I love the Star Trek TNG episode called Loud as a Whisper for so many reasons. It is so good in part because the actor who played Riva, the deaf mediator, is in fact deaf and was the originator of the idea for the episode and took a stand about some details.
For reasons explained elsewhere, some people probably think I prefer to date non-whites. It would be more accurate to say that during my divorce I preferred to date men who spoke English as a second, third or fourth language, a detail I am somewhat less open about because it's actually a more personal detail.
I met the future ex at the age of sixteen in typing class. The first time we spoke, he picked an argument with me about the pronunciation of the word tarot and was a bad loser about the whole thing when it turned out he was wrong and I was right.
Eleven years later, after eight years of marriage, having two kids together and buying a house, he looked at me funny in reaction to something I said and went "It was an excuse to talk to a pretty girl."
This was shocking news to me. I just thought he liked arguing and we had eleven years of arguing behind us which informed my opinion on the matter.
The incessant arguing was one of the worst parts of our marriage and left me with deep emotional scars. It did not stop until we were divorcing and only after three especially ugly incidents.
In one, I told him "When we argue, I wish you would go back to ignoring me like you usually do." because he would just doggedly follow me around and not let it go while I tried desperately to walk away from the fight. In another, I told him "If you had spent four to six hours in bed with me ONCE for ever TWENTY times you spent four to six hours straight arguing with me, we could have made this marriage work."
I think it was during the third incident that I told him "I am divorcing you to escape the metaphorical prison of my marriage. I don't think going to actual prison for murdering you would be an improvement." at which point he finally managed to walk away from the argument and stop haranguing me. After that, this pattern of behavior on his part did not recur.
Looking back on it, I think we argued so much in part because we were both very articulate and well read and it helped foster this delusion that we understood each other when we frequently didn't understand each other at all.
I had the highest SAT score of my graduating high school class and my ex had a higher verbal score than me but much lower math score. He could argue rings around me and we both were prone to trying to nail each other to the wall over "You SAID..." and actual understanding be damned.
In contrast to my marriage between two Americans who graduated high school together, when my parents met my father was an American soldier stationed in Germany and my mother was a German national who spoke no English. At their first meeting, my father's German was so bad that she turned to someone else and asked them what language he was speaking.
Although my childhood felt like an emotional war zone due to their frequent arguments, all I heard about their early years was funny stories about silly misunderstandings fueled by the huge language barrier. My impression was they didn't start fighting in earnest until after my mother spoke English well enough for them to imagine they understood each other when they didn't.
So during my divorce I somewhat intentionally took a page from my parents' marriage and I spent a lot of time talking with men who spoke anything but English as their first language.
This allowed me to say with complete sincerity things like "I have no idea what you are talking about. I never said that. I never thought that. I have no idea where you are getting that. I'm hurting. You're hurting. I think this is a misunderstanding. Can we not do this?" and have them actually drop it and let it go and not bring it up again.
The pattern of arguing in my marriage was so scarring in part because it was intertwined with a subtle kind of actual abuse. This ran deeper than me merely finding the arguments themselves stressful.
When we were first together, I managed the money and my husband would come to me and ask if we could "afford" for him to buy X for himself and he would list out the zillion reasons this was terribly important to him. I would say something like "Of course you can buy it dear. I love you. No big deal."
Our funds were limited and every month there was some new thing he had wanted his entire life and could not live without that I gave permission for him to purchase. When there were no funds left for things I wanted, he told me it was my fault because he had ASKED and I had given him permission.
I was the one who managed the checkbook. I was told I should have told him no if we couldn't really afford it.
When I actually began telling him "No, we can't afford it." he stopped asking. He began whipping out his credit card and buying whatever he wanted and making it my problem to figure out how to cover the bills.
He was the primary breadwinner. I had no means to control him and rein in his spending and he knew it. He also wasn't going to give me actual veto power over his spending habits. Pretending to was a charade.
Asking permission wasn't actually a request for permission. He knew I had a generous nature and he was counting on me saying yes so he had someone to blame when his behavior screwed me out of getting anything for myself.
In the early years, I often had very little. I went to libraries instead of buying books. If I had a magazine subscription, it was a Christmas gift from someone. Etc.
