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Faye · **04-07-2016, 02:13 PM**

I don't want to rehash what's been said here too much, but... someone said this sounds "situational." It doesn't. They're making you unhappy OOC. Role-play should never be that way. No one should try to alienate you from your friends or role-playing with others. No one should have so little respect for your space and time that you have to hide from them in offline mode. It may even be a sign they're not on the same page about your relationship/friendship if they want to talk to you so much more than you want to talk to them.

Miakado brought up something alluding to abuse, and I think it may be on the mark. Abuse isn't just screaming matches and someone hitting you. It can be someone smothering or controlling you and sometimes for very understandable reasons like insecurity or loneliness or love. Just because a person is struggling or sympathetic doesn't mean they're not being abusive or toxic. That's dangerous to forget.

I'm tempted to agree with Jana and say just drop it and walk away. As Warren and some others said, this behavior isn't normal, and there's a good chance a talk with the person won't change it (for long). But I think everyone deserves a chance. Talk to your RP partner. If they aren't receptive or you can't find a compromise you're both happy with, however, I would advise you not hesitate to cut ties with them, as hard as it may be. Maybe they're a good person, but it sounds like they have their own problems to sort out, and there's no reason for you to suffer while they do, or enable them. RP shouldn't make you unhappy. You shouldn't have to hide from friends.

Lydia Lightfoot · **04-07-2016, 02:29 PM**

(04-07-2016, 02:13 PM)Faye Wrote: <snip> someone said this sounds "situational." It doesn't. They're making you unhappy OOC. <snip>

That would be me, and of course it's situational. We're being given one side of a story that undoubtedly has two sides. Miscommunication happens. Misunderstanding happens. Real-life stress can overflow unintentionally into in-game misbehavior. A flat-out lack of someone communicating "Hey, this is a boundary for me" can occur and the other person may not realize that was a boundary (not all boundaries are obvious). As a result of any of those things, unhappiness can happen between two friends who both like each other a lot and who mean to do good towards each other. A scenario like this is never as simple as "you feel badly, cut them off". If that's how we all were to behave, we'd never retain any friends at all, because even the best of friends sometimes tick each other off.

Nebbs · **04-07-2016, 02:30 PM**

Hmm not sure I would agree with the cut it off at the first sign or something. Also try to avoid blame, instead consider you both have different needs.Â

Just be aware you are not powerless, put yourself first and know you can cut it off. If you feel uncomfortable step back and get perspective, which is what you are doing. If it is abusive then end it, definitely, but I think there are degrees here.

I'm one who leaves it too late I would say, I always like to hope things can be saved or worked through. So I'm no one to talk.

Faye · **04-07-2016, 02:38 PM**

(04-07-2016, 02:29 PM)Osena Rhen Wrote:
(04-07-2016, 02:13 PM)Faye Wrote: <snip> someone said this sounds "situational." It doesn't. They're making you unhappy OOC. <snip>

That would be me, and of course it's situational. We're being given one side of a story that undoubtedly has two sides. Miscommunication happens. Misunderstanding happens. Real-life stress can overflow unintentionally into in-game misbehavior. A flat-out lack of someone communicating "Hey, this is a boundary for me" can occur and the other person may not realize that was a boundary (not all boundaries are obvious). As a result of any of those things, unhappiness can happen between two friends who both like each other a lot and who mean to do good towards each other. A scenario like this is never as simple as "you feel badly, cut them off". If that's how we all were to behave, we'd never retain any friends at all, because even the best of friends sometimes tick each other off.

It's still not situational, and it is as simple as "if you feel badly, cut them off." The other side of the story does not matter. If someone is unhappy in a situation, they should fix it or leave it. People can decide for themselves whether a friendship or partnership is bringing more positive than negative and if it is worth salvaging. No one is obligated to keep a friendship or role-play going if they are unhappy. "Let me RP with my friends," isn't a boundary anyone should have to establish or state outright; it should be a given in any kind of healthy relationship.

To reiterate what I said my last post, the other person's reasoning doesn't really matter. If I've had a bad day and want to scream at someone, no one is obligated to endure my screaming, or to forgive me for it, or to remain my friend afterward. Similarly, if someone is insecure and frightened of losing someone they care about, that doesn't excuse them smothering and alienating that person. That this person may not understand what they're doing wrong doesn't matter. Even if the OP here is hiding details or blowing things out of proportion (which I would doubt) there's no need to hear out the "other side" because they know the situation and are obviously unhappy with it, and they need to put their own happiness first.

