By social gray zones I mean any area of social contact where the ground rules are not clear; any social interaction where it is not clear to me how I should act and what I should do, and how others will react to that.
This is very interesting for a number of reasons, but the one I'd like to submit for your consideration is this -- EVERY social interaction is one where it is not clear how you should act and what you should do.
Over at mindblank's thread I was discussing with her the challenge she has in detaching; she says she hasn't mojo enough to do it. In fact, she's full of mojo, she just directs it all to her work.
But when you got to work -- when you pitch a possible venture capitalist on funding a start-up -- you're putting on your Game Face, your mask, your Persona. It's all as phony as hell, but you do it because you can control it. Because you don't know exactly what to expect, but you do know how people tend, on average, to react to Thinker Guy. So you "act" like Thinker Guy.
Then, when the pitch is over, you get in your car and fire up the ray-didio and maybe jam out with yer Fender Airocaster air guitar to a little Robin Trower. And if the people whom you'd just pitched saw that, they'd laugh out loud. But they don't. And so you don't need to be Thinker Guy anymore. Now you're someone else.
So why do we that? Put those masks on? I had my Sergeant Voice. I had my Company Commander Voice. Both me. Both, strictly speaking, Not Me.
We do that because it helps us negotiate social situations where the rules are undefined.
You walk into Big Box Hardware store. You're that guy. You go to Man Clothes Discount Retailer. You're some other guy.
All you have is a reasonable expectation, a probabilistic estimate, of what the rules will be. You don't know for sure.
So it's all about The Face. Putting it on, trying it on, raising it up the flagpole and seeing who salutes it. Sometimes you're right, and you refine; sometimes you're wrong, and you recalibrate.
Even in intensely familiar social situations the rules can be hazy. Wife is in a bad mood; Mom's back hurts; Joe the Mechanic lost his job. You don't know that going in -- you gauge and judge and react and reset in real time.
I think one of the challenges we LBS's face is that it's hard -- damned hard -- to redefine / reconceptualize such familiar ground as our Marriage as "just another" space.