All my frugality did nothing to get our finances where I wanted them. He metaphorically and sometimes literally ate like a king while I went hungry.
During my first pregnancy, he told me the $10/month he spent on his hobby was too little money to make any real difference and was untouchable, then told me the $6/month I was spending on fizzy bottled water drinks could be dispensed with and I could drink tap water. It was a rare occasion where I managed to stand my ground and say "No. I buy that water because I throw up daily. It's a necessary expense because it helps me keep down food. I'm pregnant with your baby."
I eventually got credit cards in my name and spent money we did not have to get things I needed that were never "in the budget" for some reason or other. Things like clothes for me and dental visits.
This still did not convince him he spent beyond his means and needed to rein in his spending. All it did was give him a new way to blame me when we fought because now he could say "You also ran up the credit card debts, not just me."
Post divorce, I was homeless for nearly six years. I never once said or thought for a single nano second "I wish I hadn't gotten divorced!" Life was better without him, even when I was homeless and going hungry regularly.
Our oldest son is a lot like his dad. By the time he was twelve, he could also argue rings around me, but by then I had learned to tell his father things like "Just because you can win every argument doesn't mean you should always get your way at my expense." This translated to me sometimes telling my oldest son "I'm sorry you are frustrated and don't understand. The answer is still no."
The other way in which they are both alike is they are both narcissists who think only of themselves, which explains a lot about my marriage. But at some point, my son decided I actually mattered to him and he wanted me in his life and he made the conscious decision to recategorize "mom's needs" under the heading of his own needs and make sure to take good care of me.
According to my son, he does so in part because "You left him. If I push it too far, I know you will leave me too. You won't just put up with it indefinitely."
I once talked about how his dad treated us like objects and it was why none of us liked him. My son rebutted that and said "No, he took really good care of his possessions. His card collections that he had for years were painstakingly preserved in pristine condition. If he treated us like he treated his stuff, we would have had nothing to complain about."
Sometimes, there are misunderstandings and sometimes words are a part of that misunderstanding and can be used to clear things up. Sometimes, the only misunderstanding is rooted in someone taking someone at their word who is being intentionally deceptive.
You will know if it was merely an unfortunate misunderstanding or intentionally abusive by what happens after the "misunderstanding" is straightened out. If the abuse continues on some new excuse, it was likely abuse with malice aforethought all along and the only misunderstanding was one the other party desired you to have on purpose.
Narcissists aren't that bad. They only care about what they get and don't care about you at all, which leaves room for you to get your needs met in some cases even though they will take the lion's share if they can get it.
They don't want a solution in which you stop hurting. You hurting is very much the point of the thing.
In Loud as a Whisper, one person at the peace talks doesn't actually want peace and murders the chorus that spoke for Riva, the deaf mediator. The other person on his team immediately calls him a traitor and executes him.
This leaves Riva with no means to communicate and he considers giving up, until Troi uses his own explanation of his approach to convince him to use his own disadvantage as an advantage. The episode ends with him being left on the planet to begin teaching both sides his sign language as a shared experience with which to begin brokering peace.
Achieving peace between feuding parties requires there to be a meeting of the minds to get there. But no amount of meeting of the minds is sufficient if one party has no desire to establish a healthy relationship.
Some people don't want a healthy relationship. They simply like hurting others and no amount of helping them will ever get them to give up their abusive ways.
No matter how much "misunderstanding" you resolve or hurt of theirs you heal, they will always have some new excuse why they deserve sympathy and should be allowed to continue mistreating you. Seeking peace successfully first requires you to determine that both parties are genuinely willing to try to find a peaceable solution.
While we were homeless, my oldest son read a biography written by a man who was born and raised in a concentration camp in North Korea. My son concluded that his father related to food and people similar to the author of the book and he stopped being so angry at his father, though he still wants nothing to do with him.
My ex was not a monster. We both had big personal issues in our youth and we did our best to be good to each other anyway and then we amicably went our separate ways as the only loving thing left to do.
But some people won't let you go and won't do you anything but dirty no matter how you handle it.
In such cases, it's not you. It's them.
Howie Seago, who is deaf, approached the show's producers with the idea of a deaf mediator... The writers originally wanted Seago's character to learn to speak after his chorus is killed, but Seago was opposed to the idea, as it could perpetuate the practice of forcing deaf children to speak. The producers were understanding of his concerns and wrote a new draft.
