickle on 14 Jul 2009, 12:02 am, edited 2 times in total.

MikeH106,

I half-read, half-skimmed through your essay "Christianity as a Tool of Oppression Against the Romantically Unsuccessful" and you raise a number of important issues.

1. At several points you allude to the fact that the oppression of the Christian servant is not limited to romance, but also to other socioeconomic issues like class, poverty, etc.. I think this is a really important aspect of the essay as it provides a broader scope of how Christianity can be used to make people accept what they otherwise wouldn't accept. Christianity provides a justification for self-sacrifice, almost like a carrot-on-a-stick. Whether the servant actually receives the reward in the end is of great debate.

2. You also allude to potential abuses of the Christian religion by those in power, the "haves" vs. the "have-nots". The question I have is whether the Christian religion was not originally designed to include this power structure, but was co-opted later by those in power, or whether the religion had always been intended right from the start to keep a certain population (the servants) down.

3. The vagueness of the Bible results in great debate over its interpretation. I am inclined to favor logical interpretations of things, so the vagueness makes me very skeptical of any conclusions people (not including you ) make from the Bible... servants can see the Bible in a totally different way from how the enjoyers see it.

Your essay is a very good reflection of how you feel Christianity fits in human society, and touches on a lot of the negative aspects that the religion can have. However I wonder if there is a way to address any redeeming qualities that you think Christianity might provide? Sure, the cons could outweigh the pros so I'm not trying to change your view of Christianity overall. I think that you allude to the fact that Christianity can provide a perhaps false hope to the servants, but the question I'd like to raise for further consideration is "Why do some people think that false hope is better than no hope at all?" and also "Before Christianity, how would people have dealt with similar issues of despair, etc. ?"

One thing that you might find helpful is by also taking a look at a non-Abrahamic religion/belief system, e.g. Buddhism, Taoism, that way you may start to see a pattern emerge that permeates all of these systems. Then one may get a sense of the overall picture of what religion's role in different societies is, why people feel a need to have religion in their lives, what the alternatives to religion would be, and what the merits/demerits of these possibilities are.

I kinda know how that feels. Since my sentence structuring is just AWFUL, I often tend to say things that ALWAYS get mistaken for something else (a thing I've come to despise with a passion), and by sentence structuring I mean finding the right words to explain something, even when I don't mean it as something bad. Sometimes I wish I stopped talking.

When I see someone whose feelings I really want to regard as important, the possibility of saying or doing something hurtful, especially about his/her appearance or manners, disturbs me. I hope that as time goes on I can learn to be more tolerant, at least on the level of having good intentions and expressing them well.

From my experience there is always a person that will at least disagree with what you do in life. I just try to avoid thos people.

My rule for avoiding hurting people's feelings is simply to not say anything too harsh about their personal appearance, friends, girlfriend/boyfriend/partner, and family. Every time I (hopefully) catch myself about to say something like "Your boyfriend is dull, what the hell do you see in him?" or "I really think your fake tan makes you look ten years older", I chain up the words and prevent them from leaving my mouth.