Do you take the time to question intentions?
Asked by
trumi (
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October 28th, 2009
When somebody wrongs you, or seems to wrong you, or annoys you, or hurts you… do you ever stop to wonder why?
Intentions are a slippery thing. You never really know another person’s intentions, you only know your own. But through deductive reasoning it’s safe to assume that you can at the very least Guess at another person’s intentions, right? Shouldn’t you ask yourself, in any situation, “why is this person saying/doing these things?”
I feel like some people jump too quickly to a person’s actions as a testament to their character. People seem too quick to condemn each other without pausing to question why a person has done such a thing. Am I alone in thinking this?
I don’t mean to say that a person should not be held responsible for their actions, or that we should all strive to be psychics. I’m just saying that maybe we should all slow down, think, and try to understand one another. Right?
What do you think about intentions? Are they worth speculating on?
This isn’t part of the question. I ask because of my new girlfriend. Apparently when some people are stressed out about work/school and other pressures they take it out on their significant others… She has been unable to sleep, and therefore cranky, and it seems like anything I say or do pisses her off. For example, I ask her “What can I do to help” and she yells “You can’t help”, so I say “Well do you want to talk about it”, and she says “I can’t”... It’s not yet unhealthy, it’s just a recent thing… if it gets worse I’ll break it off, don’t worry. Anyway, I know how to handle the situation, and therefore it’s not the subject of my question. I just know that I personally always try to recognize my SO’s intentions when they’re upsetting me, because if they’re genuinely trying to be a good SO I want to recognize that before taking it out on them. Apparently she hasn’t mastered this skill yet. We’ll see how it plays out.
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8 Answers
she sounds like a very selfish and immature young woman. but you’ve said you’ll break it off when it gets there, so you must know what you’re doing.
yes I do take the time (albeit a short time) to consider people’s intentions or reasons why they’re being jerks…it’s very rarely about myself and almost always about them…as is in the case of your gf which doesn’t make it right…
Sometimes this sort of anger is a learned coping mechanism, left over from childhood. If she’s not taking it out on other people, like at work and at school, and she really doesn’t expect you make it better, then just give her wide berth and let her work through it. Not everyone is pleasant at home all the time.
The time to talk with her about her stress management style is when she’s not stressed about anything.
I always question peoples intentions, behind bad acts, and behind good acts.
I’m the same as jackm. I always question people’s intentions. And frankly, it’s sometimes a good thing, but I tend to think about things a lot before acting, and sometimes questioning intentions can just prolong my thinking.
PS You might want to consider or think about a possibility of her suffering from depression.
I wonder why people do things, and I try to gather the information necessary to figure that out. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, but when it comes to personal relationships, I tend to assume the worst, probably due to my insecurities. It’s really hard for me to look at my relationships the same way as I look at other people’s relationships.
So I tend to jump to one interpretation of behavior without stopping to check it out, even though I know I should check it out first.
we can never really know what people’s intentions really are and even when we might think we know what they are or they tell us…maybe they don’t even really know what they are..they can only give their own subjective judgement and once that gets mixed up with your judgement that’s when it gets messy.
I’ve recently started just trying to accept reality and what is true in any given circumstance…what i can only absolutely know what is true and work with that… everything else falls away then.
You sound like a very understand and patient person… this seems to be the truth about this situation specifically
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