Miss Me?

[joreth]

Here's another question I really hate.  I know people mainly use it jokingly, but it feels way too much like fishing for a compliment.  Chances are, if you have to ask, then no, I didn't miss you, because if I did, I would have said so.

I have a real problem with obligation and being backed into a corner.  When someone online IMs me and asks "miss me?", I feel trapped.  There's no graceful way out of this question.  I could flirt, but most of the time, the people asking me this are not people I want to encourage.  I could be sarcastic and hurt their feelings.  I could lie, but every fiber in my being rebells at lying, even to internet strangers who find me through personals and take so long to contact me again that I have forgotten who they are by the time they come back asking me this question.  I also don't want to lie to friends who just stepped away from a conversation for a few minutes and I didn't have *time* to miss them.  I could tell the truth, but that is either hurtful (no, I didn't miss you) or makes me feel like a schmuck who has to be prompted for honest emotional affection because it didn't occur to me to tell someone I missed that I missed him.

I've sent smiley faces and changed the subject, I've lol'd, I've given non-comittal answers, but every once in a while, like today, someone presses me for an answer.  The first time he asked, I sent a smiley and asked how he's been (I have no idea who this person is, but he's in my Yahoo buddy list under the heading "OKCupid", so I must have talked to him before and not hated him enough to hide my Yahoo name).  He answered how he was, then asked "so, no missing me, huh?" so I lol'd him.  He asked a third time "that a no?".  So I finally answered honesty.

"That's not a no, that's tactfully trying to avoid answering a question I find annoying".

I refuse to say "I love you too" when someone says they love me, I refuse to say "thank you" when someone says "bless you" after I sneeze.  I refuse to respond automatically with a compliment when someone is clearly fishing for one.  These things make me feel awkward.  If I mean the response, then I feel awkward for not having said it without being prompted.  If I don't mean the response, then I really feel awkward because they obviously want me to say something complimentary that I don't mean. 

I know "miss me" is usually a joke, but it's a trap no matter their actual intentions.

Comments

[leora.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't say thank you after someone says bless you because I am not thankful, but it's not the same sort of prompt since you can't thank someone for something they didn't do. I usually say gesundhteit (which I can't spell) because most people accept it as an appropriate thing to say to a sneeze and it actually means "health" (with the implication of wishing someone good health just like you might wish someone luck and the asumption is that you mean good luck and not bad luck), which I am much more comfortable doing than dipping into religious language. I sometimes say "salud" just because it means the same thing in Spanish and I like some variety, plus that way if they keep sneezing I can try to use the tradition of wishing them a different thing on each sneeze, unfortunately this doesn't work well if they keep sneezing too much as my Spanish vocabulary is very limited. But it's great for two sneezes as I can wish them health and money with no problems.

[joreth]

well, yes, much like I don't miss the people who ask if I miss them, I'm not thankful for someone "blessing" me after I sneeze.

I find that whole affair perplexing. I know the history, the legend that a sneeze supposedly lets in evil demons, sneezes out your soul, or was a symptom of the plague, so you bless someone to prevent that. But in this day and age? Why do we bother with this expression anymore? Why reserve your good wishes for a sneeze and not a cough? It's too arbitrary and the religious connotations irritate me and it's automatic on both sides - the well-wisher and the receiver. At least I don't lecture the blessers, I just ignore it and, if I can't, I smile. I'm more likely to smile at a "salud" or "gesundheit", since those people tend to consciously remove the religious connotation and also aware of what they are saying and it's less of an auto-response which loses its original meaning.

I don't say "I love you too" because, even if I do mean it, I don't want it to become automatic. I want to *mean* it every single time I say it, so I intentionally *don't* say it sometimes just to remind myself that it's a meaningful statement and to not let it become habit.

I do, however, say "I love you too" in response to my parents and sister, because that's a philosophical argument that I just won't win. If I admit to my family that I'm trying to prevent it from becoming habit, they won't understand why I wouldn't want it to be habit and does that mean that I don't love them? I won't be able to explain that it's not that I stop loving, it's that the expression loses meaning when it's habit. And, I don't talk to them often enough to make this debate worth having :-)

But thanking a blessing is something I find I can ignore without comment.