"But what's really hard is to get each side to listen, really listen, to each other and to understand."
"Words are on top. What is under them -- their meaning -- is what is important."
For reasons explained elsewhere, some people probably think I prefer to date non-whites. It would be more accurate to say that during my divorce I preferred to date men who spoke English as a second, third or fourth language, a detail I am somewhat less open about because it's actually a more personal detail.
I met the future ex at the age of sixteen in typing class. The first time we spoke, he picked an argument with me about the pronunciation of the word tarot and was a bad loser about the whole thing when it turned out he was wrong and I was right.
Eleven years later, after eight years of marriage, having two kids together and buying a house, he looked at me funny in reaction to something I said and went "It was an excuse to talk to a pretty girl."
This was shocking news to me. I just thought he liked arguing and we had eleven years of arguing behind us which informed my opinion on the matter.
The incessant arguing was one of the worst parts of our marriage and left me with deep emotional scars. It did not stop until we were divorcing and only after three especially ugly incidents.
In one, I told him "When we argue, I wish you would go back to ignoring me like you usually do." because he would just doggedly follow me around and not let it go while I tried desperately to walk away from the fight. In another, I told him "If you had spent four to six hours in bed with me ONCE for ever TWENTY times you spent four to six hours straight arguing with me, we could have made this marriage work."
I think it was during the third incident that I told him "I am divorcing you to escape the metaphorical prison of my marriage. I don't think going to actual prison for murdering you would be an improvement." at which point he finally managed to walk away from the argument and stop haranguing me. After that, this pattern of behavior on his part did not recur.
Looking back on it, I think we argued so much in part because we were both very articulate and well read and it helped foster this delusion that we understood each other when we frequently didn't understand each other at all.
I had the highest SAT score of my graduating high school class and my ex had a higher verbal score than me but much lower math score. He could argue rings around me and we both were prone to trying to nail each other to the wall over "You SAID..." and actual understanding be damned.
In contrast to my marriage between two Americans who graduated high school together, when my parents met my father was an American soldier stationed in Germany and my mother was a German national who spoke no English. At their first meeting, my father's German was so bad that she turned to someone else and asked them what language he was speaking.
Although my childhood felt like an emotional war zone due to their frequent arguments, all I heard about their early years was funny stories about silly misunderstandings fueled by the huge language barrier. My impression was they didn't start fighting in earnest until after my mother spoke English well enough for them to imagine they understood each other when they didn't.
So during my divorce I somewhat intentionally took a page from my parents' marriage and I spent a lot of time talking with men who spoke anything but English as their first language.
This allowed me to say with complete sincerity things like "I have no idea what you are talking about. I never said that. I never thought that. I have no idea where you are getting that. I'm hurting. You're hurting. I think this is a misunderstanding. Can we not do this?" and have them actually drop it and let it go and not bring it up again.
The pattern of arguing in my marriage was so scarring in part because it was intertwined with a subtle kind of actual abuse. This ran deeper than me merely finding the arguments themselves stressful.
When we were first together, I managed the money and my husband would come to me and ask if we could "afford" for him to buy X for himself and he would list out the zillion reasons this was terribly important to him. I would say something like "Of course you can buy it dear. I love you. No big deal."
Our funds were limited and every month there was some new thing he had wanted his entire life and could not live without that I gave permission for him to purchase. When there were no funds left for things I wanted, he told me it was my fault because he had ASKED and I had given him permission.
I was the one who managed the checkbook. I was told I should have told him no if we couldn't really afford it.
When I actually began telling him "No, we can't afford it." he stopped asking. He began whipping out his credit card and buying whatever he wanted and making it my problem to figure out how to cover the bills.
He was the primary breadwinner. I had no means to control him and rein in his spending and he knew it. He also wasn't going to give me actual veto power over his spending habits. Pretending to was a charade.
Asking permission wasn't actually a request for permission. He knew I had a generous nature and he was counting on me saying yes so he had someone to blame when his behavior screwed me out of getting anything for myself.
In the early years, I often had very little. I went to libraries instead of buying books. If I had a magazine subscription, it was a Christmas gift from someone. Etc.
