A useful point, or even rule of thumb for participation here:
The useful point or rule
- Don’t be an asshole to Deaconette or anyone else here.
- If you are an asshole to Deaconette, Deaconette will have to be an asshole to you.
- She is much better at being an asshole than are you.
Seriously? Seriously.
Let’s be serious a moment. Adults don’t need rules. They need a soupçon of empathy and a perfectly ordinary smidge of maturity. Deaconette believes that nearly all of you have these qualities in abundantly sufficient quantity. If she is correct about that, then the rule up there isn’t for you.
Who needs rules?
There are people who need rules, both to make them and to be guided by them. Small children are people who need rules because they lack impulse control and empathy. Narcissists are people who are stunted emotionally at the maturity level of small children. They love to impose rules, because enforcing self-made rules feeds their fantasy of grandiosity and ensures narcissistic supply from codependents.
Are you a narcissist?
One way to tell if you have a narcissistic personality is if you expect well-meaning peers to conform to elaborate self-centered rules of your own invention that are replete with threats of punishment for infractions, instead of expecting courtesy and anticipating that adults will know what that means. So if you’re a narcissist or a precociously literate small child, the rule up there applies to you.
Deaconette thanks you in advance. Abraham Lincoln said it best, of course.
Deaconette C's Blog 