LiadansWhisper · **04-07-2016, 02:38 PM**

(04-07-2016, 02:29 PM)Osena Rhen Wrote:
(04-07-2016, 02:13 PM)Faye Wrote: <snip> someone said this sounds "situational." It doesn't. They're making you unhappy OOC. <snip>

That would be me, and of course it's situational. We're being given one side of a story that undoubtedly has two sides. Miscommunication happens. Misunderstanding happens. Real-life stress can overflow unintentionally into in-game misbehavior. A flat-out lack of someone communicating "Hey, this is a boundary for me" can occur and the other person may not realize that was a boundary (not all boundaries are obvious). As a result of any of those things, unhappiness can happen between two friends who both like each other a lot and who mean to do good towards each other. A scenario like this is never as simple as "you feel badly, cut them off". If that's how we all were to behave, we'd never retain any friends at all, because even the best of friends sometimes tick each other off.

It isn't situational. One party is not happy. One party is behaving in a controlling manner from the other party's perspective. It isn't situational, because that suggests that sometimes the aggrieved party should just put up with it. No one should put up with it.

Here, let me say this again: No one should put up with this.

No one should put up with feeling like they can't enjoy themselves in pixel happy fun times. No one should feel like they have to hide their online presence from their so-called friend, for fear of emotional manipulation. No one should put up with OOC restrictions on their RP from someone they're not romantically involved with (and even if they are romantically involved with the person, there are limits on what those restrictions should be without things getting in the creepyweird territory).

Why would you want to retain a friend who makes you feel guilty about RPing? Why would you want to retain a friend who makes unreasonable demands on you, and doesn't appear to understand that the demands are unreasonable?

It isn't situational. If this relationship is harming the OP, then the OP needs to leave. Full stop. Because the most important thing in this situation is that the OP feels trapped. You shouldn't feel trapped in your RP. No one has a right to dictate to you what you may and may not do in pixel happy fun times. It's RP. It's fake. It's fantasy. And anyone who would seek to control your fantasy time is probably not a good friend.

These demands are not something a friend should be making, and no one should have to tell the friend this. It's called basic adult behavior - we don't try to control our friends' leisure time, or any of their time, because that's creepy and obsessive.

Warren Castille · **04-07-2016, 02:45 PM**

Relationships are compromise, not shackling someone to the FC house every time you log on because you don't want to RP in public.

Lydia Lightfoot · **04-07-2016, 02:51 PM**

So, what I'm hearing is that the two who just replied to me have never had any problems with their friends that they needed to resolve, or, they don't have any friends, because as soon as someone feels bad, they cut them off entirely that instant. Is that a correct understanding?

Of course it's not a correct understanding. Of course you both have friends, and of course your friends have sometimes done some bad stuff that you had to talk out with them. Please try not to encourage a behavior in others that is unlikely to correspond to behavior you do yourself.Â

Is it excusable to be controlling towards another player? Of course it isn't. But this other player may not realize that their behavior is coming across as controlling. Is it cool that the OP feels like she has to hide on an unknown alt? Of course not, but their partner may not even be aware that the OP is feeling like that (in fact, the alt being a hidden alt all by itself suggests that their partner may be ignorant of the effect of their behavior).Â

It's very, very easy to have a misunderstanding if communication isn't clear. For instance, Player A says to Player B, "Hey, after you finish your dungeon later, come RP with me?Â Big Grin

" and Player A means only to express that they enjoy the other person's time and company and would like to RP with them if they're available. Player B, however, depending on their own disposition and history, might interpret this request as controlling, and so begins to shy away from Player A who didn't mean to seem like that at all.

Point being, we don't know what was said or what the intent of any of it was. All we know is that the OP feels badly and has an interpretation of a situation, but that is possibly not the only interpretation of the situation which would be valid, and as easy as it may be for her to simply cut the person off, it may be that if they have a constructive conversation they can discover that one of them was reading subtext where there wasn't intended to be any subtext, and one of them was misunderstanding a cue from the other that the other had meant to have a different meaning entirely, and in the end, everybody has a chuckle, they have a hug, and they're sure glad that they talked and cleared it up.

I mean, their characters got married, so we have to assume the friendship and the RP were going pretty well for a good long time. This isn't a situation of "I met this person yesterday and they're being a super creeper". Sure, in that case, you have no investment in them and no reason to try and bother retaining whatever friendship that may have turned into, because there's nothing yet. Here, there's been development, there's been friendship, and now something is different. In my opinion, it's worth trying to talk it out.

LiadansWhisper · **04-07-2016, 02:56 PM**

(04-07-2016, 02:51 PM)Osena Rhen Wrote: So, what I'm hearing is that the two who just replied to me have never had any problems with their friends that they needed to resolve, or, they don't have any friends, because as soon as someone feels bad, they cut them off entirely that instant. Is that a correct understanding?

