One day a guy shows up at a desk. I dropped by and invited him to lunch, but thinking he’d say no. There was a considerable difference in our ages. But I thought I’d be polite and social.
He thought for a few seconds and said … sure.
He had the best stories. I have good stories. He had better. He’d been a dresser for Nureyev and traveled the world. He’d taught celestial navigation at RIT. He’d raced the Bermuda race and had a lifetime winning record against Buckley.
And he was dead three months later from the cancer he had that day. I can’t remember any of the lunch gang but I can remember him.
The difficulty is, in many cultures - if you repeatedly invite someone and they don't attend - people view it as disrespectful to them.
So knowing the difference between a friend who needs inclusion, and something else might be hard to discern.
But agree, it's a story that should cause a moment of reflection on your own friends & interactions.
Group B thinks that it's a desire-based decision: that Person A does not want to participate.
They don't always realize - because for many, this simply doesn't "track" - that Person A may simply consider themselves unworthy.
This is something I think I am learning now, painfully late. I'm 51. I think I'm beginning to realize that I was a feral kitten for much of my life, claw-swiping at the milk syringe out of fear when people were trying to be nice to me.
The author of this should extend his LibGen browser to consult Anna’s Archive and z-lib:
If you can approach them and get rejected each time, then surely they can approach you for advice on how to approach a problem.
I guess a generalized lesson can be derived from this story: Never give up on people.
Certainly in a company setting, for the teams cohesiveness, you should plan a variety of outings.
This went on for months.
Finally I asked him if he really didn't understand that I had never had, and never would have, any alcohol. My father was an alcoholic -- everyone in our crowd knew, and knew how I handled the situation. Craig replied, "Yeah, I just figure maybe someday you'll want to try it, so I ask to be nice."
Not wanting to go out "to party" is not a moral failing, a problem, a fault, something which someone needs to overcome. If you like that person you can find something to do on a Friday night you both enjoy, if you don't then I doubt that you really care for that person at all.
"Friends" always invite us to their house. They have two large poorly behaved dogs, with no boundaries, and terrible hygiene. There is no way to explain, they love their dogs! So we always politely decline.
One rule that helped me fight my depression was to accept invites no matter what. Go to the loud bar I don't like? I'm in. Cake decorating workshop with annoyingly cheerful Jennifer? Sign me up. Join Joel for his 5am workout? I'm not sleeping anyway.
You get the idea. But it can only work when others take the initiative.
A lot of people genuinely don't want to hang out with you. Likely that number exceeds the "real" Anna's by an order of magnitude.
If there's someone I particularly like, I'll keep inviting him. But if the person is otherwise normal (e.g. clearly has a social life), I invite 3-5 times, and then stop. If the guy wants to hang out with me, the ball's in his court.
You'll find no shortage of people who'll say "Hey man! What happened? I never hear from you any more!"
To which I'd love to respond with s/any more/ever/
If you're the guy who always invite people regardless of their response (or non-response), you'll find that people will have an expectation that you always invite them. I would recommend not getting to that point.
My interpretation is that Alexei might well have understood that Anna felt lonely / homesick. The reaching out could well have been simply sympathetic and well thought through to help include someone. That's what people did for me when I was young and out of my depth. Those people probably helped steer me into a good place when it could've gone bad.
It's always nice to reflect on the kindness of others. :)
I'm not a very social person by nature, and it has taken years -- decades, actually -- for me to get to the point where I feel comfortable in professional situations. One of the strategies I've developed to cope with this is to just be completely honest and upfront about my intentions.
This has backfired a couple of times when I started doing it, so I've since modified it to "wait until you're confident they're not shady". With that addition it has served me well.
Organizers also put themselves out there when they suggest and idea and invite people. Being repeatedly shot down feels bad too.
The core of my friend circles is the people who keep showing up. They're receptive to each other's plans and proactive about making them happen. When they show up, they bring the homemade dips. You can't get anything off the ground with a group of Annas.
The whole friend group took their turns and attempts at inviting him.
It sort of stopped altogether when we started getting responses like "hey, don't call me without scheduling a call with me before" or getting a text 3 days later "hey what's up, I don't want to hang out".
He's a workaholic and believes his work is the most important thing (he switches jobs every 6-9 months) so the whole friend group has now just stopped trying.
For context, this has been going on for 10 years and about a year ago everyone stopped trying.
Anna's behaviour indicates social anxiety grown into general avoidance (speaking from my own experience), and what's described in this story is the worst possible way to help a person with this condition. Alexei felt good about himself though, I suppose.
