Dear Carolyn: My mother does a million things that come under the heading of “playing games.” One of them is this: When she wants to make a point, instead of stating it straight-up, she badgers me with leading (or loaded) questions. For example:
In college, I fell hard for “Jane.” I had almost no dating experience and didn’t know the first thing about relationships. Long story short, Jane strung me along for a semester. I told my mother a bit about the relationship, but not every twist and turn.
As my mother drove me to the airport after a break, she asked whether Jane had another guy in the picture. I said, firmly, “No,” which was true to my knowledge. We talked for a couple more minutes, then my mother repeated, “Does Jane have someone else?” and I said, “NO!” I suppressed the urge to say, “I already answered that question.” There was silence in the car for a few minutes. Then my mother said, “Are you suuuuuure she doesn’t have someone else?”
I lost it and cried out: “Arrrrrgh! If the answer was yes, I would have said yes, wouldn’t I now? What’s the point of asking if you don’t believe me?” My mother may have gotten somewhere if she had led off with, “I think Jane has someone else because …” instead of antagonizing me.
As I said, she still does this kind of thing, so she learned nothing from this incident. Sometimes I’d like to strangle her.
— Just SAY IT
Just SAY IT: That would be a lot worse than her repeating-questions thing. Just saying.
But I do sympathize.
And I wonder what you learned from this incident with your mom. From a semester of Jane’s antics, too.
In your airport ride, you didn’t “just SAY IT,” either: “I already answered that question.” Right? And you didn’t follow that with: “What I’m hearing, Mom, is that you have something else you want to say about this?”
Instead you “suppressed the urge,” then “lost it” on her, then concluded that the conversation would have succeeded if she had done something different instead of figuring out how your choices could have changed the result.
I understand you are exasperated with your mom’s poor communication skills.
You’re still navigating your way out of them yourself, though. And that’s where you’re going to find the answer to your (non-)question about your mother’s game-playing, and Jane’s.
That’s good news for a few reasons. You are on the right track — no small thing, given your childhood environment. And you know how this miscommunication style feels, so your motivation to fix it seems solid. And you’re the one in control of the answer, not your mom/Jane/future Janes, which means no more pointless waiting for her to fix herself. You fix you.
The formula: 1. Speak at face value. 2. Take others at face value. 3. At the first sign of a meaningful gap, speak up: “What I hear you saying is, ‘[What you think someone is saying].’” 4. If people won’t engage honestly, then calmly disengage. (“Okay.” [Shrug.]) Don’t keep trying to change them.
