Our feelings can and do lie to us

There is a perverse strategy that some men and all the women in my life have exercised at some point. It comes to mind now because of Christmas is coming and the strategy is often used with giving Christmas presents.

Here is how it works. I state a desire. I'd really like to do X or receive X. For some reason, X is deemed undesirable. It's a big part of this strategy to never give reasons; the rule is silent refusal. No woman ever tells you why she doesn't want to give you X or do X. She just doesn't do it. And if you ask after the fact you run into a great wall of deflection and aggression.  It may well be that there is no reason. I quoted Proust about this a few posts ago: The unconscious spirit of devilry which urges us to offer a thing only to those who do not want it."

My guess is it's really about power. A few years ago researchers took advantage of the security cameras in parking lots at shopping malls to establish that people really do to take longer getting out of a parking space when they know someone is waiting. It suits us to give people what they want when it enhances our feeling of power—thus someone with a new baby or a new lover falls over themselves pleasing them. Once a relationship is firmly established, the power trip shifts around the other way. Now it becomes a matter of my not being driven by your wants.

The depth of perversity that now begins to play is amazing. The giver doesn't suggest something else she'd prefer. Instead, she picks some third option that neither she nor you wants. The consequence is that everyone gets the worst possible option. You get something you don't want and the giver gets to give something she doesn't really want to give, a fact that is painfully obvious in the hesitant and unenthusiastic way the giving is done.

The end result is that an easy opportunity to make one person happy gets turned into an opportunity to make everyone unhappy.

My mother was past master at this sort of thing. One of my sisters, for her sixteenth birthday, wanted to go to a then-trendy restaurant with her friends. My mother refused and instead took the whole family to what was the most expensive restaurant in town—a stuffy place where no one had a good time and where my sister broke down in tears. The meal at the trendy restaurant would have cost them $250 in today's dollars. The meal they actually purchased was $1200 adjusted for inflation. This by the way, in the middle of a recession.

One fascinating aspect of this is that our feelings lie to us. Think of what it feels like to get into your car when you know that someone else is waiting for your parking spot. I always feel rushed and somewhat put upon. My feelings tell me I'm being put upon. Rock-solid research says that I'm actually sticking to the other person.

I suspect that our feelings lie to us in a similar way when we have an opportunity to satisfy a loved one's desires. We know what they want but we feel like that's not special enough. We might think, I can give them that anytime but this is a special occasion so I want to give them something really special. And conjuring trick is complete: The fact that something would be special for the loved one becomes the reason the giver doesn't want to do it. We are more aware of the fact that it won't be special for us.