To even be more cynical, maybe Alexei wanted something more from Anna? Because I certainly haven't seen people invite someone to repeatedly get declined.
People who seem to like this story for the feeling of warmth seem to me to be the similar ones as those who "save food" for the children of Africa - disconnection from the reality is huge.
This is one main reason loneliness is a silent killer: nothing gets put into the calendar.
Yes. The strategy outlined in the article works for college, but really afterwards. It's really creepy to constantly invite someone who has clearly stated intentions of never joining.
Anna in the story did not express regret that she never joined. And as far as we know, Alexei wasn't expecting her to take his invitations either - because it wasn't about actually getting her to go to the party, it was just about communicating to her that the "we've stopped inviting you to our group events because you always say no" moment never happened and she was still a part of the group. That was what she had appreciated in the end.
On the other hand, what your group attempted seems more like a concerted push to change the person's behavior. Most people would probably reject that if they want to stay in control of their own plans.
This is a good thing!
It doesn't (necessarily) mean that person doesn't want to be friends or doesn't value your group; it means they feel comfortable telling you how they feel even though doing so is a mild violation of social norms.
If I were in your shoes, I'd just make sure they're not accidentally booted from the group chat (etc.), but otherwise just leave them be. Maybe a couple of times a year mention something like "We're all going to ___ next week, if you'd like to join. No stress!" just as a keepalive, but otherwise let them do their own thing.
I have several very close, long-term friends that I've not spoken to in months or years, because that's just who we are and where we are in life. If any of them called me in an emergency I'd drop everything to help them, and I'm 100% confident they would do the same. We _have_ done that for each other before.
frankly I'm a little jealous.... I can't imagine anyone, let alone a whole friend group, putting in that level of effort to stay in touch with me. I would probably disappear from everyone's imaginations if I didn't regularly reach out to people.
So a pro tip: if you're starting a new job or something and want to integrate into the social circles, be prepared to drop everything for those first few invitations. The first one is basically mandatory.
These invites that are always declined only provide an illusion of inclusion.
We ended up hanging out quite a bit during those early months.I think the moral is for everyone to be individually a bit nicer, not one friend group to support an entire community.
Anna has a mouth she can use to speak up, instead of relying on others ability to read (possibly unexpressed) social cues.
Also what world do you live in where an invitation to somewhere from your friend group can be seen as disrespectful, intrusive, or rude? Talk about disconnect from reality.
this kinda ties into a more general blind spot for nerds on the internet. there's no obligation for people to include you in their personal lives (or vice versa) just because you vaguely know them. if someone chooses to do so and you want it to continue, you gotta reciprocate somehow.
Of course “action follows motivation” but even when not motivated “motivation follows action”.
For example, even as a healthy person I am not always motivated to go to the gym after a busy day at work which I am “so tired from”. I go dispite the lack of motivation. Unsurprisingly, I walk out of the gym feeling re-motivated and “with more energy”.
"It was last weekend", he said.
"Oh, I didn't get an invite"
"That's because you never come"
She looked shocked, I think she genuinely didn't know what to say. After an awkward silence she said, "but I liked to be invited"
"I'll happily invite you next year if you promise to come"
She smiled politely and walked away.
It was memorable to me because it was such a foreign interaction on both sides from my perspective.
In order to get over my social anxiety I did the same. First year of college, I'm in to every event, hangout and gathering. I made many close friends, connections, memories.
Yet after any significant social interaction I was somehow, inexplicably, almost mysteriously, extremely exhausted. A lunch with few close friends would have me resting on the couch for a few hours afterwards. A meetup with more people would incapacitate me for the weekend. There was no alcohol or anything, the exhaustion wasn't physical but mental.
I kept at it for a year but the anxiety never eased off like so many "Get out of your room, touch grass, socialize" people claim. By the second year I was literally dreading getting out of my dorm room to get groceries for the off chance I'd meet a friend in the building. Meanwhile everybody loved me and were very friendly to me, but for some reason I was feeling like secretly everybody doesn't like me. I had negative amounts of self confidence and had constant people-pleasing behavior.
My friends kept inviting me because I was showing up to every event.
It turns out I had undiagnosed autism and ADHD. I was masking all this time[1]. The reason I felt why everybody doesn't like me was because I didn't like my friends, but never deemed my emotions important enough to even realize that.
After I realized this I let go of %99 of my "friendship"s and I'm much, much happier, content and stress-free than ever before. The comfortable level of socialization for me is maybe an outdoor activity with a close friend once a month.
