Spending a lifetime being offended.

There are people, in increasing numbers these days, who choose to spend their lives being offended. A feeling of offense comes from realizing that another person holds a negative view of you or someone you like. Sometimes the negative suggestion is imagined; another person points out a purely neutral trait of yours or another person, and you read a negative connotation to it: “You know, Seb is a brunette.” “Oh what, you’re calling me/her boring?!” “What no? I just said she has brown hair.” “Yeah, but why did you have to bring it up if you didn’t mean something by it…”

It is also not too healthy to be constantly worried about offending other people, you are basically living a life on eggshells as if you were surrounded by an army of narcissists (who are great at taking offense and picking a fight with it) or constantly insisting that people are offended with you basically over whatever they say… or don’t say to you. You can be raised to do this, and in a #meToo era, everybody is at least attempting to treat everybody as if everybody were as sensitive as the most delicate of narcissists can be… It can actually be a little insulting to be treated this way, too; “I am offended that you think I’d find that offensive.” The snake is starting to eat its own tail.

Offending people as a form of flirtation.

There are people who thrive to offend others, truly, not people like stand-up comedians who play with offensive things to say that mean to convey nothing but mutual trust and goodwill, but people who truly try to be mean to others in order to cause offense. Interestingly enough, these people also do not mean harm, per se, but they are testing others on whether their words carry any weight with you. Their idea is that if you like them, you’d feel offended or insulted to think that they think that way about you. They feel offended and disregarded when you don’t take offense in what they say, but you can, of course, take that information in any way you like. (I personally couldn’t care less if they get offended by me not taking offense, or if they take offense by me finding the whole practice stupid as.)

So these people believe everyone takes offense as a form of flirtation; “oh I’m offended you’d think that way about me”, but people who don’t use offense in this manner won’t often get it. They simply find that person to not like them, and they simply figure “you know what… You don’t HAVE TO like me. I’ll just move on with my life.” And the offensive flirter comes after them “but I SAID I HATE THE COLOR OF YOUR HAIR!” “Why do you look at me when you hate me… Why would I look at you when you make me hate you too? I sense a smell of retribution in the air… I don’t even understand why the fuck you even care…?” Axl Rose wrote in “Get in the Ring“, basically an open letter to his “haters” in celebrity magazines – people desperate to get his attention, I figure.

When you deliberately offend people who don’t understand your true meaning.

Unfortunately, the feelings of people who recognize an offense as a deliberate or constantly insensitive remark on them tend to turn off completely over time rather than flair up into something more powerful as intended. If you constantly get the message of “I don’t like you, I find you and your thoughts ridiculous, I am embarrassed to know you…” you are going to withdraw from a person like that, even if that’s your own family or the person you loved the most in this world. They may not be offended, per se, but they simply figure: “Oh, so-and-so doesn’t like me very much, do they? Well, I guess I just move on, then.”

The thing is, tho, people who try to offend you on purpose want to “get inside your skin” to cause a lover’s quarrel of some description. They feel that if they offend you, they mean something to you, they matter to you – even if just a little. But if this attack never ends, it can truly erode the relationship down to nothing if the receiving end doesn’t operate in that way. It is a good thing to know, that there are people who try to offend you for two different reasons; as just described, as a way to get closer to you and to test your sense of humor, and build mutual trust. The tonality of these offenses changes a little, however; the latter is supposed to be funny, the former doesn’t seem to be funny.

There are ways to not feel offended ever, even when you know someone is trying to offend you, and that is to simply NOT BE the kind of person you’d ever be ashamed of being, and if there is shame in you, you should work through it so people can’t truly offend you.

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