Communication breakdown.

I talk about communication a lot, mostly about how not talking is a big part of the whole process. But it occurred to me today that unless somebody says something, it is pretty hard to resolve problems, or even be an ear to listen to problems.

We as a whole are usually not very good with talking about things that bother us, I've seen this mostly with the women in my life who have issues, but it presents with men too, usually something like "I'm sorry I am such a mess" or "I don't want to bother you", shit like that, I've done it myself, men get a bit of added issues since we aren't really supposed to talk about our feelings at all, although you could say the same about women, the difference is I guess that men aren't really supposed to have feelings so if admit to having them we aren't really men, while women have too many feelings and should stop bothering people with them, or some bullshit like that.

We hate showing weakness to each other, and emotions sorta are considered as such, not without good reason as many people will use them as ammo in a fight, which, you know, valid, but also terrible.

So we talk around it, instead of going into what is bothering us we mope, or talk about something that isn't really the problem, or get all vague about it, in extreme cases we say "You should just know what is wrong". I call this TV communication, when a problem brought up in the first five minutes of an episode could, and does eventually, get resolved if only the people involved took the trouble to use like three sentences to tell the other what the problem is. Hell, the phrase "Honey, I got laid off" would have shortened Person of Interest by like three episodes because then the person in question wouldn't have had to turn to illegal activities to make ends meet and thus never be at risk of being murdered by the mob. Ninety percent of sitcom episodes could be completely done away with, and the world would be a better place for it.

Anyway, the point is we seem to prefer to talk, or not talk, like that and it sucks ass. I was fighting with my dad once about something unrelated, and then he brings up that he is upset with me that I joked about him dying so I could get his inheritance a few times, now I admit, my jokes were pretty tasteless and I feel bad about them, but that had been going on for literally a year or more before he told me it bothered him.

How many marriages end because one partner or the other wouldn't speak up when they had a problem? An unscientific accounting of my friends and family that I can take a relatively educated guess on is "most of them".

How many people suffer quietly because they don't think, or have been told, that their problems and feelings weren't important enough to talk about? How mad do you think they get when they start to believe they are important?
A further unofficial survey of people I know returns a result of "unimaginably furious"

It's really kind of terrifying, that anger comes out in ways that no one intended and can be unleashed on people who are not in any way related to the problem that caused it, people die because of it. And it is completely avoidable. Or could be if we knew that it was okay to talk about it, and had someone willing to listen.

Now I am depressed.