Anna needs to realize that the amount of people who have the time and willingness to invite someone out for _years_ while receicing no is very low. These friends need to be treasured and appreciated, and Anna needs to make an effort by saying yes sometimes, or at least expressing what she's going through. The friends are making an effort by keeping her in the group, she needs to do the same.
These days I know a lot of busy people, so my softer version is, if I invite you to a thing and three times in a row you don't even reply, I'll probably just quietly stop inviting you altogether. I'm ok to keep you on the list if you make the effort to reply and explain why you can't come.
Sometimes when my friends wanted to do something, I'd suggest asking someone who frequently declined and they'd ask what the point was.
Well either our friend joins us for once or she declines, but if you at least ask she knows she was wanted and thought of. Pure upside.
It sucks being alone at home. It sucks more to be alone in a party.
You can create energy through effort.
To your last point, I'm feeling much better when not pushing myself so hard to be social but the question I'm grappling with now is somewhat selfish but about how to make sure I have support? E.g. I had a friend who just went through a cancer diagnosis and a lot of us friends and his community rallied for him. It also made me wonder about what happens if I get very sick, or lose my job and don't have a professional network to reach out to or personal/friendship support, or just if my car breaks down at 1am or something, or just being very lonely without real close friends.
How are you reconciling this sort of thing in your own life?
In the story,it was only first semester, so at most mid August to mid December.
If you have friends you think are depressed or have something else going on, by all means reach out, but thats not the same thing.
I was merely pointing out that most people who don't respond or always say "no" are not like the Anna in this submission. If I know someone who is in similar shoes as Anna, then I have no problem continuing to invite.
Nowadays, people just ignore / ghost you and don’t even take the time to answer
Maybe it's an age thing, a "head of household" thing, or just an A(u)DHD thing - but I've definitely been in places in my life where I didn't have time to do anything discretionary.
To put it another way - if they're willing to ask you to schedule time to talk to them, they're already violating social norms. Why would they bother to give you a way to get ahold of them if they didn't value the relationship? Why not just reply "I don't want to talk to you" instead?
It sounds to me like they're legitimately just way too busy, to the point that they're likely well down the road toward burnout and don't even have time for themselves.
From the article:
After that first semester, the friend group disbanded and we all went our separate ways.You are funny and aggressive at the same time. Good job.
Don't twist my words. Its not invitation that is the problem, but spam of invitations from the group that doesn't take your opinion into account. Its harresement.
It appears its not my take that is one dimensional.
“It costs nothing to be kind.”
Whenever I go anywhere or make plans to do something social, I try to invite everyone I can. You’re sending the invite already, the marginal extra keystrokes it takes to add someone is trivial. And even if you know they’re not interested, the invitation might bring them some joy, so why not?
Life is not a game where people build up points with you and you start to be kind to them only if they maintain themselves above a threshold.
They have the famous (repeat) prisoner's game, where two parties decide to either collaborate or to screw the other party. People ran software simulations of various strategies, and the winner is: Tit for tat. In other words, you start positive (invite), and stay like that until the other person screws you. They you screw them once next time and turn collaborative again immediately after (no hard feelings).
I'm not advocating you play the prisoner's game on people, but it's interesting that people worked formally on something relating to this.
By the time facebook has been used to plan events, your list of potential Anna's will be in the high dozens, because Anna doesn't use fb and it's too difficult to send sms's. You simply cannot keep this up with all the Anna's.
Per the second sentence of the article, declines were limited in scope to party invites, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45348495#45355972
We ended up hanging out quite a bit during those early months.If it's constantly "no", to anything, including a chill tea evening with 3 people or movie theater or walk in the park or museum etc., then I'd conclude she doesn't like the group/me and the invites are probably annoying.
It reminds me of a relationship I had once which didn't work out for many reasons, but one thing in particular stood out: how we each expected to ask and receive help.
She would expect me to see that she needed help and just jump in. When no help was forthcoming she would just get more and more frustrated and annoyed that I wasn't helping. She treated me how she wanted to be treated: if she thought I needed help she'd just jump in and try to help.
But I was also treating her how I wanted to be treated. I don't like it when people just jump in and help. I want to figure things out for myself and if I want help I'll ask for it. So by each treating each other how we wanted to be treated we just annoyed each other constantly. It turns out the "golden rule" doesn't actually work; you can't just assume people are the same as you.
