On being misunderstood

It happened to me a couple of days ago, when someone misinterpreted my attempts to offer her help and advice, took it totally the wrong way and decided that I was against her.

But it's not just me. I see it happening to people online so often, I seem to spend half my time trying to clarify things, saying "no, that's not what he's saying, he's saying......". Once in a while there is a moment of satisfaction, when someone says, Oh, I see... (But of course, once in a while, it's me who gets the wrong end of the stick, and it's my turn to say, Oh, I see...)

Obviously online communication is more open to misunderstandings because of the lack of all that extra information we normally rely on to help us interpret what someone means in a face to face conversation - things like facial expressions, tone of voice, body language. And in some discussions online there is the extra factor of communicating with people we don't know, plus possible cultural differences, plus some language barriers - so there is a lot that can get in the way of understanding one another. And then of course there is an element of distraction by all the multitasking that goes on - we hop from one conversation to another so easily, I've sometimes seen people post a reply on completely the wrong thread.

And then there is the fact that even when not online, even when talking to someone face to face, there are still plenty of misunderstandings between people. Partly this is because we are generally not so good at listening - I mean really listening, really paying attention to what the other person is saying, not thinking about what you're going to say as soon as they pause to catch their breath, not wondering how to fix their problems or how to win the argument, not jumping to conclusions about what they are going to say...

And so often we come into a conversation with expectations - he's bound to say X, people always say Y... Our insecurities come into it - if you're insecure about being overweight, for example, then someone at a party asking if you want more cake could sound to you like they're making fun of you. If we expect people to mock us, we are very likely to hear that in whatever they say. If we expect people to disagree with us, we're very likely to hear disagreement in whatever they say.

Our prejudices also come into this equation - and, like it or not, we all have some prejudices. We might not be racists, but deep down we all have some assumptions about people - it could be what you think about men or about women, what you think about people who dress a certain way, people who smoke, people who don't smoke, people who live in a certain town, people who work in a certain occupation (traffic wardens?) - the list is endless. (Oh, and I haven't even touched on the thorny issue of accents!)

Prejudice means we assume certain things about a person, not based on facts but based on some general idea we have about "such people". Prejudice isn't always negative, by the way - I've had people tell me upon hearing I'm Jewish how they admire our warm family life...

If we think we know what "such people" are like, then we won't be listening to them properly, because we think we know what they're going to say. We think we know what they think.

Listening properly is a rare commodity in our age of busy rushing around and multitasking. Have you had the experience of being listened to really really well? If you have, then you know how valuable it is. So try and offer it to others too - whether it's online or out there in everyday life. Being misunderstood is painful. Let's try and be the ones who do listen and do understand. Showing someone that you have heard what they said is one of the most precious gifts you can give them.

Could we make murder legal too?

This morning's paper has an article calling for the legalisation of prostitution. "We will never eradicate prostitution," says the quote on the front page, "so let's make it legal."

According to this logic, I expect all crimes to be made legal - after all, we're not going to eradicate any of them, are we?

By the way, as far as I understand the laws in the UK do not criminalise prostitutes, they treat as a crime certain actions on the part of their clients (e.g. kerb crawling) and the people who live off their earnings. Which is as it should be - women who sell their bodies are harming no one but themselves, so I see no point in punishing them for it.

This article also seems to suggest that there's nothing wrong with paying for sex, that it doesn't do anybody any harm.

That would be true if we were animals, and sex for us was merely a physical act that has no emotional consequences.