Keep Your Hands Offa My Mojo

[Kettricken]

Well, AK, there's the School of Mindreading, then again sometimes it's just a more garden-variety of communications breakdown, based perhaps as you suggest on assumptions about the broad applicability of a specific instance, or perhaps instead on a confusion about definitions, etc. What exactly did you mean by, "I think we (in general) approach these in very dramatic but broad form and are baffled that it doesn't translate into the more specific events, decisions, actions etc."?


Speaking for myself, beyond the whole "Just ask, dammit", I've also chosen to try to train myself out of my perfectionist tendencies (which I think are at the root of a lot of these questions of control). If you're (general you) that hung up on the minutiae of how it gets handled, do it yourself. But if you tell a man, "I trust you to handle it", then you've pretty much abdicated your rights to any post-mortem bitching about however he does handle it (within reason; not if he takes the mortgage payment and uses it to make a down payment on 1/23 of a used circus elephant). And naturally this applies to either gender. It's not mars/venus; it's basic common sense and fairness. For my money, anyway.

As far as that putative "testing" stuff goes, isn't that understood to be mostly unconscious on the woman's part? I don't see the relevance, anyhow. Statements along the lines of "you're worthless" etc aren't testing, they're just straight-ahead bitchy and destructive. If it was a man saying that stuff, no doubt the "abusive" card would be played early and often. For some behaviors, there is simply no excuse.