The invitation thing is similar. Some people will take "no" as a rejection. They know that if they say no then it means no, so they assume the same for others. But sometimes no really means "not this time, but please ask again". I have heard some people being really explicit when saying "no", like "sorry, I can't make it this time but I really want to join you so please invite me next time".
I now get to the gym (or some form of exercise) 6 days a week. That was entirely because I made the decision to go to the gym and watch some YouTube.
Then I’d end up staying 90 mins but I’d get my 50 min workout in with a lot of long breaks! Then things started becoming a habit but I still have many days where I just watch YouTube at the gym lol
Or it was just a comment without any major feelings of dominance attached to it. Some people interpret everything as a status fight, but most dont.
A good boss will try to work with you to resolve the issue, and help you transition to another role or company if that isn’t possible. A bad one will undermine you, violate your confidences by reporting the concern up the chain, or even outright fire you. I’ve had the all of the above happen, though it’s been a while. I think I’ve gotten better at judging people, but it’s also possible that I’ve just had a lucky streak.
There's a big difference between inviting a regular to something they may or may not like, and inviting someone who's absent for everything.
> Some people will take "no" as a rejection.
People say "no" because they mean "no", and people accept "no" as meaning "no". This is how adults communicate. I don't think you can both-sides this situation.
Trying to dress this up as adhd/age/head of household (what is that even??) is just expecting the world to revolve around you
No, learn to be a decent person.
The group of friends is saying "you are invited" to someone probably disinterested - polite and inclusive to some, bothersome spam to others.
The 'workaholic' is saying "no thanks, and please stop bothering me"
The group of friends is stopping bothering him
Good clear adult communication, clearly expressing boundaries and gladly respecting them.
If somebody I don’t want to hang out with keeps inviting me that doesn’t make me feel good about myself, that makes me feel anxious, like I haven’t properly clarified our relationship with them.
> That person likes to be invited to feel like they are the more valuable person in the relationship.
For me, I would expect the opposite - if you get invited all the time but never come, it’s because you’re not actually involved in their life, you’re not actually all that valuable. In order to be valuable you’d have to be making the effort to be present, or at the very least, communicating your availability so the other person would better understand when it’s appropriate to expect you.
Sadly, I’m not.
People can be quite cruel; especially as a mob.
You’d think that a crowd like nerds, with our famously awkward aspect, and the way so many of us were treated, would be empathetic, but it seems that the treatment has actually had the opposite effect. I suspect many of us have had “nerdy” bosses that were walking nightmares.
It didn’t happen to me, but that’s through no fault of my own. I had a lot of stuff happen to me, that forced me to become empathetic. If that hadn’t happened, I suspect I would have been a real demon.
Be careful. It is trivial for others to take advantage of such selfless kindness. Ingratitude is common, as is sociopathy. Altruists often discover that the world does not reciprocate.
Nowadays this happens even more naturally, as my different groups will also be organised in their own Signal groups. So I'll just send a group message to my colleagues group, and there will always be people in there that never go - but they're welcome to.
Or they just can't make it each time.
> It's really that simple.
Simple, yet wrong.
What harm does is do? Altruistic kindness is not affected by the response. That's the point. Being "exploited" for kindness is not possible, it's not a currency.
> Ingratitude is common, as is sociopathy.
Source? If anything, most anecdotes point to the opposite, gratitude and kindness is extremely common.
I was lucky enough to make a few friends my first semester of college. We ended up hanging out quite a bit during those early months.
We’d all get excited for the weekends because Friday nights meant going out to party. Everyone except for Anna, that is.
Anna was quiet, shy, and a definitely a goody-two-shoes. She was from Alabama and spoke with a pronounced southern drawl I’d rarely heard in Maryland. She was reserved but friendly once you got to know her. Anna cared about school a lot. She was almost always studying whenever I saw her.
Every Friday night we’d make plans to go out together and party. But Anna would always refuse to come. She’d say something along the lines of “I have to study” or “I just don’t feel like it tonight.”
Eventually, we stopped inviting Anna out. Everyone except Alexei.
I liked Alexei the most in our friend group. He was valedictorian of his high school, played tennis at a competitive level, and was remarkably smart. If anyone deserved to have an ego, it was Alexei. Yet somehow he managed to be the kindest person I’d ever known. But my absolute favorite thing about Alexei was that he always invited Anna to come party with us.
One Friday night as we were all about to leave the dorms for a house party, Alexei stopped us. “Hold on, let’s invite Anna.” We headed over to her dorm and invited her to come with us. She said “Sorry, I have to study for my Arabic exam next week, but you guys have fun.”
