One of my readers (female) forwarded me an email asking my opinion whether or not she seemed upset based on what she wrote. I read it and upset was not what came to mind. Unless I know the person writing I try to strip emotion out of the equation and just focus on the gist of what was written. I sympathize with her though because I learned through experience to put emotes in written correspondence to help emphasize emotions. The truth is, when I am upset I am silent.
With all the drama that happened a couple of days ago, I noticed people inferred I was upset when I said things like “I don’t like it”, “that’s crap”, if I curse…things that don’t necessary “imply” upset. So today being that I’m in a good mood, I decided to run a little experiment. I sent out emails today to several people (all male) to see their reactions. Remember, I’m not upset…I’m in a good mood.
I sent emails to different men I interact with on the internet but don’t really “know” me. None of the emails had emotes, I was blunt, but I did not curse but I bolded some text to emphasize some things. In all the emails I 100% meant what I said.
I noticed that there are a couple of reactions when a woman is “upset”:
- Apologetic – assuming they made you upset even though they aren’t sure how but want to fix it immediately.
- Fixers – they “think” they did something wrong and attempt to fix it without admitting they did something wrong.
- Avoiders – they ride the storm and wait until the woman cools off and either avoids the issue all together or brings it up when they feel it’s “safe”.
Some were Apologetic, apologizing but not understanding why I am upset (which is sweet really). The Fixers were trying to get out of “trouble” without admitting they messed up, which is good because they didn’t mess up. The Avoiders responded to me but not about what I initially emailed them about…like trying to change the subject.
Odd isn’t it? Ladies, do you experience the same thing?
What I find particularly amusing is when I am upset I say nothing at all or if I have the feeling I will be upset for a while I will respond with something like “I have to think about this a bit. I’ll get back to you…”. For the most part I don’t get upset over online stuff. Irritated perhaps but don’t we all get irritated with our work once in a while?
Let me put a emote in this entry to make sure no one thinks I’m upset. 🙂
