I guess she was calling for help, so the strategy of postponing wasn't that bad even in retroperspective?
Or do you mean you called her becouse you kinda knew you were mad and wanted her to also say it?
Or do you mean you called her becouse you kinda knew you were mad and wanted her to also say it?
So it didn't postpone anything, maybe if she had given a realistic ETA (or just said "I'm coming, wait for me") it would have worked though.
It's very difficult to know what to do in these situations though, I've been on the side of that girlfriend and you just can't have a full understand of what's going on in the head of the other person, everything is just walking on eggs, except the eggs are actually landmines.
The problem here in my opinion is rather that most people are used to lie, manipulate and betray (in society this behaviour is actually euphemized via the term "white lies"). In this particular case, such a behaviour does have consequences. See the example of this thread where the girlfriend claims she will be there in 15 minutes, despite being 100 km away.
Since most people are not used to being honest (or, I assume, actually never were), they give similar descriptions of their difficulties when their lies do have consequences like your "everything is just walking on eggs, except the eggs are actually landmines".
Being 100% honest and not hiding anything doesn't work either, so it's a constant balancing act between telling them the truth, reassuring them and sometimes indeed shielding from the harsh truth by avoiding from mentioning something, which I do believe is different from lying. Lying is out of question though and I think the people who resort to that do it out of laziness more than anything, or maybe well-intentioned wishful thinking in the case of the aforementioned girlfriend. But this is always harmful, not just with psychotic persons.
This statement exactly proves my point concerning how dishonest and betraying most people are.
To take a concrete example, consider the classic white lie "no, that dress doesn't make you look fat". It is possible that this could cause someone to wear an ugly dress, but the person probably looked at themselves in the mirror too, so they probably will end up choosing a dress that doesn't look awful. In this case there is no negative consequence associated with the white lie unless person wearing the dress is unable to accurately self assess. (which is something the speaker hopefully would know about the dress wearer)
You could define being lied to as a violation of your trust. In particular, I think autistic people often can't pick up on social cues, and so rely more on people speaking the truth to them. However, that doesn't mean white lies are betrayal for everyone. If you in particular feel like white lies are betrayal, you might want to tell people in your life that so they know it's important to you. They won't automatically know and it isn't automatically important to them.
Which white lies do.
I can understand where GP is coming from. A lot of my professional career even exists because someone has to cut through the massive layer of bullshit and distortion people generate in an org to be able to make substantive statements about what is the truth, born out by quantitative data and observation.
After a while in the field, you really start to lose your appreciation for other people walking around "sparing" one another from the Truth.
Back to the dress example. Let's say the dress wearer is my girlfriend, and I have been asked the question "does this dress make me look fat?". Let's also assume I do think this particular dress makes her look fat, but generally find her attractive, and know that she has body image issues. If I answer "yes", or even "that dress isn't particularly flattering on you", she might interpret that as "He thinks the dress makes me look fat" -> "I am fat" -> "I am ugly", which is not actually what I think and not what I want her to think of herself. Even if I try to reassure her that I don't think she's ugly, she might think that my reassurance is a lie. People with insecurities don't always think logically about them. I think "You look beautiful" would probably be the most ideal response, (in that is both true and doesn't cause her to spiral) but if I didn't have time to think about my response, "No, it doesn't make you look fat" feels like a better response than something else which would cause her to spiral.
If I feel the need to actually help her choose the right dress, I can back that up by pointing out exactly how some other dress that looks better on her actually looks good.
Of course, if I feel like she could take it well, then pointing out exactly how the bad dress is bad might be helpful to her. However, I feel like keeping her from spiraling is more important then informing her of every detail of my taste in dresses.
