lemm.ee

52 points

4 months ago

I’m male, and bi. I’m about equally bad at picking up on hints from men and women, but it seems more common with men to just flat out state what they want, either immediately, or after I miss their clue, which I’d presume to be cultural.

I’m bad with social clues in general, so I dunno if it’s a male-thing, or a me-thing.

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livus@kbin.social

10 points

4 months ago

@VeganCheesecake It’s a bit of both. I think the relevant concept here is Ask Culture versus Guess Culture.

I’m not sure if @FatTony is talking about romantic hints or all hints, but I think in many cultures women are socialised to be little a bit more Guess Culture than men, even if it doesn’t come naturally. The same goes for LGBTQ+ in cultures that are repressive. And of course some nationalities tend towards one or the other.

As someone whose natural state is very Ask, I found this concept really helpful. Sometimes I straight out ask the Guess people if they are hinting to me.

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3 points

4 months ago

That’s a fun way to put this into concept!

The funny thing is, despite often being bad at ascertaining what is being hinted at, I have very much been raised in a ‘guess’ culture, a family that found itself to be very high-brow and fancy, which lasted until the companies went bust, and the debt caught up to them.

Anyway, that leads to me, while having lots of problem with reading ‘guess’ people (unless they grew up in similar circumstances, that usually helps), also apparently being pretty hard to read for many conversation partners.

In the end, I found that jumping over my shadow and just spelling out what I’m trying to say, ask, or think I’m being asked, usually resolves things.

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livus@kbin.social

4 points

4 months ago

@VeganCheesecake yeah I was raised in a mostly ‘guess’ family as well! They think I’m oafish.

You’re right it does cut both ways. My ‘guess’ ex thought I was super hard to read because they couldn’t grasp that I literally meant exactly what I said not some extra hidden meaning.

These days I’m with another ‘ask’ person so the only stress like that is figuring out what our mothers are trying to get at.

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3 points

4 months ago

My mother’s actually pretty approachable in that regard, she’s a surgeon from a mostly working class family that married in. Anyone else can be pretty difficult though. Especially the part of the family that didn’t crash and burn financially, though they life on the other side of the country, luckily.

I’m usually a bit taken aback when I meet a ‘guess’ person that gets legitimately offended when being asked stuff directly, because pretty much everyone in my circle is pretty chill.

I guess everyone is living in their own world, in the end.

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livus@kbin.social

4 points

4 months ago

That’s interesting how it’s linked to social class so clearly in your family!

Come to think of it, the guessiest guesser in my life is from an industrial factory-labourer workingclass background, but different country. They experience direct requests as confrontations, so they are very easy to inadvertently hurt. It used to exasperate me, until I read the above concept.

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2 points

4 months ago

Yeah, kinda curious, might also be one families customs vs the others, though. Might also be a family that became wealthy at the turn of the last century, and then got stuck in the way they thought they where expected to act, enforced via ‘traditions’ taught. Dunno, really.

The guessiest person I ever met was actually the mother of my last partner. She was, on the one hand, usually offended by direct requests, while also very much assuming and extrapolating things from anything indirect one said, to the point where she often became incredibly offended by things no one said, but that she heard. It was exhausting, to a degree, and my first instinct was that she was looking for things to be offended about, either consciously or subconsciously, but I also feel that I can’t really judge someone for the way they perceive the world.

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