Of course it's not a correct understanding. Of course you both have friends, and of course your friends have sometimes done some bad stuff that you had to talk out with them. Please try not to encourage a behavior in others that is unlikely to correspond to behavior you do yourself.Â

Is it excusable to be controlling towards another player? Of course it isn't. But this other player may not realize that their behavior is coming across as controlling. Is it cool that the OP feels like she has to hide on an unknown alt? Of course not, but their partner may not even be aware that the OP is feeling like that (in fact, the alt being a hidden alt all by itself suggests that their partner may be ignorant of the effect of their behavior).Â

It's very, very easy to have a misunderstanding if communication isn't clear. For instance, Player A says to Player B, "Hey, after you finish your dungeon later, come RP with me?Â " and Player A means only to express that they enjoy the other person's time and company and would like to RP with them if they're available. Player B, however, depending on their own disposition and history, might interpret this request as controlling, and so begins to shy away from Player A who didn't mean to seem like that at all.

Point being, we don't know what was said or what the intent of any of it was. All we know is that the OP feels badly and has an interpretation of a situation, but that is possibly not the only interpretation of the situation which would be valid, and as easy as it may be for her to simply cut the person off, it may be that if they have a constructive conversation they can discover that one of them was reading subtext where there wasn't intended to be any subtext, and one of them was misunderstanding a cue from the other that the other had meant to have a different meaning entirely, and in the end, everybody has a chuckle, they have a hug, and they're sure glad that they talked and cleared it up.

I mean, their characters got married, so we have to assume the friendship and the RP were going pretty well for a good long time. This isn't a situation of "I met this person yesterday and they're being a super creeper". Sure, in that case, you have no investment in them and no reason to try and bother retaining whatever friendship that may have turned into, because there's nothing yet. Here, there's been development, there's been friendship, and now something is different. In my opinion, it's worth trying to talk it out.

If someone other than my boyfriend attempted to control my RP and manipulate me into feeling guilty about RPing with other people, I would first give them a piece of my mind, and then kick them to the curb. Full stop.

Actually, if the boyfriend was doing that, I would probably give him an earful.

See, I've tried the cutesy, nice way, "Oh, maybe they're just confused and don't realize that trying to control other people's behavior is really creepy and wrong," but it's been a long road and I no longer have the patience or the willingness to put myself through that particular brand of suffering. No. If someone can't figure out on their own that guilt tripping people for RPing without them, and telling them that they can't RP with others is really creepy and not okay, they have problems I can't solve for them.

Nebbs · **04-07-2016, 03:05 PM**

I would filter out from all this advice with good intentions and discard people's personal experiences and bias.

Only you, OP, know yourself and the situation.Â

It seems clear that you should not put up with things as they are

If you feel there is something that can be resolved try.

If you feel it can't be resolved or you don't want to try just cut it off. IÂ would suggest doing it with honesty and calmness. Blaming, victimisation and anger won't help.

Faye · **04-07-2016, 03:06 PM**

(04-07-2016, 02:51 PM)Osena Rhen Wrote: So, what I'm hearing is that the two who just replied to me have never had any problems with their friends that they needed to resolve, or, they don't have any friends, because as soon as someone feels bad, they cut them off entirely that instant. Is that a correct understanding?

Of course it's not a correct understanding. Of course you both have friends, and of course your friends have sometimes done some bad stuff that you had to talk out with them. Please try not to encourage a behavior in others that is unlikely to correspond to behavior you do yourself.Â

You are hearing what you want to hear. None of my friends have ever told me where to go, what to do, or who to talk to--not real life friends, not online friends, not even my boyfriend. I've had a couple RP partners who have seemed clingy and manipulative even if unintentionally in more subtle ways, and made me feel smothered and trapped. In those situations, I've sent them strongly worded messages saying "this is what's been happening, and it's going to stop happening right now or we're done IC and OOC" and I immediately distanced myself from them OOC and took time to re-evaluate if the partnership was even worth keeping.

There are times I've gone in offline mode simply because I wasn't in the mood to talk to anyone, and there are times I've gone in offline mode or not logged in to something to avoid a specific person/people (always strangers or acquaintances, not close friends or RP partners). So yes, I'm saying your hypothetical situation of someone trying to control me, me politely talking to them about it, and them backing off because it was all a big misunderstanding and everything was 100% fine has never happened, largely because the moment someone tries to control me I tell them to take a hike, and because I don't surrounded myself with people who will try to manipulate me.