Obviously, I made this scenario very concrete, but I feel like you can't really decide if it is a good idea without that very concrete knowledge. Which is one reason why white lies might be a bad idea in professional settings, where you don't necessarily know how people will respond to things in the first place. (Because you might not know them well)
And you're right. It'll feel like the better response; because all of our social circuitry heuristics honed over our lives by a biological imperative to minimize energy expenditure will happily present that as a quick, harmony preserving fix. However, in that case, are you not doing an injustice to your partner with self-image issues by A) bearing false witness to your true feelings on the matter (dress does not fo you any favors, darling) and B) not addressing the pathological denigratory self-image with active confrontation and refutation of the validity thereof, with an accurate accounting of your own reasoning?
Example: I've had that question asked of me while my partnner and I were trying to shopping for wear to attend a wedding in. My partner loves blue. Like BSOD blue. Cobalt electric blue. She was drawn to a dress in that color. She had a friend along that was already giving the customary platitudes, but asked me my thoughts on it. That color, unfortunately, in my eyes, does not love her back. Her skin/complexion tends toward the rosey and warm; a combo which strongly clashes with and fights with said the coolness of the blue, and which would tend to cause the eye to pick out the paler aspects of her instead of accentuating the her livelier parts. The cut, and just how it laid on her body didn't complement her. It hid her best parts, and accentuated the parts I knew she was ultimately more self-conscious about because there wasn't a damn thing to do about them, and the baggage that came with it. The strong blue just visually overwhelmed the visual experience to the point where all you saw was the dress, and how it dominated the image of her; not the person wearing it, with their actions and body being accentuated and emphasized by the dress. I told her if that was what she really wanted, and if it made her feel good, then what does it matter? However, I thought she'd look better either in a purple, or perhaps more importantly a dress of a different cut. One that instead of looking like a wrapper, would actually lay on her body in a way that would naturally draw the eye to her, and what she was doing.
End result? She kept looking. She ended up picking out a pattern and cut that she felt was more befitting for her role/relation to the two getting married (deep or high saturation colors are apparently reserved for the bridesmaids per her thoughts on the subject, and something a bit more matronly made her feel more comfortable at the event). She also picked up a dress I thought really made her look gorgeous, and I adore seeing her looking regal af in, and wouldn't be out of place at about any event.
I acknowledged, and reaffirmed that ultimately, the most important thing was how she felt. I also provided a truthful evaluation about the answer to the question, giving her more insight about how I see things,the things I look at, and the affect they have on me; and as it turned out, she's gotten way more use out of the dress she ultimately picked than she'd ever have been comfortable getting out of the blue one. So by taking the path of truth, I opened a door to a novel experience for her, and she says she's happier for having done so.
Not to mention, you're kind of doing yourself an injustice by not really valuing your own feelings on the matter. I'm not saying that it's okay to tell someone the dress looks them look like they're wearing a trash bag; but it's absolutely okay to express your feelings on something in that type of circumstance, even if your rational side tells you that maybe you should be silent. The only way to help someone through the healing process is to acknowledge there is something there, and to be supportive and truthful. Placing care about everyone else above your own care for yourself is as sure a recipe for a bad time as any. One can't wholely and truly give for others what one does not yet possess for themselves have.
It may not necessarily win one many invites to fancy parties, but I've found that getting into the habit of twisting things makes the process of growth, healing, or recovery so ruinously complicated as to present an overall harm in comparison to the brief cauterizing application of truthful, sincere communication. See the cleverest code as compared to the most straightforward as applied to social dynamics. Many of the same principles transfer.
Getting back to the example. If there is some combination of not being close enough, (in the example, lets say just started dating) and insecurities running too high, then they won't necessarily trust your reasoning. They might just feel like you are attacking them, or that you are trying to cover for not reacting fast enough. The end result is that they now feel ugly and like their date hates them. This won't make their body image issues any better.
