2001-08-16 - 4:18 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: "Surfin' USA", The Beach Boys

So I am thinking hard lately about the notion of being "offended". Or in personal relationships, the notion of being hurt by one's partner.

You're probably not going to believe me when I say this, but Poindexter does not, ever, hurt my feelings. I don't seem to hurt his, either. I'm trying to pin down why.

I asked him just now, "Can you remember the last time I hurt your feelings?"

He couldn't think of a time.

"Well, I have I ever done it?"

He supposes I might have, but can't remember anything.

Asking him this makes me feel uncomfortable. I sit with my heart in my throat worrying that he's going to come up with something. I never get over feeling bad for hurting someone's feelings. Ever. I remember shitty things I said years ago and still feel bad about them. Even when it was unintentional, as most of the cases are. Since I've become an adult, I have gotten very good at restraining myself from lashing out. I'm also good at focusing on the postive aspects of people. But sometimes I do end up hurting people's feelings, and I never stop feeling bad about it, even when they've forgiven and forgotten. I've apologized to my brother very recently for calling him names and putting him down as a kid. He thinks I'm a nut for doing that.

So anyway, there's all this, and I'm waiting to hear if I've hurt the feelings of POINDEXTER, the person I love most in the world.

Much to my relief, he can't come up with anything. So I ask,

"Could I hurt your feelings? If so, how?"

His reply to that was "If you insulted me, and meant it."

What the hell could I say to insult him? "Your chef skills are slipping; this meal sucks." That wouldn't happen. I'd phrase it far more diplomatically. "Um, I think it needs a little something, I'm not sure what."

Okay, how 'bout, "You're too fat to have sex with."

I ran that one by him. He said, "You'd have to mean it."

Then he said, "You insult me all the time." Which is true. I do. I call him "fat boy". But he knows that I don't mean it, or more specifically, that I love the little collection of schmoo around his waistline, so he never feels hurt.

So, okay, we've figured out one way to cause hurt feelings. Insult someone, and mean it.

But why does it hurt?

Does it hurt because someone you love doesn't like some aspect of you? Sometimes that can be the case.

But what about when it's someone who doesn't mean anything to you? In that case, it's almost certainly because you agree with them on some level and you're not happy about whatever it is.

What about the situations when it was unintentional? When your feelings are hurt, but it's not because they were insulting you?

Shit, this would be a good time to come up with a specific example. Let me try to make something up.

Okay, you've all heard me whine about my hairy legs. Let's pretend that instead of just being occasionally bugged and mildly amused by them, I am deeply insecure about them. If someone mentions my hairy legs, or said, "you could really benefit from waxing," I am deeply hurt. Let's also pretend that plenty of people who love me point out that I have really nice legs, and the hair is not a problem -- in fact, some men can't keep from drooling when they look at my legs -- but no one can persuade me that it's okay to be hairy. I hate my legs. I'm always upset about them and talk about it all the time.

Now suppose a friend says, "It's silly to worry so much about your legs," and I get all pissed off.

Suppose I hear that as "you're silly". The friend says, "No, I don't think you're silly, I think that the concept of worrying so much about something that isn't really any big deal is silly. I'm sorry if it hurt your feelings, but that's not what I meant."

Would you be pissed? Is it reasonable for me to be pissed? Did the friend do anything wrong?

In a situation like this, I see the problem as being with me. I have the low self-esteem where my hairy legs are concerned, so when somebody says something mean about them -- or something that might possibly be interpreted as mean -- I feel terrible because I agree with them on some level.

[BTW, this is an almost literal description of something that happened to me once, except hairy legs wasn't the problem, and I was the friend who said it was silly to worry.]

Now suppose I'm the real me, and I'd rather have less leg hair but it's not a self-esteem issue. In that case, I don't give a shit what you think about my legs. If you eye my five o'clock shadow and tell me I need to shave more often, I'll say, "I shaved this morning. Fuck you."

Basically, I noticed that when I got to the point in my life that I was comfortable with myself (and having Poindexter as my number one fan helped, I'm sure, plus a previous boyfriend who thought I worried far too much about inconsequential shit, and he was right), I became nearly impervious to insults. The only time I get worked up by something someone says is if I'm afraid they might be right and I'm not comfortable with whatever it is about me that they're allegedly insulting. Or if they're downright wrong (like they would be if they said I was, say, condescending to nonwhite persons) and I want to correct the lie.

Then if I do think they're right, I think about whether it's something I want to change. If it is, I work on it. If it's not, I dismiss it.

So basically what I'm saying is that what Eleanor Roosevelt said is true: No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

There's another kind of insult, though, that doesn't have to do with self-esteem. It's when you know that someone you love doesn't like something about you, particularly when it's something you can't change or it would go against your principles to change it. Even if I'm 100% happy with my legs, it would hurt if Poindexter found them repulsive. In fact, I'd develop a fucking complex about my legs, start shaving three times a day, and it would start to bleed into other areas of our relationship, always worrying that he wasn't happy with me in some way.

What would I do in a situation like that? Get rid of Poindexter? Insist that he learn to like them? After all, any guy who hates my legs really has no business being with me, does he? And actually, if he so strongly dislikes some part of me, is HE the one with an attitude adjustment to make?

In the end, I suppose, there's nothing to do but compromise. I agree to shave regularly if he agrees not to make faces or complain.

Maybe what it comes down to with me is intent. Poindexter never intends to hurt me, and if he did by accident, he'd feel bad. So even if he WAS unhappy with some aspect of my person or personality, I know that it doesn't mean that he doesn't think everything else is downright wonderful. And if he was more concerned with my flaws than he was with the wonderful parts, maybe the whole relationship would need reconsidering.

This is making my head hurt.

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