I have a very different friend group. Yeah people still like to project success and their kids whatever at the moment. But even that’s only my local friends. Many of us love to talk shit about the state of the country/world and try to take care of each other through mental and emotional issues.
It’s funny, I generally prefer to talk to a woman professionally, but I’d rather talk to a man friend about specific emotional problems. Of course I’m lucky to have a wife I would talk about most of these things with, but not everyone has a good partner.
Not the person you replied to, but just listening and allowing the person to express themselves and feel heard goes a long way. Getting it all out to someone and not being bottled up inside your own head can be a huge relief, even if the problem itself remains the same.
The instinctual reaction is to want to offer fixes. However, whatever the hearer thought of in five seconds, the sufferer probably also already thought of, and spent days/months/years attempting to make it work and it just didn’t, and now the listening session gets diverted into kind of an argument where the suffered has to justify they have already put in sufficient effort to the fix the listener is pushing that it’s not worth continuing on that road.
OK, be concerned. Now, please tell me how to be better. I am the first to admit that I suck at inter-personal things.
Let’s say you are hanging out with a good friend, it is late in the evening, and they tell you about some fucked up shit happening to them.
“That sucks, man hang in there,” doesn’t quite cut it, as someone else pointed out, no solution you can up with in five minutes is going to help them, and just awkward silence is awkward to both of you.
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I have a very different friend group. Yeah people still like to project success and their kids whatever at the moment. But even that’s only my local friends. Many of us love to talk shit about the state of the country/world and try to take care of each other through mental and emotional issues.
It’s funny, I generally prefer to talk to a woman professionally, but I’d rather talk to a man friend about specific emotional problems. Of course I’m lucky to have a wife I would talk about most of these things with, but not everyone has a good partner.
Genuine question, how would you wish a good friend/partner would react?
Not the person you replied to, but just listening and allowing the person to express themselves and feel heard goes a long way. Getting it all out to someone and not being bottled up inside your own head can be a huge relief, even if the problem itself remains the same.
The instinctual reaction is to want to offer fixes. However, whatever the hearer thought of in five seconds, the sufferer probably also already thought of, and spent days/months/years attempting to make it work and it just didn’t, and now the listening session gets diverted into kind of an argument where the suffered has to justify they have already put in sufficient effort to the fix the listener is pushing that it’s not worth continuing on that road.
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OK, be concerned. Now, please tell me how to be better. I am the first to admit that I suck at inter-personal things.
Let’s say you are hanging out with a good friend, it is late in the evening, and they tell you about some fucked up shit happening to them.
“That sucks, man hang in there,” doesn’t quite cut it, as someone else pointed out, no solution you can up with in five minutes is going to help them, and just awkward silence is awkward to both of you.
What do you do?
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