I came across an article on MSN of all places (I know, right?) called “15 Rude Conversation Habits You Need to Stop ASAP”. This is especially impactful to me because last night I did two of these things without even thinking about it, and I didn’t realize until afterward that I was being rude. I just thought it was normal. So I’m going to talk about the fifteen habits this week.

Being Brutally Honest

The article says that being brutally honest can be… well… brutal. But here’s the thing — in polyamory, sometimes that kind of honesty is needed, especially when someone isn’t acting positively. There are always ways to be nicer about saying things, but there are occasions when you just have to say the thing and take the consequences. Of course, if it doesn’t affect you, you may just want to shut up and let it be.

Posting Conversations Online

I admit that I’m guilty of this, although I do usually ask first, or at least obscure the people’s identities enough that no one knows who the other person is. Plus, over the years there have been plenty of sites (like When Parents Text) that monetize other people’s funny, sad, or interesting conversations. I haven’t been on Buzzfeed in a while but I’m sure they still do it too, scraping content from all over the web and making top-ten or top-twenty lists. Oh, and this one goes for sending screenshots of text conversations to other people, too — you never know if the other person is saving your screenshot and sharing it with someone else.

Being Too Agreeable

I’ve talked in the past about boundaries, and as a polyamorous person I’ve had to become better over the years about setting them. However, sometimes I’m still too agreeable to what people say, want, or do, because I don’t want to be the person who infringes on another person’s freedom. It’s the same reason it’s still hard for me with newer people to bring up going from the living room to the bedroom to do a scene.

Interrupting

Hoo boy did it take me a long time to get past this one. In my family, interrupting was the norm — and sometimes it still is — and in my first marriage we constantly interrupted each other. It wasn’t until my second marriage where I really learned to stop interrupting. Plus, interrupting tells the other person that you’re more interested in what you have to say than what they have to say. Interrupting can also be annoying when you’re texting someone, but one thing I used to do that I really want to start doing again is putting interruptions in parentheses or brackets, so we can have multiple conversation threads going at the same time. I used to do that a lot on AIM.

Overusing Sarcasm

Yeah, right, like that’s something I’d ever do. But seriously, sometimes when you’re trying to be funny by being sarcastic, it backfires horribly. Often when you say something sarcastic and you see the other person’s face fall you immediately feel regret for going that route. It’s harder to gauge people’s reactions over text or chat, so I suggest less sarcasm when doing that because you never know what the other person is thinking unless they explicitly tell you.

More tomorrow!