This leaves me with more questions, but they are more specific, so yay!
So I can definitely understand not hanging out with or regularly talking to someone after a break-up, and I can understand that if people don't like him, not wanting to just say that. (Though from the other side I would prefer to hear it)
On the other hand, if he seems creepy or has crossed motives, these seem like things that you could say explicitly. In your situation I wouldn't offer this information unprompted, but if he asked would you proffer it?
It saddens me to think that the social groups of people I'm thinking of thought of me as low status, but I'll update towards that for now.
Also none of this really gets to the heart of what I'm curious about, so let me try to improve my question: Say your ex still had one of your old possessions, but something that you cared about having less than you cared about not seeing him. He offers to return it. What goes through your head as you formulate a reply?
On the other hand, if he seems creepy or has crossed motives, these seem like things that you could say explicitly. In your situation I wouldn't offer this information unprompted, but if he asked would you proffer it?
At the time I made it pretty clear that the thing he did was creepy.
Say your ex still had one of your old possessions, but something that you cared about having less than you cared about not seeing him. He offers to return it. What goes through your head as you formulate a reply?
Mu. This is actually the case; he sent me an e-mail about ...
The other day, someone did something I didn't expect. It was something many people have done before; something that I thought of as very normal, but that I in no way understood and had not predicted.
As I said, this had happened many time before, so I wrote it off as "me not understanding people" or "people are weird" for a second, like I usually do, before realizing that "bad at" really means "lacking basic knowledge", which I had never realized before.
And then I thought "I should ask someone who is different from me why people do that, and eventually someone will have an answer."
But many people will have many more questions like this. So, what have you observed people doing time and time again, but never understood? Or something that you only understood after a long time or asking someone about it?
And can Less Wrong tell us, not necessarily why (I for one can make up evolutionary psychology fairy tales all day if I want) but what conscious thought process occurs behind these events?