One would assume that explaining what you need from people is simple enough to do. However, the truth is that some people see the world from such opposite perspectives that explaining a simple thing may take you a lifetime, and it’s simply not worth the effort. Personally, I spent 25 of my adult years trying to express my position and thoughts to my mother, and eventually, I gave up trying. She took not one word I said seriously, as it was all so irritating to her that she thought I was trying to piss her off on purpose, so she did the same to me.

People are very different at times. So different that one person’s attempt to reject another sounds like a marriage proposal to them – I kid you not. Imagine this situation: You’re trying to explain to your girlfriend or boyfriend why you must leave them. They see it as your confession that you’re incapable of commitment or they’re not to your liking, which, to them, doesn’t mean you’re actually leaving, but that they must help you to stay faithful to them because you’re not good at commitment and that they must change for you so you can be happy in that relationship – and all they need from you now is help to change. But they’re happy you’re finally opening up, so you can get serious about your relationship.

Another example is that when one type of person eventually loses all of their respect for another type due to their behavior and constant bitching, they eventually blow up and start arguing with them along the same lines. While this person feels no love or respect toward the other, the other feels that the ice has finally been broken, and now, you’re communicating and “bonding.”

Your life is too short to keep explaining yourself to someone incapable of seeing your perspective.

Explaining yourself to a person who cannot see another person’s perspective as valid is absolutely futile. I would have never thought I’d say this myself because I always thought the only thing you need to do is to talk about it, just express it… Be clear and honest in your words, and everything will be fine… Now, I know that is not true. The two thinker types, the Young Soul* and the Old Souls* are so different that communication between them is practically white noise. We understand the basics: I am hungry, I am sad, I am angry. And everything deeper than that is not worth discussing, basically – and I am absolutely certain most of you won’t believe me until you give it a good, real try… And the only situation where I give it half a chance of working is with a person who you love unconditionally, and you wish nothing but to bond with them forever… But mind you – they might not feel that way about you.

When two people’s objectives are inherently different, a discussion between them is wasted time. If you want to separate from someone and they want to create a bond, you’ll be discussing on cross purposes. EVEN THEN we run into a problem where the other one doesn’t think you’re seriously trying to leave, and they’re just getting bored with your hesitation; they may think you’re still together and act accordingly, making couple’s arrangements without taking your leaving plans into account, or acting like they have to keep taking care of you even though you’re SAYING you’re leaving. Still, they don’t think they’d be as lucky that you are leaving. They act sad on the surface because they want to pretend as though your leaving is making them sad, and you don’t want to go because they are so inconsolable.

Sometimes people act unaffected in the wrong place because they think you’re bluffing and emotionally manipulative, so they don’t show their emotions and signs of understanding you.

Knowing the Young Soul* and the Cat Thinking will help determine when the talk is wasted.

Your intention to flirt with someone may be equally ineffective because of a perspective difference. It may be very difficult to start a conversation to explain yourself when your initial starting point is too polarised: She’s beautiful (presumed user), he’s handsome (presumed player). In truth, both want a relationship with each other, but others interpret everything they say and do from their fear of rejection. Therefore they’re both kinds of playing each other to put the other one at ease: Pretending not to be as keen as they are, to make it seem safe to get to know the other without that instant “I want to marry you and have 12 kids with you” feeling.

Explaining yourself may also not work too well when you’re accused of murder or any other crime; there will always be people – even the judge – who won’t understand your reasons or perspectives or don’t sympathize with them. People have a different levels of need for freedom, for instance. When one person feels protected and secure by a parent’s behavior, another person feels driven to a corner, suffering and abused. Teenagers who cannot see eye-to-eye with their parents should have the option to leave the house before they feel the need to kill their parents, as different people mature and feel the need to gain autonomy varies dramatically.

Yes, knowing the differences between the Young Soul* and the Old Souls* help in communication, especially when you write political messages and advertising. You emphasize different things to the Young Soul* than to the Old Souls*. The biggest asset of the theories, however, is not to make a union happen between these thinker types but to avoid getting into a relationship with the wrong ones, to begin with. It helps you to understand WHEN to keep explaining yourself and when it is time to give up and cut your losses.

No form of communication made a difference to me in the 46 years of my life with my mom.

