Questions and answers

You know, right now I'm wondering whether someone coming to you and saying "I'm torn between doing x and doing y. I know doing x will upset you, but doing y instead will make my life difficult or inconvenient to one of several varying degrees that don't necessarily affect you, so it's a tricky decision. What do you think I should do?" is terribly fair.

For me personally, I feel like I'm being put in a position where I can't say, "Well, obviously I don't want you to do x, because it will upset me... so I'd say don't do x." because if I say that, I feel like I'm utterly disregarding the adverse effect that doing y instead of x will have on the other person, and thereby being selfish.

What bothers me more about this kind of question is that I feel like the way the question's phrased - when the other person KNOWS doing x will upset  me before the question is even asked - is more of a veiled "You know, I really really want to do x instead of y, this but I know it'll have an adverse effect on you so I feel bad. Please give me permission to do x so I don't have to wear the consequences of making the decision myself."

I know that the validity of my viewpoint depends entirely on the situation, the options being considered and the people involved. The situation that brought this post on saw me exhausted, depressed and crying, and the other person pondering whether they should go out as planned or stay with me. You guessed it - action x is going out, and action y is staying in. Action x ended up happening.

You know who you are. I want this kind of bullshit behaviour to stop.