While I've not dated anyone with that level of insecurity, I've been friends with a some, though none of them had body image issues specifically. In my experience they have to both trust you quite a bit, and also be ready to confront their own insecurities. I've tried to speak my mind clearly to one friend who evidently weren't ready to process their insecurities, and in the end it just seemed to make them feel bad and also hurt our friendship. They seemed to feel like I was attacking them and making excuses in a manner similar to what I talked about in the example. I've had some level of success with another friend, but they had actually expressed self-awareness and a desire to change. My current policy is to keep away from people's insecurities unless they express a desire to change or ask me to be brutally honest.
I could choose to only let people into my life that don't need me to route around their insecurities. However, I do want to be available to people who need emotional support, which means occasionally placing myself in a position where I need to be careful with people. My actual weapon of choice here is to re-frame the situation, because I'm pretty terrible at lying convincingly and also don't enjoy doing it. An example of a re-frame is the "you look beautiful" in my first post. However, re-frames are also a stop-gap measure as other people won't do such re-frames on their own. What I am doing is not technically deception, but I don't feel like the sort of deception that white lies are composed of has significantly worse side effects. They are both just a way to push the issue down the road. Furthermore, coming up with re-frames is a moderately difficult skill that I have specifically cultivated, and I think white lies are easier to do "untrained". Thus, if someone is put on the spot, I'd prefer if they didn't write off white lies just because they fit the definition of lie.
As far as your comments on doing myself dirty. Guilty as charged, I certainly have work to do on that front.
I'm pretty curious about what you think white lies do in a social dynamic though. I'd appreciate it if you could elaborate.
EDIT: My post is literally your GP, but based on your stance earlier in this thread, I think you were talking about aleph_minus_one's post I was responding to. In which case I think our opinions are similar?
In terms of the social dynamic I agree with you, the "white lies" serve as a way to be considerate of the other person. And it's not just "lies" about them either, if someone is in a hurry or in some casual context and asks how I am and I've had a shitty day, I might say "I'm fine" to avoid them feeling the need to talk through my problems with me. If someone asks at dinner and I spent the morning having explosive diarrhea, I don't share that either. That is a classic white lie but to see that as a betrayal strikes me as extremely bizarre.
In the particular example, the girlfriend did lie to him by telling him she'll be there in 15 minutes despite being 100 km away. This exactly lead to the strange chain of thoughts.
You mean lying by omission? A.k.a. not speaking the quiet part? It's still received and noted by the other person you know. Likely by the part of the psyche they haven't got consciously integrated, or are experiencing a connectivity problem with.
Remember, that part of them is still a very big chunk of human neural processor. It isn't stupid. It's also not terribly capable of straightforwardly communicating. What it is scarily good at is navigating the external world, which includes seeing the void of what one doesn't say. If it's already running amok, pouring more fuel in the form of duplicity on the fire is probably not the greatest idea.
But she lied to you - and this lead to your dangerous chain of thoughts.
It wasn't especially anxiety inducing for the most part and was quite fun, but I feel as if I just got lucky and that in a slightly different circumstance I could just have convinced myself that my apartment window was in fact the front door and fall out of it.
It didn't postpone anything. I called her because I knew I'm going mad and wanted to confirm if it's true or not. Of course I didn't word it this way, though. What she said confirmed the delusion, nearly got me killed and even though I didn't jump, I got lost in the city, hurt myself, nearly hurt others, until someone called the police few hours later.
It is really hard for me to relate to, the feeling of believing I am Piccard.
Like do you want logical reasoning?
'I am Gandalf'
'So where is your beard?'
Or just reassurence?
'I am Gandalf'
'No you are not'
In my case, it went like this: Whoa, my crew is telepathically beaming me instructions and we are right in the middle of a mission. Where the fuck am I? Crew, give me my command protocols. Oh, I command a starship? Sure, sorry, the heat around here, I might be hit with something, I don't remember, help me! Oh, you're going to transport me? Sure, go ahead, let me just run away from this commando waiting on the hallway using the only other exit - the window... Now it makes sense that I'm a starship captain, why would a commando be waiting there otherwise...
(Your mileage may vary)