Patterns in my experience of dual relations
Disclaimer: Not going to label each interaction with the function, since I am not fully confident if I am correlating the functions correctly, but I still kept it in mind. Basing it off 2 LIEs(Luke, a high school classmate and Mike, an ex-coworker) whom I’m more certain of their typing than others.
“Who?” It’s not out of character for me to pretend I don’t notice people outside of my social circle, but in these cases, these people were truly like the background characters in a low-budget anime. Just faceless blobs.
“Did you see the picture that Luke airdropped!?”
“No…I don’t put my airdrop on.”
“Luke sent this weird purple-“
“Who?”
“Elmira, you literally sit right next to him.”
She wasn’t exactly right. He sat in the chair behind the chair on my right. But I didn’t notice this man at all. I don’t think I ever even looked at him before my friend mentioned him.
“Mike will be working with you tomorrow, he doesn’t…”
*eyebrow furrows*
“What?”
“Mike?”
“Elmira, you entered the company the same time he did. He was working across from us this entire week.”
In this case, she was absolutely right. We also attended the same new-hire orientation and had the same time slot for the building’s company tour with 2 other individuals.
“Awkward.” For Mike, the environment placed us together, so this was less severe. But Luke? That was rough.
Luke did the initiation. Like mentioned before, he would airdrop very odd images in class. Overtime, I did start to notice that he did always check my reaction when he would make these clever jokes and acts, but I thought it was a stretch and a bit narcissistic to be thinking such things.
Soon Luke did make it known that this was not the only class I shared with him, I shared my last period with him too. He began approaching me after class or just before the dismissal bell rang and it was horrifically awkward. It was like we were running through a stale screen script written by a secluded teenager.
“This class sucks.”
*stiff smile*
“She’s boring ash.”
“…yeah…”
In the case of Mike, I did notice how quiet my hours would be on days he and I were working together. If we did interact outside of mentioning a work topic or we ran into each other in the hallways before/after our hours started/ended, the conversations went in a similar manner to the one with Luke.
“…Sorry.” Horribly when the awkwardness starts to ease, I become mean. I didn’t understand why I did this and I’m still not fully sure, but after some introspecting, I did take a guess. When I start to ‘accept’ them, I become intolerant of their impersonal way of speaking. Ig, it’s me rejecting the public-friendly version of themselves.
“Only one more hour.”
*heavily sighs* “Yup.”
-Awkward silence-
That came out way more bitchy than I intended. Why are you giving him a bad attitude? He’s been nothing but nice.
*looks at Mike and notices that he’s smiling like nothing happened.*
“…sorry.”
*Mike starts talking about another topic.*
This would go on sporadically throughout the hours for a few days, sometimes it was worse than the example shared. I would get so rude some days, but he’ll just keep on with the corporate friendliness.
One day, I wondered if he disliked me, so I decided to test it out. Unfortunately, my nastiness did attend that work day, but that day instead of me only mumbling out a sorry, him switching the topic, and then me avoiding him the entire day, I noticed that he remained silent. That made me all mopey. Instead of wallowing in my self criticism, I hesitantly decided to make sure my observations were correct. I think I made an anecdote about the song that was playing. I was fully expecting rejection or apathy that I usually received even from individuals I wasn’t mean to. But to my surprise(and relief), he was back to his high energy and paragraph-talking self. After that, there was no awkwardness in our conversations.
For Luke, it was similar. After a few of my curt, harsh responses, I started ruminating on why I was starting to catch an attitude with Luke. One day, I noticed he did not speak to me before the bell. In high school, I was painfully shy, but I remember the next day, feeling like a girl on a mission. At first, it was terrible. More than ever, he was giving me the corporate politeness, but I kept talking. I do believe it was a humorous story about me studying for the exam and how my dad tossed away my notes. He made a deadpan comment with a serious expression. I failed to hide my sadness completely and when I took a glance at him, I saw the corners of his lips were curled up. When he saw my confusion, he laughed. He started going into a funny storytelling, way better than my storytelling, and for the first time, we had an enjoyable conversation.
