I think you’re making a huge mistake if you frame the interaction entirely as a social dominance transaction. In some cases it may be, and the object-level disagreement is just a casus belli for the emotional reaction. But in many cases, a mistake was actually made and there’s a very real disagreement about why it happened or the severity of result, so no agreement on what will change in order to make similar errors less likely in the future.
That disagreement over priority is not resolved by any acceptance of emotion, only by acceptance of the facts. Some hurts are caused by different priorities or capabilities of the “perpetrator”, and regardless of apology, punishment, or submission, will probably reoccur in the future.
I agree that this is a failure mode—that’s why the title talks about avoiding these scenarios. You want to avoid things getting to this point, but also recognize that if things did get to this point, trying to solve the casus belli here and now is not a viable path forward. The spiral must be diffused first.
After that, yes, you should step back and consider whether the original problem still exists and is worth addressing, and if so do so when everyone is calm and proceed super carefully.
That disagreement over priority is not resolved by any acceptance of emotion, only by acceptance of the facts.
It would be helpful if people would explain themselves when they did something that seemed reasonable to them at the time, or were working under constraints that were not obvious to the disappointed person—or simply took disappointing someone as an opportunity to talk about adjusting future expectations.
“Submission” is an explanation for why people often don’t bother to do this, and try to simply accept a lowered status. This behavior only makes sense if it is sometimes adaptive. And the simplest explanation for why it is adaptive, is that in their experience it’s often been what the disappointed/angry person wants.
“Submission” is an explanation for why people often don’t bother to do this, and try to simply accept a lowered status. This behavior only makes sense if it is sometimes adaptive. And the simplest explanation for why it is adaptive, is that in their experience it’s often been what the disappointed/angry person wants.
Well, yeah. The vast majority of such fights would be far more painful if the perpetrator said “yup, I found something better to do; this is not as important to me as it is to you” than the social fiction of apologizing and claiming weakness.
I think you’re making a huge mistake if you frame the interaction entirely as a social dominance transaction. In some cases it may be, and the object-level disagreement is just a casus belli for the emotional reaction. But in many cases, a mistake was actually made and there’s a very real disagreement about why it happened or the severity of result, so no agreement on what will change in order to make similar errors less likely in the future.
That disagreement over priority is not resolved by any acceptance of emotion, only by acceptance of the facts. Some hurts are caused by different priorities or capabilities of the “perpetrator”, and regardless of apology, punishment, or submission, will probably reoccur in the future.
I agree that this is a failure mode—that’s why the title talks about avoiding these scenarios. You want to avoid things getting to this point, but also recognize that if things did get to this point, trying to solve the casus belli here and now is not a viable path forward. The spiral must be diffused first.
After that, yes, you should step back and consider whether the original problem still exists and is worth addressing, and if so do so when everyone is calm and proceed super carefully.
It would be helpful if people would explain themselves when they did something that seemed reasonable to them at the time, or were working under constraints that were not obvious to the disappointed person—or simply took disappointing someone as an opportunity to talk about adjusting future expectations.
“Submission” is an explanation for why people often don’t bother to do this, and try to simply accept a lowered status. This behavior only makes sense if it is sometimes adaptive. And the simplest explanation for why it is adaptive, is that in their experience it’s often been what the disappointed/angry person wants.
Well, yeah. The vast majority of such fights would be far more painful if the perpetrator said “yup, I found something better to do; this is not as important to me as it is to you” than the social fiction of apologizing and claiming weakness.