Just to share my personal experience after first talking to my mother in person, in an email, and in spirit, not one of these conversations has made even the slightest bit of a difference in our relationship. She still thinks we are “so much alike,” and I think we couldn’t be more different if we tried to be. Even after all this time, I’m not sure what she thinks because she never speaks directly. Everything that she says is a riddle or some form of a hoax, it seems… And I like people who talk honestly and directly to each other, who don’t argue but converse nicely. She thinks the only time people are honest with each other is when they are angry. Still, because I’m still yelling at her to go fuck herself, she thinks I haven’t gotten the anger out. She’s convinced that if she just keeps pushing my buttons further, eventually, I’ll be angry enough to tell her the absolute, undeniable truth: “I love you, mom, you are my hero, I admire you, I want to be just like you, but I don’t know how I’ll ever measure up.” Every small thing I’ve ever said to her in that direction serves to her as definitive evidence that’s what I feel. The fact I scream in her face that she’s a boring old mean cunt whose life I would never want to lead to her means a simple insecurity statement, deflection from the truth of my absolute adoration of her and her being. (She has her moments, don’t get me wrong, but she is FAR, FAR from my ideal person, and I’ve struggled my whole life to feel genuine love for her. I’ve tried… So hard.)

She has urged me to write this post in spirit, probably to talk myself into “opening up” to her. The trouble with communication like this is that you’ve already decided what the other person wants to tell you, and you think everything else is a lie or a deflection. Communication, thus, is rendered absolutely useless if anything you say is being directed into a filter of some description, and all they hear is what they’ve already decided to be true: “You love me unconditionally (and you know for a fact I love you; therefore you’re arguing with me to show me how much you trust our love for one another,)” “you’re a man; therefore you’ll say whatever you have to get laid,” “you’re a woman, and you’re just playing nice because you want my money….” When the other person is, in addition, more than ready to get you laid, give you his money, or to love you unconditionally while fighting you for the rest of your existence, they’ll just want you to ADMIT IT, even though you would feel in your heart of hearts that this presumption has no bearing with the truth whatsoever.

Listening and “listening.”

There can also be a situation where one person feels like they are “listening” when they are trying to read things between the lines. If another person is yelling at them to “listen to me, you never listen to me, for once, listen to what I’m saying,” they may sharpen their ears and try to listen to the clues in your words because what you are saying in the lines of your speaking is either so foreign to them or so unpleasant to them, that they feel that the real message is hidden between the lines of what you’re saying.

If this is where your conversation is at, I suggest you start putting your message between the lines. Be kind in a sarcastic tone, act politely on the surface but cold on the inside, or whatever you feel, stop saying it out loud. People who hear stuff between the lines cannot hear the truth that they are being told in their face… Nothing confuses a riddler as a truth told openly.

When the other type says “listen to me” they mean listen to the very words I’m saying to you, and take me seriously. Don’t keep inventing new ways to interpret my words; calm down, just listen, I am explaining it as I feel it; nothing is hidden. But if that person is unwilling to receive the message, they feel that when they hear again that “you don’t want to be with them,” they’ll decide you are, after all, still talking in riddles or trying to coach them to have better self-esteem or believe in themselves more or you’re setting them up for a surprise proposal for all I know.

If one person had made up their mind about the nature of your relationship before you had a real one even, it might be completely futile to try and talk to them about it.

Communication may also make your relationship unworkable.

There is also the possibility that a relationship that could have been lived with turns toxic with communication. When you wish for a better relationship with someone that isn’t compatible with you, you try and create a connection through conversation, right? However, if people are too different to their core, they may just find out ugly things about each other that they were blissfully unaware of before and that their love for each other was based on a type of fantasy image they had of that person.

The “love” that existed may quickly turn sour when the veil is lifted through conversation. It is also true that extroverts enjoy their relationships much more because they rarely talk honestly. They live in an imaginary world where everyone they interact with is much like themselves. Introverts are largely introverts because they… talk and communicate and understand differences between people much better than extroverts do… And as a consequence, introverts don’t truly like many people on a personal level, even if they accept different types of people and their perspectives easier.

Do you love them, or do you love them not?

As far as your personal relationships go, the decision on whether communication will be a good idea comes down to this: Do you love them, or do you not love them? Can you still live with them in a casual, shallow relationship with no hope for something better?

If you love them and are not afraid of their rejection, tell them you love them even if you think they know. After you’ve put their mind at ease about that, other messages may go through a little easier.

Once you’ve at the end of your tether, and you don’t love them or just don’t love them enough to waste your life arguing with them – walk away. Stop all communication, block them on social media, and make your friends and family members choose between you two. (And mind you, you HAVE TO make this clear to your friends sometimes: It’s either them or I. You can’t have us both. Final opportunity to choose a side; I’ll block the lot of you after your decision – if you can’t choose, I will.)

Principles are principles, however. You make exceptions as you must in order, to be honest. Maybe leave a door open for a certain individual to change sides, but stop talking to them for as long as you feel they’ll “bleed” into the relationship you must cut away.

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