Sunday ramble: ethnicity, directness, and people skills

A week or two ago, I was (surprise!) complaining about children. Actually, I was--we all were--complaining about tourists. Specifically, those who stand on the left. My coworkers were saying (though this could have been any and every conversation anywhere and everwhere in DC) that the Metro needs to put up signs, like the Underground in London does, telling people to stand right/walk left. I said I'd read that Metro won't do that because they don't want to formally encourage people to walk on the escalators, out of safety/liability concerns (even though everyone does it anyway). I added, "is there not a safety concern about my fist coming down on a small child's head?" A coworker, who knows the former Soviet Union well, said, "that's the Russian in you coming out."

True enough. Russians don't beat their children any more than anyone else does (and my coworkers know that I wouldn't actually hurt a child), but they certainly don't coddle them in some ways that Americans do. They'd teach them to get out of the way on the Metro, because they know that no one will be making way for them.

[Note a propos of nothing: an elderly or pregnant person standing is a sight unseen on public transportation in Russia; it's a sight I experience nearly daily on Metro.]

This is all a very round-about way of rambling (again) about communication and relationship styles. You see, perhaps I overattribute certain attributes to my ethnicity (or other ethnicities), most commonly directness. My people don't do indirect communication. I don't do indirect communication, and I have a hard time interpreting it when others do it. Let me tell you why this has been on my mind.
Mom had a small meltdown when we talked last weekend, which was entirely within the realm of mom behavior to be expected, but it brought back memories of many similar mom-meltdowns from before when she was sick. They fit a similar pattern, and this one was almost a compressed version of those--both in onset and resolution. The pattern: mom asks me to do something; I usually ask her to help her help me in some way, but if it's just not feasible, I decline; at which point mom boils up in a fit of "I do so much for you and I just ask you for one thing and it's too much! How did I raise such an ingrate?"

Example of the former: mom asked me to write a lot of complaint letters (those days are well documented on this blog); I asked her to provide information for the complaint letter, and/or I asked her to provide it at another time (because, for example, shopping for wound bandages was not a good time--even though that was when I happened to pick up the phone--for me to undertand the issue or take notes on it). Complaint letters were rarely written to her satisfaction, for a variety of reasons. I'd offer to resolve mom's issue instantly with a phone call, but she really wanted a biting letter (that she couldn't write herself), and I'd eventually write a perfectly functional letter lacking in spite and sarcasm, because that's how it's done. Mom would be furious, would accuse me of laziness and indifference to her plight; she'd go on about how easy it would be for me to just write a letter (clearly not). None of this--none of my failures at writing the letters she hoped for--ever kept her from asking me again. And again.

More rarely, mom would ask me to do something that I refused to do, and the request itself would infuriate me (as much as my refusal would infuriate mom). When I was moving to DC--and overwhelmed, trying to get a gazillion things done, as I was quitting a job, moving, and starting grad school--mom, who was retired, demanded that I apply for an EZPass for her. Are you f*ing kidding me? Yes you gave birth to me, etc., but are you f*ing kidding me? Maybe as I try to stay afloat in my own paperwork, you could apply for your own EZPass? Mom did not take this well. Of course--and this is where I'm going with all this--had she asked differently, I might have responded differently. Had there been a polite, "at your convenience, when things settle down for you, could you please get me an EZPass," I probably would have done it without a second thought.

In case your wondering, the recent request was that I learn about day trading so I can manage my parents' retirement accounts. I pointed out that it would be better for everyone involved if they hired a professional to do that; not only did I lack the time, energy, skill and overall wherewithall, they'd just do better with a professional. Mom's response: "I thought so. Any given thing is too much to ask of you." She stormed out with a huff.

I've written before about askers and guessers, and noted that the articles I cite note that Eastern Europeans are incorrigible askers. That's only partly true (the more important point in the articles is that asking and guessing are context dependent). The other really important point is that the key rule about asking is, you take no for an answer; you don't proceed to wear down the askee.

The example I gave in the linked post concerned asking a friend if I could crash at her place after a play in her neighborhood, so I could have a shorter commute the following morning. I didn't have her guess (i.e., "I'll be seeing a play in your neighborhood, and I have an early start the next morning. [Pause, wait for her to offer.]). And had she declined, I wouldn't have pushed it or asked for a reason.

Just in the last month or so, I've asked for many things. I asked a friend to alter a few dresses for me. I asked a friend for a ride into work, so that I could bring in camping gear. I asked a friend if I could crash her apartment's roof deck for the 4th, as I had friends visiting who'd appreciate the view of the fireworks on the Mall. Friends have asked me, as well. A friend asked if I'd babysit. Another friend asked if she could store a box of stuff at my place. (No, I'm not keeping score; that's not the point). I'm glad these friends asked me, rather than hinting so that I might guess at what I could do for them. I'd have no idea what they were hinting at.

The key word here is "friend." Asking is context-dependent. The friend whom I asked to alter my dresses has expressed willingness to do so in the past. I don't take that willingness for granted; I appreciate it enormously. But I don't believe my friend would benefit in any way from my asking her less directly. Were she to say no, I wouldn't push it. If I weren't sure she'd feel safe saying no if she really wanted to, I wouldn't have asked. I might have engaged in 'guessing.'

Guessing--which is on the polite end of the passive-aggressive spectrum--is appropriate in some contexts, just like passive aggression is sometimes appropriate; we do it for a reason. We engage in passive aggression in an attempt to get our needs when we don't feel safe, and we all engage in Guessing (or the other side of the coin--hinting) when we don't want to impose upon somebody who may not feel safe saying 'no.'

The flip-side of that is that there's no room for passive aggression (or hinting/guessing) in healthy relationships. If you don't feel safe saying no to a request, it's a problem. In a romantic relationship, safe may be, "this person may not want to be with me if I say no." But then you're cheating the other person of the information (s)he needs to determine whether (s)he wants to stay in that relationship. If your partner says, "this thing is really important to me" and your response is, "too bad, I don't care," that's information. If your response is, "I don't want any part of that but I'm afraid to tell you because you might leave," you're only making things worse in the long run. If you're not communicating your needs because you're either waiting on your partner to figure them out or you want to sacrifice your own happiness for "peace," no one needs your martyrdom; everyone needs from you, information about your needs. [yes that was one long subtweet re:an ex. so what?]

This is where it occurs to me that, when I've written about this in the past, I've overrelied on ethnicity for explanatory power: I'm Russian, therefore I need people to state their needs explicitly. Yeah, maybe, but really I think stating one's needs explicitly is a prerequisite for a healthy relationship. I was thinking about my Russian parents: mom doesn't do passive aggression, but she sure as hell tries to manipulate, and explicitness is the enemy of manipulation. Manipulation feeds on innuendo and assumptions. When you try to pinpoint what the issue is, you call out the manipulator. I thought about this with regard to the Carolyn column I linked to the other day, about the mother-in-law who gets offended when her daugher-in-law doesn't react graciously to a behavior the daughter-in-law has asked her to cease doing. You know I've been through the same not only with mom, but with RM and BE. I'm almost grateful for each, because it made it easier to address the others.

I won't rehash those experiences now; they don't matter except for what we (I) have learned from them: communication style is ethnicity-influenced and relationship-specific, but a healthy relationship depends on a mutually acceptable communication style.