I had an interesting communication moment recently.<\/p>\n
Polyfamilies was doing its usual thing of debating everything under the sun (nuclear power and alternative energy, I believe) when someone new to the group commented that she really couldn’t figure out what the group was about<\/em>. Since it’s ostensibly about polyamory, but in general the members really do talk about everything\u2026. Well, debate about everything, anyway. I explained Why We Are the Way We Are, and went on to comment that maybe we needed to get some Polyamory 101 discussion going, since we did have a lot of newer people on the list who hadn’t spoken up.<\/p>\n I used the term Newbie, which I probably shouldn’t have, even if I meant it benevolently. But what was worse, I assumed that the person who spoke up was new to polyamory. She did not<\/em> ask for any Polyamory 101 discussions, though some good ones wound up happening. I made the assumption she was wanting them and not asking for them. Turns out the woman had been poly awhile and just wasn’t taking the time to follow the non-poly discussions.<\/p>\n Remember how I always reiterate how one should take people at their words<\/em>? And how that includes not trying to interpret<\/em> their words?<\/p>\n Yeah, that.<\/p>\n There are times when I feel like Alistor Moody (Constant vigilance!<\/strong>) when it comes to even my most casual relationships and communication habits. Like many of my examples here, it was a trivial instance. But’s it’s pretty illustrative of how ingrained trying to interpret or assuming can be.<\/p>\n While I’m all for<\/em> creating an environment where people want to communicate and feel like it’ll be a good idea, there is a line and a stopping point.<\/p>\n What about you guys? I’m interested to hear your stories. When have you caught yourself interpreting and assuming?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I had an interesting communication moment recently. Polyfamilies was doing its usual thing of debating everything under the sun (nuclear power and alternative energy, I believe) when someone new to the group commented that she really couldn’t figure out what the group was about. Since it’s ostensibly about polyamory, but in general the members really…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communication"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}