Assumptions I Make on Purpose

I wholeheartedly disagree with the notion that we should not make assumptions about other people. Not to say that we should be willy-nilly, judgmental, or insensitive in our assumptions. I believe we should be making compassionate and calculated assumptions.  The following assumptions are related and work best when utilized together.

  

Assumption 1: The Struggle is Real. My go-to assumption is that the other person is struggling with some part of their human experience whether it be a physical, emotional, spiritual, mental, environmental or other element.

In example: I got a text message from a friend who was upset about how her boyfriend was responding (or more accurately not responding) to her text messages. She sent me the series of texts from their conversation. It went something like this:

Kara: (8:35pm) Haven’t heard from you in a while, is everything ok?

Bob: (9:10am) Yeah things are good. I came home and am exhausted.

Kara: (10:30am) That’s what I figured. You’ve had a crazy busy month. You aren’t still sick, are you?

Bob: (12:20pm) No, just tired

Kara: (12:21pm) Do you like your new place, so far?

Bob: (12:21pm) Yeah, I do. It’s a nice place.

Kara: (3:40pm) I am not sure what you want me to do here. I’ve been supportive and understanding I believe, but it would be nice to be asked about how I am doing. I get that you are exhausted, but I am feeling a little ‘in the dark’ here.

She sent me the screen shots of the above message 24 hours after her last text was sent to Bob.

She said a month ago things were going swell. Three weeks ago he got sick, then left to work on his dissertation in Tennessee for two weeks and had just returned the night before she sent him a text. There was nothing weird before he got sick, and he was texting as normal as he could with all the obligations he had while travelling.

So we decided she would send him another text:

That was a shitty text to send, sorry! I was being insensitive to how exhausted you are. I was acting like you owed me something, when really I was missing spending time with you; our great conversations and how we connect. I hope we can spend some quality time together after you are rested and recharged from your trip.

Bob responded right away with:

Cool, I understand. I haven’t been great about communicating lately. It’s hard to explain but I feel physically and emotionally tired. There hasn’t been one thing that has me feeling this way – it has been a lot of little things like getting sick, seeing so many people, travelled a lot and did some physically demanding things – all in three weeks.   Just a lot of change and I think my mind and body are processing and recovering.

Using our empathy to discover how the other person may be feeling and then taking action to do something to relieve it or express our understanding – that is compassion. We made a compassionate assumption and she made herself vulnerable. She flipped her own script; rather than continuing to think and act as though he was avoiding her or wanted to stop seeing her – she thought and acted like he was suffering and she told him what she understood and was needing. It seems to me that he needed her to let him know that its okay that he is taking this time and she needed him to tell her directly that he needs time.

I assume that others are currently suffering and any hostility/coolness I feel is likely from their suffering and not related to me, or my actions.

 

Assumption 2: The whole truth. This is somewhat of a gendered assumption that I make and I think it is applicable to most men and some women (based on my experience). I think in general men say/text what they mean, no funny business. If a man texts ‘I’m tired’ (see Assumption 1 example) they mean ‘I am tired’. Women are used to the cultural norm of lying/mis-representing to maintain control of perception. So, when the ‘mean girls’ we know from adolescence say “I am tired” they could mean anything from ‘I am sleeping with your boyfriend’ to ‘I have PMS’ to ‘I am hanging out with everyone else but you tonight and I know you won’t go out without me so I am going to tell you that I am staying in so that you don’t know that I went out’ and rarely do they mean ‘I am tired”. So, it seems easy for women I know to assume that there is something hidden and sinister behind what men say – and I think we should assume that what they say is the truth.

Now, ideally we are dealing with mature, growth minded adults here and we are going to assume, until proven otherwise that they are always telling the whole truth.

Assumption 3: What you see is what you get. People show you who they are. If someone is rude to a server once, they will probably do it again. If someone remembers that you said you hate yellow skittles and they pick out all the yellow skittles for you, they will probably do it (or something else thoughtful) again. This is a loving and elevated assumption in my mind because it frees us of unreasonable expectations. We all have had expectations we do not embrace put onto us – and we don’t (usually) like it. These can be expectations of success or failure, either way they are likely to be off the mark, unless we can find a way to make our expectations based on data.

So, where is the data? It’s in your gut, in the behavior, in your feelings. If the data is not positive – shut down your red-flag-mower and heed the signs! If the data is positive, acknowledge those things we can easily overlook – validation is vital to our relating.

 

If we believe people are coming from a place of pain we can take quicker action to assist (as we are able) in alleviating suffering; if we take people at their word we will quickly know if it is worthy of our trust; and if we believe that people will continue to do what they have done our expectations will stay in check and also be flexible for new patterns as they emerge.

These elements create a place where peoples’ individual needs and desires can have space and be respected. It is not only up to the person sending the message but it is also up to the recipient to make sure that the message they got was what was intended for transmission. That’s how making compassionate and calculated assumptions can reduce the risk of misunderstanding and hurt feelings.