A brief breakdown:
- event: I broke your vase.
- event: I bought you a gift but then left it at home
- event: I want to go to a (privately valuable event) on our (relationship important day)
Options:
- I wanted to save you the effort of thinking about the thing and so I decided not to tell/ask you before it was resolved.
- I wanted to not have to withhold a thing from you so I told you as soon as it was bothering me so that I didn't have to lie/cheat/withhold/deceive you even if I thought it was in your best interest
Discussion:
what is a better plan of action?
1 would be doing emotional labour in the form of:
I thought about the event and how you would feel about it and modelled how I thought you would feel and then acted according to what I thought was best for you feeling better.
2 would be to put an emotional burden on the other person but carries with it more honesty, more expectation that the other person is autonomous and able to make choices for themselves.
I didn't want to withhold anything, but instead burdened you with making the choice about what to do about the matter by telling you about my conundrum.
I used to do 1, but now I do 2. The relationship books tend to suggest 2.
All of the things my brain ever conjured up used to tell me 1.
Brain: Make the martyr choice for people. Don't tell them, suffer in secret.
I made a lot of relationship mistakes doing 1's in various situations and now I do 2s. I don't know why this works but it lines up with everything I ever read - NVC, Daring greatly, Gottman institute research. I don't have much to add other than - I wonder if you do 1's or 2's.
I would prefer people do 2's not 1's around me. (A little more on emotional labour)
Original post: http://bearlamp.com.au/emotional-labour/
Two counter-examples involving my SO in cases where we both chose option 1 and both felt it was the correct decision.
Event + option 1: I became aware I was pregnant with your child right before you left in order to visit your parents over the Christmas and New Year holidays. I kept it from you during all of your vacation because I knew it would screw up your whole stay with your parents and friends. I predicted you'd prefer to deal with it later and in person.
Event + option 1: I (not known to be paranoid about personal health) found a very suspicious lump in a very suspicious place in my body. I immediately went to get it checked, but since I predicted you'd be extremely worried about me I did not tell you about it until after my second check-up months later, so you would not have to worry about losing me to cancer like you recently did one of your parents.
We agree that in both cases these were good decisions, but those are rather extreme cases with a very high emotional cost to the other person compared to breaking a vase or something in the low range of suffering.
My suspicion: Preferring option 2 over option 1 across all applicable cases seems too generalized and wrong. I suspect there is a point of magnitude in emotional cost to another person, after which you might also feel that option 1 would be preferred by both parties - what do you think?
Another real-world-example I'm personally familiar with that feels very related to this one, but without the intention to ever let the emotionally impacted person actually know (i.e. direct lying) is this situation: Dear god-fearing bed-ridden grandma, your poor son died peacefully of a heart attack. (As opposed to slit his wrists in the bathroom while drunk).
I'm reminded of an incident in Richard Feynman's "What do you care what other people think?" involving his then girlfriend, later wife, Arline and her illness. Her family chose to go with (1) both Feynman and her where rather annoyed when they found out. I don't remember the exact details right now and don't have the book in front of me.