Do you have friends or rellies that are always criticizing you? On and on they go, finding fault....
If so, how do you deal with it?
um, *hello*, one thread/day only, *if* you don’t mind.
try less than 200 sarcastic comments per day, enrq
i have a long term best friend who seems to enjoy saying negative things about me. It’s only been happening in the past couple of years though, coincidentally her boyfriend does the same thing.
i tend to pass off a lot of social FAP invites out these days, with her. I’m running out of excuses as well.
oh and i love that word ‘rellies’ btw
try less than 200 sarcastic comments per day, enrq
— resumo impetus (n...), February 16th, 2007.
if someone could work out my running total for today, i’m up for this.
34539
a quick calculation has it at about 160
xpost
Lyric is “...all you wanna do is criticize”, jeez get it right.
Generally, ignore them. Unsolicited “advice” (or more usually criticism) tends to say more about the *advisor* than the advisee. Especially if it’s that sort of relentless “advice” which is just a stream of negative criticism.
I mean, there are some people for whom that constant advising criticism thing is a misguided way of showing that they care, kind of constant low level fuss. (My mum is a big one for this.)
But then there are people who have just got it into their heads that somehow they can “fix” you, or that they have some insight into your personality, and if you’d just LISTEN to them then you would be so much better. And that is slightly more unavoidable, because people like that tend to get resentful if you *don’t* listen to their fabulous advice that they are so gracious to bestow upon you. And then the “advice” turns from “I can fix you if...” to nagging and nit-picking, often in a very public form. And that’s awful.
Agree non-specifically and change the subject. Ask them how *they* are maybe, because it could be that they have something on their minds of their own.
shurely not! that would imply that she only had the intention but didn’t put it into practice! Shurely Alex couldn’t complain about *that*!
Kate, you have *so* described an ex-gf of mine with yr 3rd para.
Yeah, I’ve had friends, and unfortunately partners who have done that. I mean, I’m sure that I’ve done it in the past, when I was younger and stupider and still believed that you could *change* other people. But when you’ve been the focus of it... the moment that someone changes from misguidedly helpful to this sort of public humiliation approach, that’s just it.
Not all criticism should be ignored. It may often be constructive and astute. My criticism of enrq, for example.
Also Brian May’s criticism of Mika haterz
No, not all criticism or advice should be ignored.
But it’s that kind of hyper-critical relentless nagging I’m talking about.
Some advice can be very very good. But I’ve found that the best advice comes either from people who have known you quite intimately for years and years—or else from complete strangers, who do not have any personal involvement or emotional stake.
It’s this sort of quasi middle-ground of people who believe that they know you, or that they have some unique insight into your personality—but what they are actually reacting to is this sort of negative projection. By their own nagging, they end up producing a self fulfilling prophecy, and this poisons friendships or relationships.
I’m sure I’ve done this, I’m not excusing myself and I’m trying not to be a hypocrite. I just know how not-effective it is.
The best advice or “constructive criticism”, I find, is that that is just put out there, and you can figure out if it resonates with you and how. Anything forced down a person’s throat is likely to be rejected out of hand.
I have been guilty of this myself. I sometimes critize all the frigging time. :-(
Hey N, what have you done for me lately?
It’s Ms Nathalie if you’re nasty.;-)
You get used to it after a while.
Like, about 6 years.
I had to distance myself from a dear friend because of this. And the worst thing was, I’d told her to stop, so then she’d just preface the unsolicited advice with “I know I’m not supposed to say this, but... (fill in name of massage therapist I should call, or glossy format I should use in my magazine, or assistant I should hire to help with my mother, etc, etc, etc.)”
It was unending. And this is a person who’s in a fevered state of crisis every day of her life. She often didn’t show up at work (we were partners) because of some crisis. It was making me too angry, so I extricated myself from the partnership, giving her the jobs (I had others). I told her it was to preserve the friendship, but then I realized the the friendship was fucked. I exploded it by backing out of the partnership.
We’re okay when we run into each other—we’re totally on each other’s wavelength in many ways. but I know if we started working together again the same old shit would crop up again. I feel sad about it.