That being said, I haven't and never would advocate someone do something I couldn't/wouldn't do or haven't done.

tl;dr It's never happened to me; I don't take no crap. Cool

Warren Castille · **04-07-2016, 03:08 PM**

Armchair psych:

OP mentioned that their partner has several similar issues that they themselves possess when it comes to RPing with other people. We only have one side of the story, obviously, but what we're hearing is traditional maybe-intentional-maybe-not signs on manipulative behavior: Guilt-tripping someone for not being online for a day, pressure to log-in and RP, pressure to leave current RP because they don't want to be in public, and passive-aggressive challenges followed by logging off of a messenger.

We don't know the reasons for this sort of thing, but I can make my uneducated guesses: OP says they play other games or hang out with other people, so I'd bet my bottom dollar that their partner lacks other people to be able to provide the extra attention. Failing that being the case, it's possible they just prioritize the OP and is effectively playing favorites.

We can't know what the actual situation is, and OP hasn't replied to any of the good advice in this thread despite having checked in on it as people post, so arguing over it is fairly meaningless stance for the time being. The cynic in me just thinks this is attention dollars, too, but the sympathetic part of me thinks that confronting someone you care about regarding their behavior can be scary, since the prospect of losing someone can appear worse than just indulging their shitty habits.

Shit sucks.

Lydia Lightfoot · **04-07-2016, 03:10 PM**

(04-07-2016, 02:56 PM)LiadansWhisper Wrote: If someone other than my boyfriend attempted to control my RP and manipulate me into feeling guilty about RPing with other people, I would first give them a piece of my mind, and then kick them to the curb. Â Full stop.

Actually, if the boyfriend was doing that, I would probably give him an earful.

See, I've tried the cutesy, nice way, "Oh, maybe they're just confused and don't realize that trying to control other people's behavior is really creepy and wrong," but it's been a long road and I no longer have the patience or the willingness to put myself through that particular brand of suffering. Â No. Â If someone can't figure out on their own that guilt tripping people for RPing without them, and telling them that they can't RP with others is really creepy and not okay, they have problems I can't solve for them.

We've all had experiences with people who intentionally were abusive towards us. I've also had a ton of experiences with people who simply lacked self-awareness of the way their words could be taken by others and who, with discussion, were brought some clarity and were able to grow as a person and become better for it. Unfortunately, our society has become so PC that we feel it's not acceptable to offer others a criticism of their behavior, even if it's a constructive criticism. Parents don't even do that - everybody's kid is a perfect special snowflake and incapable of wrongdoing.Â

The only way a person who doesn't know any better will learn is if they're taught, and teaching requires patience and love for others even when those others are jerks. Cutting them off gives them no opportunity for growth. They still do not know that what they did was wrong or why it was wrong or how to do better, they will continue to believe it's okay and that you were just a mean/rude person to them for cutting them off - because if they understood why you cut them off, then they probably would've had enough self-awareness to have avoided the situation happening in the first place. All it accomplishes is that they go on to the next person and end up causing a problem for them, too.

And yep, sometimes you try to talk it out with somebody and it turns out that yeah, they really are just a crazy douche, and your time trying to talk it out has been for nothing. That's on them. You at least tried to do the compassionate and friendly thing.

Faye · **04-07-2016, 03:11 PM**

No one is obligated to take their time to try to help someone who is hurting them, and that's nothing to do with "political correctness," it's looking out for yourself and having priorities. I'm not saying it's not helpful or good to let someone know what they're doing wrong or talk to them, but if someone is making you unhappy, you have absolutely no obligation to stay in contact with them, give them explanations, or try to help them. Sticking around can even enable people in some situations. Sometimes cutting ties is just the slap in the face someone needs to wake up. In my own experience with abusive people, it's only when everyone has bailed on them and they've hit rock bottom that they try to better themselves and finally realize what they've been doing wrong.

Warren Castille · **04-07-2016, 03:13 PM**

Not all lessons come from a classroom, and they certainly don't require patience. Social sciences and learning how to people is a trial and error kind of thing, and no one is required to calmly explain to someone that saying "You're not even trying to take this seriously" and then ragelogging is bad behavior.

Puppies learn not to bite too hard in a litter because if you do it, the other puppies stop playing with you. Even dogs have that self-awareness. It's not on anybody to teach anybody else that their acting harmful.

LiadansWhisper · **04-07-2016, 03:14 PM**

(04-07-2016, 03:10 PM)Osena Rhen Wrote: -snip-

As Faye put it, it's no one's obligation to teach people basic human interaction. If you want to do it, more power to you. But absolutely no one is obligated to do so, and they definitely should not attempt to do so if they are extremely uncomfortable in the situation.

Your well-being comes first.

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