DailyJim: Feeling angry when people do or do not stop when we say no

Hello, everyone. Welcome to another Daily Gym. Today is Wednesday, July 24th, 2024. Oh, 24-24. I'm recording on the day. It's nice. Like one in the afternoon. Today, I want to talk about feeling angry when people do or do not stop when we say no.

Haha, so earlier today, someone was asking me for money to contribute to a campaign and I felt really bad about the thing that the campaign was on, is helping with children and such, but I didn't know this person very well and frankly I get asked for money very often, especially when I'm traveling through East Africa and I said no and then the person kept asking and I said no and then the person kept asking and I said no and I started to get more and more frustrated, annoyed, angry, whatever label you would put on it for me, wanting him to accept that I said no, and him continuing to ask. Now, I've also seen the, you know, I've also heard about this happening a lot out here, and I'm sure it happens in other parts of the world. But out here, it seems to happen a lot where somebody, you know, if you listen to my episode a couple weeks ago will ask hey just one more just one more beer just one more beer and i say no and they say but just one more come on you don't care about me and i say no it's not that i just want to go home ah but then they order the beer anyways.

So not stopping when I said no. But I've heard this happen in other contexts. A friend of mine once was on a phone call with one of their friends and only wanted to be on for about 30 minutes and stayed on for like two hours. Because the person, oh, no, don't go. We haven't talked in a long time. And then continues, ah, but don't go. Let's keep talking. And then two hours later, a lot of anger, maybe resentment, frustration, et cetera, towards the other person's behavior, but also towards our behavior and not actually stopping and ending it. Um, now, what I've also discovered is that I think sometimes we can feel angry, or rather other people can feel angry, when they say no, and the other person says, okay, and stops. Like, okay, I heard you, you said no, I'm done. Because I've had some weird dynamics where I'll say no to something, and then the person will later cuss me out, almost. Most i'm like why are they cussing me out they said this is what they wanted and i said okay i agreed to what they wanted i didn't push and then later they were like oh i'm like what, like one one person's like one girl was like um i you know i want to go home i said it's fine you can go home and then they go home and then later they tell me i can't believe you would let me go home at that time? I'm like, what are you? Huh? You said you wanted to go home. Am I supposed to say no, no, no, stay, stay, stay. And I think this happens a lot in some cultures. It's kind of the what is the example? It's when somebody asks if you want no more food. And the polite answer, the first answer is supposed to be no, because it's disrespectful to say yes first. And so you say no, and then they offer again, and you say no, and then maybe the third time you say yes. And I think this depends on the culture.

But I wonder how healthy that is. Why do we have to lie one or two times? Or is it not lying one or two times? Is it really just to try to gauge if the person is interested? To gauge how much the person cares? People have told me this. They say, if someone says, you know, if you ask to do something, like if you want to kiss somebody and they say no, and then you say, okay, then they might think, maybe here, oh, you don't really care about me. It's like, what? Because if you really cared, you would have been like, no, come on, please. Like start to like really kind of ask again and again. And I'm thinking, really?

So another example. I saw a meme online the other day, a friend posted, where it was like a girl lying in bed. And I think she blocked the guy. And then the guy later reached out and says, you know, something like, oh, the happiness you have when you block somebody and they decide to reach out to you through email. Like, what? Or they find another way to reach out to you. And I'm thinking, but maybe, because sometimes when you block someone and they reach out to you, doesn't that also annoy? Because they didn't stop. You said stop, and then they kind of went around and did it anyways. So do we get more annoyed if somebody stops when we tell them to stop? Or do we get annoyed when they don't stop?

It can get really tricky. And I think this can get into really deep conversation about how do we interact with each other and do we listen to each other's words? Do we trust and respect and obey the words more? Or kind of the emotion that we're feeling, the body language, the verb, the intonation and things like this. I don't know. Do you want people to listen to your words or do you want people to listen to what you meant?

Sometimes the words aren't the same as what you meant. If you call somebody an asshole and they're like, well, you called me an asshole, so I'm not going to talk with you. And they go, no, but I didn't mean it. But should I listen to your words or should I listen to what you intended to mean? It's tricky because if I listen to what you intended to mean, then you might get pissed off that I didn't listen to your words. But if I listen to your words, you might get pissed off I didn't listen to your intention.

It's a very tricky conversation. I try, I think, more and more to listen to people's words and respect the words, at least to obey in terms of their action, even if I believe that something else is actually happening.

So if they say, like, for example, this one time, a friend was overcooking, and I backed off. And they're like, why are you so far away? I said, well, you look angry. I'm not angry. I'm fine. I said, okay.

So I trusted that the person believed that, but I still backed up. So actually, I don't know. Was I listening to the words or listening to the emotions? I think I was probably listening to the emotions underneath.

And then later, ah, you're really empathetic, aren't you? I said, yep. Ah, I pissed off at something my ex did. Ah ha, voila. That makes sense.

This idea of how do we, what do we listen to? What do we obey? What do we trust the most? Is it the words or is it kind of the feelings underneath? I think we tend to trust the feelings underneath. But sometimes people want us to trust the words. Or I don't know. I want people to trust the words that I'm saying. I don't know. It's complex. It's really complex. But what I found is that often here, especially when it comes to interacting with women or interacting with people, if I say something, I want people to listen to it. If I say, no, I don't want this, I want them to go, okay, I heard you. Maybe if in the future you want this, please let me know because I'd really like to. And then I go, okay, I appreciate you listening to what I said and respecting that and then still telling me what you want. Uh but if i say no and somebody says ah but come on like this you know i haven't seen you in a long time and kind of all this guilt tripping and it's not intentional guilt tripping it's more of like they feel bad they like seeing me they want to hang out i'm not saying they're bad people for doing this um it's just i tend to get more and more annoyed when people persist too much after i've already said no um which i'm curious i'm really curious about people's experiences across different cultures because people who are listening to this are from many different places. If you hear this and you want to share a story or something that relates to your life or your experience please uh an idea now is to join the jim and friends forum and comment and share a story about maybe a time when you have said no to someone and then they did not stop and you were angry or a time you said no to someone and they stopped immediately and then you were angry that they didn't keep trying. So yeah, that'll be a new experiment for today. So if you want to try that, I would really appreciate just hearing other stories of people's experiences, and sharing with each other. Sounds good. All right, I will talk to you all tomorrow.