Alexei continued to invite Anna every time we went out for the rest of the semester. And Anna said no every single time.
Curious about his persistence, I asked him “Why do you keep inviting Anna out when she’ll just say no?”
I’ll never forget what he told me: “I know she’s always going to say no, but that’s not the point. I invite her out so she’ll always feel included in the group.”
After that first semester, the friend group disbanded and we all went our separate ways. Many years later I ran into Anna and we ended up catching up. She told me how difficult her first semester of college had been. She was very close with her mom and sister and missed them them terribly.
But then she said something that stayed with me: She was grateful. She was grateful to be part of that brief friend group because she felt like she had a family away from home. And that even though she never partied with us, she always felt included because we would stop by her room and invite her anyway.
[YES!!!] / [Remind me later™]
If you would like the other side to do you a small favor every time, it's worth considering to do the same. At least respond to the invitation with gratitude and a hope to maybe do it next time.
To me, a relationship doesn’t need two people to maintain and keep it going: it only really needs one, so be that one person!
I realize people are busy and have their own lives, but I still call, I still ask how they are, I still ask what they’ve been up to. Gestures like these are tiny, tiny investments that pay off in the form of a rich, robust social life.
Nobody has ever told me stop reaching out, stop trying, but if they did, of course I would.
I get the cynicism; it’s easy to feel like the world is just full of uncaring people sometimes. But, does adding one more help?
The amount of nerds in tech is overstated and so is the absurd assumption that everyone here was bullied.
And second, a lot of what we call "not having social skills" is frequently an euphemism for "being mean and then wondering why people avoid me" situation. It may be unintentional in some case, it may be they dont see relationship between other peoples behavior and their own. But it is a real thing.
This is like asking depressing people to stop being "depressing"
I tend to take a relatively Stirnerite view of it: As long as I'm getting more enjoyment out of hanging out with someone than the effort of inviting them, I'll keep inviting them even if they never proactively invite me to do stuff, because it's still in my self-interest. If someone always says "Hell yeah", or at least "Can't do it that day, how about this other day", then the negatives of slight inconvenience of planning are wildly dwarfed by the positive of hanging out with this person I like to hang out with. If they say no frequently, then I'm experiencing far more negatives (beyond the linear scaling of energy to invite per frequency of meetups, rejection is a big demotivator).
No one is suggesting one needs to. It's a choice. And when you make it a choice, it is indeed nice.
"I'll be nice, and others will be nice in turn" is magical thinking. There is no such deal in place.
It's perfectly possible for others to soak up all that niceness and then suddenly leave without being equally nice in return. If pressed, they might even say they didn't ask for the goodness that befell them, they were just happy to accept when it was offered, thereby absolving themselves of any obligation.
Now I’m going to have to brush up on my German, just so I can better understand the social “dance” of switching between “sie” and “du”…
("But that's on Facebook, which Anna doesn't have" - true, but apparently syncing contacts with Facebook - something FB presumably often does automatically - will wipe out email addresses of your contacts)
As the parent comment said, clarity is kindness. If you're leaving people guessing, then you're being very unkind.
Evil is in most cases a Yin/Yang system of abuser and willing victim. Both are dependent on each other for their common goal of creating evil in this world.
The abuser from primitive motives: "I have to do it to them, because if I'm not an abuser, somebody will make me a victim."
The willing victim because he thinks it's an easy path to be a good person: "I don't have to engage my heart and soul, just take abuse and each "point" of abuse turns into good boy points for me."
There is nothing to be admired about victims and the victim cult is a mistake. They deserve empathy and help, they don't deserve admiration.
Nah, Dunning-Kruger is in effect here. People are frequently far less emotionally-intelligent than they believe themselves to be, and will misinterpret the actions and intentions of others, often projecting onto them their own hang-ups, insecurities, and vices. There is also an erroneous conflation of comfort and prosociality, where someone who merely makes another individual (or, more likely, someone of the social group that individual is a part of with large amounts of social capital) uncomfortable is branded as "mean" or "an asshole", while another person - who is charismatic, but actively harming the people around them - is accepted, or even admired.
IME, "nerds" (frequently neurodivergent) tend to be observant, but have difficulty wearing social masks. This is where the above comes in: they actually have above average emotional intelligence, but because their attempts to be prosocial are considered rather than instinctual, they come off as "unnatural", their efforts are misinterpreted as malice, arrogance, apathy, etc., and they themselves begin to believe that they're socially-inept. Meanwhile, they are, unfortunately, surrounded by people who are often incapable of identifying or acknowledging this dynamic.
