Excuses

Every so often when I have little book spring clean I put one book aside that I bought ages ago….should I chuck, shouldn’t I…and it stays. So the other day when it ended up the keep pile I thought I would whizz through to refresh my mind.

The name of this book is: The Idiot’s Guide to Coping with Difficult People. You may well ask why I bought it…well it’s because I don’t cope or deal with difficult people very well at all and I am usually end up feeling like a loser or really awful.

Does the book help? Sure it does. Does one always follow the good advice and insight it dishes out in well thought out chunks – of course not. Or….maybe only sometimes. Would you be better off following the advice – most definitely.

The book covers relationships with family, parents, siblings, bosses, lovers, h

usbands and wives and friends. During the quick refresher read I did, I noted one point that kept coming up in all these relationships and that was: If you keep making excuses for a person there is something very wrong with that person…. Or if someone else makes excuses for a person…ditto. And what do I mean by this? Here are a couple of little innocuous examples:

• He is very angry/aggressive because his father left home when he was young

• She is so self centred because her mother spoilt her

• He drinks because he had a difficult childhood

• She behaves like that because she has a difficult job and is very stressed

• He has so many hardships in life – that is why he is so difficult to get on with/beats his wife/doesn’t communicate with anyone.

For as long as people (usually their nearest and dearest) are making excuses for the way a person behaves…that person doesn’t have to do anything to make themselves more agreeable or likeable or get involved in your life/the kids life/your folks and friends/take the dog for a walk etc. They can behave like miserable spoilt brats – and they get away with it. You are the one who bears the brunt of it.

One of the really funny examples that popped up was: He is so brilliant – he just can’t fit in with this world – he can’t relate to anyone because he is so clever - that is why he is so distant/anti-social/disagreeable/rude/obnoxious – need I go on? What rubbish – if he was so brilliant he wouldn’t behave like a jerk…so Mummy/sister/wife encourages this bad behaviour by making out he is so brilliant….and thinks he is too good for lesser mortals - hahahaha.

When you make excuses for people you are enabling them to cop out of taking responsibility for their bad behaviour. They are the ones who end up not doing stuff, they don’t get asked to help out with things and generally they can sit back and watch everyone else slogging it out and tip toeing around them.

So what do you do when someone tells you about this really amazing guy/gal (possible future employee/girlfriend/boyfriend) but says you must treat them carefully because they had an alcoholic father/was adopted/is so clever it is difficult to understand them/is rude because they are a perfectionist……what do you do? Well the best thing to do is run a mile.