[leora.livejournal.com]

I'm actually really glad I have gotten a lot of my family to accept, "be well" as a parting phrase rather than "I love you". It makes me a lot more comfortable, and I can say it with more sincerity regardless of what conversation we just had or how I'm feeling.

I don't generally mind saying, "I love you too" to someone I clearly love, but I would mind if I felt it were required. I don't want to be forced to express my affection. And when I say, "I love you" I am not looking for someone to validate their love for me. If they always say "I love you too" I may worry that they feel that they are forced into it by my desire to express my love for them, and I don't want that. I want it to be voluntary and meaningful from them.

I don't think people tend to ask me if I've missed them. Although I pretty much never respond to journal posts where people ask people to comment or say nice things about them, because whenever I am pushed to do something I find it much more draining to do it. I will sometimes, if I feel there are very reasonable circumstances, but not just a general post asking for positive feedback. For example, I might do so if someone were talking about struggling with depression and having unbalanced views of themselves and wanted people to help them view themself more honestly... then I might state positive things I truly believed, but then it'd be a focus on seeking truth, so I could deal with that better, rather than just a desire for people to say nice things to them.

I'm not sure why I'm so opposed to just being nice to people when they request it. There's an extent to which I support the idea of just asking for what you want and not having to play games to get it. But there's something about a large en masse appeal for compliments that doesn't work well for me.

[joreth]

Yes, that's pretty much how I feel about it too. It's not that I mind saying "I love you too", it's that I don't like to be expected to respond that way and I don't expect anyone to say it back to me when I do say it. It's tied into that hatred of obligation that I have, like with gift-giving. It loses its meaning when it's obligation.

I think I developed this hatred of obligation with respect to auto-responses in the Catholic church. How could anyone mean all those protestations of love when they sounded like robotic drones and had to say these phrases at scripted points in the service every week? Surely some of those utterances were said while the mind was on something else? I know mine was! And if so, the saying of the phrase becomes meaningless when it's an auto-response. I can program my email to auto-response, I certainly don't want someone professing his love for me in the same manner!

Things like with compliments, if someone I cared about told me that it was very meaningful for me to give them compliments and they need to hear it more often for their self-esteem or just as a gesture of love, could I please make an effort to increase the amount of valid, truthful compliments, I might be more inclined to do so, because they would all be genuine. Sort of in the manner that I might try to perform an act of service or not be so cranky in the mornings or attempt to just listen without trying to solve the problem when someone just wants to vent, because I want to show someone that I care and these are the ways that are most meaningful to them, perhaps in the way I might ask someone to do the dishes more often, or just please let me carry my own bag, or come dancing with me, because this is what means something *to me*.

But merely prompting me to pay them a compliment *right now, this minute, and it should be this kind of compliment*, like the "miss me?" question really pushes my obligation buttons. It doesn't happen very often, but when it does, it's particularly irksome.

One of the truck drivers at work yesterday was hitting on me all day as I delivered freight to his truck. He filled his truck and had to come back 3 times in one day. On the 2nd or 3rd time, he asked me if I missed him. 1) No, I don't know you well enough to like you well enough to miss you. 2) No, I was too busy doing my job to miss anyone. 3) You weren't gone long enough for me to miss you even if there wasn't a 1 or a 2. Then I got the conversation above earlier today from someone online.

::headdesk::

[joreth]

Yeah, one of my metamours, years ago, mentioned needing a manual of herself to hand out to prospective partners. When I started writing this journal, I wasn't originally writing such personal pieces, but over time it became a convenient way to keep track of those issues that are personal and important to me that a new partner could just look up and see what I've already written on the subject.

Unfortunately, my two current partners do not regularly read my journal and I don't think they know to follow the tag links on the left side to intentionally pick out those topics that are of interest to them.