The irony is that this comment is meant to elucidate and inspire empathy, but it will itself likely be misinterpreted as condescending.
When I was getting my start, it was almost exclusively nerdy white males.
That is no longer the case. Tech now looks a lot more like any other community.
Misanthropy is often a self-fulfilling prophecy. That’s different from social awkwardness or fear.
For myself, I’m “on the spectrum,” so high-stimulus environments are exhausting. That describes most social gatherings; especially amongst neurotypicals. It’s unfair for me to insist that they cater to my proclivities, and it’s also unfair for me to insist that they understand why I am the way I am.
One of the things that I learned, early on, is that I am the variable. It’s not something to be self-pitying about, but understanding myself, helps me to interact better with others. I appreciate it when others understand, but I don’t expect it.
To stay on topic:
You definitely are not going to be invited to my parties!
I am talking about people who are insult others, mean, condescending, refuse to consider very real and practical needs of others as valid. These absolutely exist and they get euphemized away, just like you do it now, as "just being awkward and misunderstood".
You basically refuse to consider such situation, unless the person in question is also charismatic. If someone is not highly charismatic, they can not be jerk, basically.
> The irony is that this comment is meant to elucidate and inspire empathy, but it will itself likely be misinterpreted as condescending.
You are refusing to listen and read what I said, projecting some kind of completely different situations onto the one I described. That wont elucidate empathy, because you are simply not considering what I said in the first place.
> they actually have above average emotional intelligence, but because their attempts to be prosocial are [...] their efforts are misinterpreted as malice, arrogance, apathy
I will stop at "malice". If on ended up doing harm to others unintentionally, his/her emotional and social intelligence is not high. And if it was not unintentional or result of not caring about others, then it is what it is.
Same goes with arrogance. Someone is being overbearing manner to others or operates on the assumption that others are dumb so much, that it is noticeable. When others notice, their conclusion that he is arrogant is correct and valid. It is not awkwardness nor fear nor anything like that.
Per the article, the collegiate counterparty did accept other invitations:
We ended up hanging out quite a bit during those early months.
“Why do you keep inviting Anna out when she’ll just say no?”
“I know she’s always going to say no, but that’s not the point. I invite her out so she’ll always feel included in the group.”I am old enough. It is not about changed composition. It simply never was true that everyone would be a "nerd" or bullied. Or even majority of us. Or that majority of the people in tech would ever be neurotypical. There might be more neuroatypical people then in teaching, but not enough to make it reasonable default assumption.
Some people were nerds and some people were bullied. There was overlap between those groups, but not perfect circle and it was far from majority of people in tech.
> Misanthropy is often a self-fulfilling prophecy. That’s different from social awkwardness or fear.
Yes. And what I had in mind was something kind of third. When I said "mean I meant literally "being mean": being condescending, telling people they are idiots, mocking them or their interests.
There is being awkward, which is socially punished. And then there is something else that is euphemized away as "awkward" so that we avoid saying something negative.
On the surface, implicitly negotiating over who is more important sounds horribly dramatic, but it’s a game that’s happening constantly among everyone. Usually folks push and pull over some equilibrium point, one person making concessions, then the other, in turns, with the actual hierarchy determining roughly how many turns each person should concede before making a demand of the other. This is where you get dynamics like “he’s a very demanding boss but he cares a lot about his employees” (high amplitude of switching between demand and concession) or “she’s very sharp but also hard to get along with” (doesn’t concede enough to make others feel important).
Concession in this game can be anything, small to large, from being the one who opens the door to let the other through, to offering help during personal problems, to letting someone take more credit on a collaboration.
But, again, these are all played in the implicit layer. They can be raised to the explicit layer by having a “heart to heart”, like “you’re always so kind. I appreciated when you did XYZ”, or “I’d really like if sometimes you did ABC”.
Taking care to not be an abuser and to not be a victim is rather the best path, even if it demands more from the person. It's easy to just do what others tell you, but it will soon bring misery.
We also had a lot of ties, back then. Sucked. I did learn to tie a Windsor, though, so I guess it's not a total loss.
I've read a number of books on effective communications, and they all emphasize not to read into these signals, and when you do, to go and have a conversation about it to confirm them. I found, as many have, that the error rate is about 50% (i.e. half the time you read the signals wrong).
These books are for normal people - not neurodivergent folks.
My read was that Anna never acted like she's actually part the group because she's only ever shown repeatedly declining invitations.
definitely a goody-two-shoes