Misunderstandings

Post Reply New Topic

IMO, one of the most important areas of compatibility or incompatibility between any two people is what they believe about misunderstandings. What do you believe?

Feeling a bit fatalistic today, so 4

I picked 3 but I'm not entirely sure that there are specific techniques to deal with misunderstandings. They may be inevitable, and it's important to try to clear them up, but I think it's a matter of communicating and getting to the bottom of it.

I really don't think this is an "either / or" thing. All 4 situations and more arise in real life at different times. Even "stupid" people may be able to work through an honest misunderstanding.

6 - All of possibilities.

#1 requires reading between the lines to spot and call the whole thing out if the intent is truly there. This is more like knowing people, their ways and habits.

#2 requires discernment and where the communication breakdown lies from.
And it's not limited to stupidity; not everyone has great command over receptive and expressive languages.

#3 is a rational communication practice, however potentially one-sided burden.
One-sided if there's only one side of the party is attempting to learn how to avoid misunderstandings and usually gets the blaming end when they couldn't.

#4 can be an emotional or an ego matter in either or both parties to see how an attempt to straighten things up as pointless.



7 - misunderstandings may tell what a person thinks.
Whether remedying or not tells something about them to an extent; their reactions due to a misunderstanding, their attempts to see past misunderstanding...

Misunderstandings isn't always all bad for me. Sometimes it can be hilarious

It can be good lucky-good; it can be a backup bluff, it can be beneficial or exploitable to an extent when playing along with it...

Gained Number Post Count (1).
Lose Time (n).

Lose more time here - Updates at least once a week.

I went with three, but it's a lot more effective to identify the potential misunderstandings in advance. It's harder to get people to let go of their own explanations after they've come up with them. When they connect all their explanations into a narrative, especially one where you are the villain, you are now screwed because humans prefer narratives to logic. It's some sort of biological or evolutionary drive to employ and hold onto narratives, especially ones about danger.

3, but I don't think identifying misunderstandings is the crux of conflict resolution.

Sometimes even when a misunderstanding is identified there's still a difference of opinion, difference of values, or a power dynamic where one person is trying to bully or manipulate/control the other. That remains a problem whether the misunderstanding is identified or not.

I'm somewhere between 3 and 4, you can typically figure out who you can reason with and even agree or disagree on good terms vs. who's just there to 'win' a conflict they started.