All my frugality did nothing to get our finances where I wanted them. He metaphorically and sometimes literally ate like a king while I went hungry.
During my first pregnancy, he told me the $10/month he spent on his hobby was too little money to make any real difference and was untouchable, then told me the $6/month I was spending on fizzy bottled water drinks could be dispensed with and I could drink tap water. It was a rare occasion where I managed to stand my ground and say "No. I buy that water because I throw up daily. It's a necessary expense because it helps me keep down food. I'm pregnant with your baby."
I eventually got credit cards in my name and spent money we did not have to get things I needed that were never "in the budget" for some reason or other. Things like clothes for me and dental visits.
This still did not convince him he spent beyond his means and needed to rein in his spending. All it did was give him a new way to blame me when we fought because now he could say "You also ran up the credit card debts, not just me."
Post divorce, I was homeless for nearly six years. I never once said or thought for a single nano second "I wish I hadn't gotten divorced!" Life was better without him, even when I was homeless and going hungry regularly.
Our oldest son is a lot like his dad. By the time he was twelve, he could also argue rings around me, but by then I had learned to tell his father things like "Just because you can win every argument doesn't mean you should always get your way at my expense." This translated to me sometimes telling my oldest son "I'm sorry you are frustrated and don't understand. The answer is still no."
The other way in which they are both alike is they are both narcissists who think only of themselves, which explains a lot about my marriage. But at some point, my son decided I actually mattered to him and he wanted me in his life and he made the conscious decision to recategorize "mom's needs" under the heading of his own needs and make sure to take good care of me.
According to my son, he does so in part because "You left him. If I push it too far, I know you will leave me too. You won't just put up with it indefinitely."
I once talked about how his dad treated us like objects and it was why none of us liked him. My son rebutted that and said "No, he took really good care of his possessions. His card collections that he had for years were painstakingly preserved in pristine condition. If he treated us like he treated his stuff, we would have had nothing to complain about."
Sometimes, there are misunderstandings and sometimes words are a part of that misunderstanding and can be used to clear things up. Sometimes, the only misunderstanding is rooted in someone taking someone at their word who is being intentionally deceptive.
You will know if it was merely an unfortunate misunderstanding or intentionally abusive by what happens after the "misunderstanding" is straightened out. If the abuse continues on some new excuse, it was likely abuse with malice aforethought all along and the only misunderstanding was one the other party desired you to have on purpose.
Narcissists aren't that bad. They only care about what they get and don't care about you at all, which leaves room for you to get your needs met in some cases even though they will take the lion's share if they can get it.
One for you. Two for me. One for you. Three for me.But some people are actually sadists and for such people it's not enough for them to get the lion's share because they feel they "need" it for some reason and fairness be damned. No, for sadists, your actual suffering is the actual goal.
They don't want a solution in which you stop hurting. You hurting is very much the point of the thing.
In Loud as a Whisper, one person at the peace talks doesn't actually want peace and murders the chorus that spoke for Riva, the deaf mediator. The other person on his team immediately calls him a traitor and executes him.
This leaves Riva with no means to communicate and he considers giving up, until Troi uses his own explanation of his approach to convince him to use his own disadvantage as an advantage. The episode ends with him being left on the planet to begin teaching both sides his sign language as a shared experience with which to begin brokering peace.
Achieving peace between feuding parties requires there to be a meeting of the minds to get there. But no amount of meeting of the minds is sufficient if one party has no desire to establish a healthy relationship.
Some people don't want a healthy relationship. They simply like hurting others and no amount of helping them will ever get them to give up their abusive ways.
No matter how much "misunderstanding" you resolve or hurt of theirs you heal, they will always have some new excuse why they deserve sympathy and should be allowed to continue mistreating you. Seeking peace successfully first requires you to determine that both parties are genuinely willing to try to find a peaceable solution.
While we were homeless, my oldest son read a biography written by a man who was born and raised in a concentration camp in North Korea. My son concluded that his father related to food and people similar to the author of the book and he stopped being so angry at his father, though he still wants nothing to do with him.
My ex was not a monster. We both had big personal issues in our youth and we did our best to be good to each other anyway and then we amicably went our separate ways as the only loving thing left to do.
But some people won't let you go and won't do you anything but dirty no matter how you handle it.
In such cases, it's not you. It's them.