Living with a Skeptic

[trzes]

Originally Posted by MissJo

I do believe that there is something more when it comes to Tarot, but hey... she's the most ultimate skeptic I'm friends with, I was trying to explain it in a way that she was going to understand and believe. And I think I succeeded!

Ha! That's exactely how I was drawn into tarot once, me the sceptic who I still am, because it was a way of thinking or the type of argument that was sort of compatible to my own mindset.

I am telling this because sometimes when a clash in a discussion happens I find it hard to distinguish between a clash because of the matter itself and a clash because of the style of arguing. I remember myself being annoyed about the other one's "irrationality" only to find out later that our points of view haven't been all that different. Well, they often were, but the difference was in a way acceptable.

Originally Posted by Narwhallove

I have the uneasy feeling that my partner is kind and tolerant of it b/c I am his girlfriend, but if I were *not* his girlfriend, he would be dismissive. Although I understand this is the reality of compromises in any relationship, it strikes me as sad and even insincere.

And how much one accepts about somone else's different mindset surely depends on the amount of personal respect or love for the other person. That doesn't have to be a bad thing. It is a bit about the question wether we want to be loved or respected for our personality or for our way of thinking and/or our intelligence. I mean, I keep catching myself wanting to be loved for my imagined brilliance rather than for my imagined niceness, but in theory at least I think that any kind of respect can be appreciated.

... and then there is me and my partner who is a very grounded and "rational" person too. One should think the safest topic to discuss for the two of us should be something like math. But quite the opposite: we never clash about politics, we don't even clash about tarot. If we clash we clash about MATH, honestly. It can't be the math itself (like "why will you never understand that 11 is even") or the mindset (like "I hate your uncritical attitude towards prime numbers"), not even the way of thinking, really. Just the way of communicating I suppose.