Wanting Others to Prove You Wrong

Well, I missed a day. I had a good rhythm going. A blog post every day. Then, I missed a day. Forgive me, my readers. I can't imagine what you did without the daily dose of sarcasm I provide. I'd imagine a few withdrawal symptoms were experienced and for that, I'm sorry.

Have no fear though, I'm back with a new silly quirk to criticize and exploit in the usual fashion. This one's a doosie, believe me.

I called it wanting others to prove you wrong, but you can think of it as wanting others to disagree with you, if that makes it easier to understand. Rather than going through a long explanation process of the concept, I'll give you a short concise example.

MAN

I'm such a lazy person.

WOMAN

(sympathetically)

No you're not! You're very active, I've never seen you go through the drive-thru at McDonald's. You always go inside.

See what happened there? I hear some call it fishing for a compliment, but I prefer to think that fishing wouldn't like its good name tarnished with something as prideful as this. Instead, we'll call it candidating for compliments. I have two reason: I haven't used alliteration this pathetically in a while and politics really don't have a good name to tarnish.

I never try to offer problems without solutions. I realize the need to get compliments, approval, and self-worth from others, so I'm going to offer a few different ways of getting those kind words without being quite so manipulative.

Ask

This one will take some guts. It takes a lot of courage to go up to the cute guy in your psychology class and say "Will you tell me how awesome I am?" Of course if the person you're asking really is just "the cute guy in your psychology class" and you've never had a conversation before, he probably won't have many kind words to say to you. Maybe you should try it with the guy you've been in love with for 2 years but he won't notice you because he's been with his high school sweetheart since, well, high school. He didn't notice your last haircut or that you now have glasses, but he's invested in you enough to tell you wonderful things about yourself, right?

Demand

This one's fun, I promise. You get some self-esteem points just for being able to utter the words "I'm pretty. Tell me why you think so." I do have one word of caution for this one though. People will start becoming too eager to compliment you when you go about it this way and probably pay you far too many compliments than you asked for. And of course it's sincere, why else would they say it?

Well, that's where I'm going to leave this post lie. I would write more, but I'm just not a very good writer...