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Comment by pinkrooftop | Hacker News Reader

but you're the common denominator so its their fault, ok right

Yeah, I consider the above behavior as being pro-active. He/she didn't allege this issue to be the case in every relationship, nor -- as the other comment correctly suggests -- anyone's fault.

It's human to use our register of past experiences to foresee problems in the future. I'd rather put out a warning than waste time with someone who later hits the eject button based on something that was evident from the jump. In relationships of any sort, really, including business, it's reasonable to say "hey, just so there aren't any misunderstandings down the road, let's be clear on x,y,and z; otherwise, we're wasting our time and this probably isn't going to work."

Astute observation that he was the common denominator -- as opposed to his experiences being based on a history of relationships that didn't involve him. I guess anytime a person has multiple bad experiences, it must be their fault, right? (I have family members that think that way. I no longer visit them during the holidays.)

Well, you can't say it MUST be their fault, but certainly if the same thing keeps happening over and over, they might want to do a little self assessment and see if anything they're doing could be the cause of the issues.

I don't see anywhere the OP assigns blame to anyone.

>I wonder if it was actually that my ex-partners were incapable of understanding how someone unlike them would react to different situations. I was usually able to predict their reactions, but maybe it was only a one way street

Perhaps you should ponder the meaning of "I wonder if" and contrast with your attempt to interpret this statement as an unequivocal assignment of blame.

Fair to speculate that the other person was the problem. They didn't say it was a certain thing. Some people have blind spots that prevent them from realizing that their actions may not fly with the other person. I can't speak to how objective this poster's self-evaluation was, but I guess they felt they were better able to predict the reactions of the other person, and accordingly, were better able to avoid doing things to irritate others.

To be fair, I do see how you could misinterpret this as blaming the other person; but an alternate take is that the person is brainstorming, after reading the article, that the other person was simply less adept at predicting behavior.

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