Do you tell someone you understand, or do they tell you?

Two blowups happened in my life in the last week, and they both had something in common.

Well, me, of course. But since people who think they're being objective will stop analyzing at that point and think they've figured everything out.

This post, this blog, is just that last gasp to suggest maybe they don't know as much as they are sure they do

and that may have some bearing on our situation.

"That you would uprate such a piece of shit diary tells me all I need to know about you"

"All you can do is argue and say I don't understand, and that I never will. I understand plenty. You pretty much hate me because I am content, you are not, and it's all about you. But I don't look down on you - that has to be you measuring yourself against others. You are the one that thinks you are a failure. Not me."

The first one is pretty simple: that a person can say they know "all that I need to know" about a person based on one comment/lack of condemnation of what they felt deserved to be condemned - that's the depth of their investment in knowing a person before judging them.

The second post was from a friend of 25 years ago. A relationship that was apparently so shallow that despite it's original importance had sheltered both of us to things that would not have allowed a friendship had either one of us known. The other guy, it seems, wants me to know that he has nothing to prove, he does not judge me (but I judge him) and to prove it, he has to tell me that our parting is all my doing because he did not judge anyone.

Focus please on just this one sentence:

All you can do is argue and say I don't understand, and that I never will. I understand plenty."

Can you name for me one situation in life where it's good enough to tell someone that you understand the subject at hand, and they take your claim at face value, that's good enough?

Do you tell your teachers/professors that you understand, or do you have to take a test to prove it to their satisfaction?

How about the Bureau of Motor Vehicles? Many people will tell you that they are great drivers and they KNOW all the rules, yet the BMV still makes you take the exam. They will deny you a license if you don't answer enough questions correctly, and the police reserve the right to pull you over and issue a fine or arrest you if you demonstrate your actual failure to understand.

But to my "friend", I tell him he doesn't understand what I'm telling him, and his answer is "I understand plenty".

Wow. My grades in college would have been so much better had I been able to get a deal like that.

But this person takes it one level further - his whole point is to tell me that he is my friend no matter what and that he has nothing to prove.

Am I the only one who thinks it's odd that a guy who has nothing to prove went a long way to prove he wasn't wrong; and that if what he was trying to prove was that he is my friend and he doesn't have a problem with my faults...

...did he not just take the time to point another one of them out to me?