“Nonstop teasing and bickering.”I’m not used to getting teased. Even the most playful pranksters don’t tease me, so I never really know how to react or play along. But Mike was relentless. At some point, I sincerely did consider if he had a masochist kink.
I hate asking people for things…, but maybe he was using it. “Have you seen the thermometer?”
“No, I haven’t used it. I’ll keep my eye out for it.”
“I’ll check the fridge. Someone left it there before.”
*goes to check the fridge, notices a shadow over me*
“Is it in the fridge again?”
Looks at him in confusion. “No, I’ll find it though.”
“Okay, I’ll keep an eye out.”
*Started looking again, but this time I was multitasking and along the way, I sort of abandoned the thermometer task.*
“Have you found the thermometer? I should look for it too.”
“No, I’ll find it.”
*asks me again*
“Do you need it, Mike?”
“I wouldn’t ask for something I didn’t need.”
*checks where it’s originally placed, notices a shadow behind me again, turns around and sees Mike holding out the thermometer.*
“Oh you found it. Where was it?”
*starts laughing*
“Wait…, did you have it the entire time?”
Every single day, pranks and teasing. Mike was far more cheeky than Luke.
With Luke, it wasn’t out of character for him to say absurd stories or a dark joke with a serious look. I never thought about myself as gullible, but around Luke, I recognized how much I was. He’ll tell me the most ridiculous stories, recommendations, and comments, and I would just believe him without a thought.
*tells me an in-depth story about his practice and how a strange trespasser came on the field, who looked to be on a substance*
“Really?”
“No.“
“Oh.”
*Luke laughs.*
There are times that I get into what I call my “Siri mode.” I usually get into my Siri mode, when I don’t like something and I’m trying not to whine about it, was criticized on something I’ve done, or I’m worried about something. My Siri mode is what usually led to Luke and I bickering majority of the time.
“Why are you taking that way?”
“To get in my steps.”
“It’s a waste of time and the distance isn’t large enough to make any difference in your step count.”
“Still a difference.”
“A 2 step difference.”
“… I’m allergic to coconuts.”
“…There aren't any coconuts here, Elmira.”
“Someone sprayed coconut perfume over there and now I feel itchy.”
“…I’ll put the things back when we’re done.”
“Okay.”
After a while, our bickering did come to a minimum as Luke would just directly ask me “what’s wrong?” when I went into Siri Mode.
“Teamwork makes the dream work.”
Once Luke and I befriended, our personal friend groups in the class started to intertwine and in total it was the 6 of us. It was a science class, so by the time of our 2nd group lab, we were all doing it together as one group. I remember the first time we did a project together and it was a big jumbled mess.
“Let’s just try to follow what he gave us.”
“No, he told us he’ll remove points for copying his example. We have to think of something else.”
“Donna and Jeremy, pay attention.”
“It’s not like we’re actually doing something.”
“It’s already been 20 minutes.”
“We still have tomorrow.”
“Everybody else has already started.”
*At this point, it’s divided into following the guide that the teacher gave us and losing points or following the rough idea of one of our members that seems that will also make us lose points too. I noticed that Luke started doing his own thing*
“Luke, what are you doing?”
(Honestly I don't remember his response that clearly, but I do recall the feeling I had. You know when the animation style changes in One Punch Man when there’s a big fighting scene and Saitama looks cool that how Luke looked in the moment as he answered me.)
“Following the guide is dumb, I’m not losing points on this project.” He proceeded to demolish Donna’s idea and then brought up his plan.
“We’re following Luke’s idea.”
“I think-“
“I’ll do this task.”
*Luke starts dividing the rest of the work.*
On the next group assignments, I recognized that Luke and I would make a group inside the group and just mainly worked together. Even solo assignments and in our other class, we would still go out of our way to give each other feedback.
Even while it was still awkward, when we first started working together, Mike and I were always able to work easily together. In larger groups, we would still mostly contain our collaboration within the two of us.
“You got my back. I got your back.” I don’t like to gather attention. I go out of my way to not stand out and blend into the crowd. But some of the few occurrences, I sacrificed my sheep persona correlated to these two men.
