Having a Non Sexual Safe Word

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I have this email friend, she is lovely but sometimes doesn't understand that she needs to explain things to me sometimes. She says something confusing, I ask for clarity but she just goes on saying 'why are you asking?' 'why don't you understand?' 'that's funny' etc. So I get annoyed.

So I said to her 'look you know my brain works differently to yours. I think we should have a safe word. If I use it, it means I genuinely need a clear explanation from you because I don't understand what you wrote. You can use it too if you need to.' She is also not English so there are often misunderstandings.

So she was concerned about me and agreed. If either of us use this word, it means we genuinely don't understand and need a clear explanation of something, not teasing and making fun about it.

What do people think of this? I would only have a safe word with good friends and relatives, not every single person.

What does this safe word do?

If you use it, how would your friend or family act any differently?

Maybe not question you? But it seems like the questions are more a gut reaction than anything else. They may not know how to explain something because of the curse of knowledge.

In any event, it makes me think of a tool that's used in the table top role playing game community called the X-card. Usually there are cards with an X on them on the table. If a player is bothered by a subject, they tap or raise their X-card and the other players basically just drop that subject and move on to something different. You don't actually have to use a card, players can cross their arms in an X or just say "X card" and it counts the same.

I think it’s a brilliant idea, KitLily. I’m totally in favour of safe words… I mean non-sexual as you describe. Might be easier to call them code words.

Emmett:

Thank you. I suppose I just wanted to call it a safe word because it shows I need to be safe and stop the conversation from getting into teasing and making fun of me/her. Code word doesn't sound right to me.

But each to their own

Works for me, KitLily.

I wish I spoke to enough people to use it.

The only code word I used to have was when I was 13, my friend and I would say "Orange" if our parents walked into the room when we were on the phone.

Thanks Isabella.

She is an email friend I've known for years, I only really have email/online friends.

Ohhhh even better!

Same thing for me.
I barely speak to anyone verbally.
Most of my communication is written, even to my kids when they're in the house.

So the idea is, the word means "Slow down and explain in literal terms", or something like that?
My main problem is that I take everything very literally but some people don't write literally.

Let me know if it works for you.

For anyone confused, here is an example:

I watched a show and really loved it, and thought my friend, let's call her June, would like it so I took some screenshots of the characters.

Me: here's some of the characters of that show I watched. It's really great, you'd love it.

June: Ohhh...

Me: what does Ohhh... mean?

June: You know what my ohhh means.

Me: no, I don't. Is that a good or bad ohhh?

June: What do you think?

Me: I don't know what to think. Do you like the pictures or not?

June: they're very...mm hm...

Me: what the hell does that mean?

etc. etc.

She does this sometimes, about 1% of the time. So I decided to stop her.

I'm the same, I don't like talking, I like communicating in writing.

Yes. 'Slow down and explain in literal terms' is a good explanation of my safe word.

BUT a safe word could be for anything e.g. 'I'm overwhelmed, stop talking at me.' 'Please change the subject, it's distressing me.' Like Emmett talked about above with the X card.

I usually just say "That means nothing to me" even with people I'm just acquainted with to kind of hammer it home that I don't understand. Another way you could say it is "That's too vague. Can you try again?"

So maybe your safe word could be "Vague"

That way it contains the actual message and, when agreed on, has the added instruction that it's important to reconsider the message.

I wouldn't have a clue. ^

One thing I hate in written language is the ellipsis.

imo, it indicates annoyance.

Everyone uses ellipsis to indicate a pause, but if you look at the actual function it's supposed to indicate a skipped word. Weird.

Some people put them at the end of their messages ...

Exactly! June is f*****g annoying 1% of the time. I give up with some of her messages. So anyway now she knows I struggle with her replies so we have a word to use. btw the other 99% of the time she is a lovely friend, she just gets too NT sometimes. (it turned out she thought the men in the screenshots were gorgeous and she fancied them. )

I even did that with my husband yesterday. I was absorbed in reading things on the internet and he suddenly said 'I wonder if she's going to tell us what happened at work.'

I thought: Erm...who? What work? What happened? Do you mean someone on the TV? Do you mean our daughter? What?

So I said 'okay, safe word safe word, what the hell are you talking about?' I don't even have a safe word for him yet, so I just said safe word. And he explained.

Just to say that this safe word thing is going really well!

I've used it on my friend and she apologised and explained clearly what she meant.

She just used it on me yesterday and I apologised and explained clearly what I meant!

So it works. In case anyone was wondering. I think it's a great idea.