Emotional Blackmail

I suppose everyone must have experienced being made to look like the bad guy when all they did is to point out that, say, "Hey, something doesn't look quite right here," or "Hey, that argument doesn't make any logical sense." It's one thing if you were being rude or impolite, or it just wasn't the right time for unsolicited advice, but sometimes even if you were being polite and you were in the appropriate forum, instead of getting a valid response, they get "I am so hurt. You have no regards for my feelings." or "I am so hurt. You don't even appreciate my efforts."

That sucks, right?

I don't know of any scientific studies about it, but I know I usually get that from women, particularly women who are said to be or claim to be highly intuitive. Which could as well be synonymous to highly emotional, but that is only my personal observation (I don't belittle intuition at all. It's possible that it's heightened mental processing, so there's nothing hocus pocus about it. But to act blindly on intuition certainly is hocus pocus. And we can leave that, my lovelies, until the next blog post or so). And there's this one particular woman I went to college with who totally gave me hell with how she reacted. We were working on a team project, and, during one meeting, she was on her laptop doing something totally unrelated, and she still hasn't done what she said she'd do, and that has made us far behind schedule, and so I pointed it out to her, very politely, meaning calmly, without using any cuss word, without any screaming, without any sarcasm. She ran out of the room wailing.

I thought, and hoped, that it must only have been the stress of having to deal with a lot of things like homework and exams and terror teachers and having to cram all of that in only 24 hours per day. Then she blogged about it and made it appear like I was antagonizing her for no reason. I wish I could find the link, but it's a private blog, and it's been years since I unfriended her from that site, so I can't view it anymore, but I don't remember her writing about what happened before her histrionic fit. All it said was that I was an insensitive bitch and I hurt her a lot but she's forgiven me because she values our friendship more than being right. What disappoints me was that she didn't address the real issue at all, which was her procrastination. I would have made up with her if she didn't resort to emotional blackmail. In fact there really wasn't any making up to do. It's not like I was picking a fight with her. Well, according to her, I was.

Frustrating, really frustrating.