As mentioned before, Luke was silver tongued and when our friend group would start roasting or debating with each other, he would always come up with clever comebacks that made one look dumb, get the class laughing, and earn him the last word. No matter how much people tried to outsmart him, he had this controlled and “it’s not personal” air to him that made some individuals in the friend group more likely try to provoke him, even with low blows.
Before I could process and reconsider, every time someone would try to low blow him, I would get upset, rebuke that individual, and kill the fun.
No matter how many times I would get anxious about standing out and drawing attention, I found myself doing this protective behavior over and over again.
Luke being intelligent, polite, and appearing self-controlled, people developed this entitled mentality towards him. Always requesting him of his time, energy, and labor, with as I quote “But it’s Luke, he won’t care and it’s easy for him.” All while expecting him to be their personal comedian. He would find a way to deny their requests without outright saying no, but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t stop requesting and pressuring him.
This would rile me up so much. One day, I found myself getting very angry at my own friend that I knew much longer than Luke. Without the tact that Luke had, I outright told her to do her work herself and called her condescending and mean. I could count on one hand how many times I had an outburst and that was one of those times.
In a way, Luke had a protective streak with me too. I was horrible at arguing; coming up with the right words at the right moment rarely happens for me. So I didn’t engage when they started to debate and diss each other, but they’ll involve me anyway. Every time I was targeted, even if he wasn’t really engaging with the group that day, he would return the sharpest comeback that sometimes I thought was a bit cold.
I sort of mentioned Mike’s story before, but I’ll go into detail ig.
After a week or so, the supervisor, Mike, and I for the first time scheduled together. I heard the supervisor and others complain about him when he wasn’t there, so I was dreading that day. You know the seconds before you witness a car crash and you realize that the cars won’t be able to evade each other, not even at the last second, and are going to collide, that’s how it felt going into that work day.
The tension was unmistakable. Inwardly, I had nicknamed Mike ‘the agreeable Masochist,” and I thought to myself “how can one get into a serious conflict with Mike,” but I was absolutely aware of others’ differentiating impressions of him and knew how it sourced.
Mike’s corporate friendliness and diplomacy wasn’t getting him anywhere. His need to talk from a place of authority sent her on a power trip and made other coworkers, specifically those who like to take 20 minutes of chatting and leisure between each task, upset. Near noon, I watched as the mob grew and people abandoned their work to “teach the guy a lesson” or just happily accepted an excuse to leave their task, and he continued to try to “talk it out.”
The first time it happened, I actually walked away. It was so difficult watching him trying to explain himself to an audience that didn’t want to hear and he simply did not recognize that. When I came back, Mike was cheerful and humorous, still teasing and bickering with me as if nothing had happened. But I did notice the eye rolls and the mumbling every time he talked.
Throughout this time, Mike had been very helpful to me. With me also being new and me playing sheep, coworkers would place their laborious tasks on me to complete. Insisting on maintaining my passive, mediocre sheep act, I would accept the work. After a while, I found Mike negotiating my case and always knew how to talk into getting the original person to complete their assigned tasks. Despite him being quite energetic and restless, which could give you an impression of him being absent minded, he was rather attentive. There were times that I was struggling with a task, but I made no outward display of struggle and he’ll come over and help me. I thought to myself a couple times, “The only way you would be able to tell I was struggling is if you were watching me.”
The mob went on for the next few days, and despite me knowing exactly how to stop it, I was unwilling. Perhaps because I was less closer to Mike than I was to Luke and it was a work environment.
I began to notice he seemed to become dispirited and quicker to leave once the work day was over.
I had a moment of reconsideration about remaining passive and in the moment of hesitation, unable to decide myself what was the best choice of action, I had a Blue Spring Ride moment. Even with how he is right now, if he goes out of his way to help me, I would surely help him back.
Sure and behold, he left his things to go and help me. I knew he would, I just needed the encouragement. Next time the mob happened, I engaged in the cattiness. My confidence in being able to end the mob against him was not misjudged, because the next two days, the mob had turned against the supervisor, herself.
Lastly, I notice their absences more strongly than what is normal for me.
(This point doesn’t need to be delved into. It’s pretty straightforward.)
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Originally Posted by Sol
