I find myself doing it again and again: thinking that if I just express myself clearly, if I articulate my needs and wants* clearly and precisely, if I show why I'm thinking what I'm thinking - then the other person will respond to me in the desired way. Not - I tried to explain - necessarily by fulfilling the need, or even by thinking it a reasonable or understandable or morally okay (technical term here) thing to need - but by engaging me in like manner.
This is clearly not a thing that's going to happen. (I find the same tendency in some of our politicians - if we just explained things carefully and clearly to people, they will see why our policies are what they are, why they are what they had to be. It doesn't work that well in politics, either.) My question is, is it okay for me to do this? To demand engagement? Is that a need that I'm demanding be fulfilled - a meta-need? an underlying need? - and is that demand, well, wrong - not reasonable or sympathisable-with or morally okay, but too narcissistic and self-centred and self-ish? Maybe yes? The 'maybe' isn't purely rhetorical - for a long time I believed that it was reasonable (etc) to articulate one's needs and to expect to be taken seriously - for the other person to fulfill the need or explain why it couldn't or shouldn't be fulfilled or to articulate his or her own needs or something. To respond in the same register. (Though maybe this is a smokescreen for myself: I did expect that the so-reasonably-set out needs would be fulfilled. In the way that I wanted them fulfilled. As in: I would like you to show your love in these particular ways. And how would you know them if I didn't tell you what they were? But I want to acknowledge the possibility that my reasonable needs were not, in fact, reasonable.) That while my interlocutor might well say no, there would be a conversation about that no. But is the demand for the conversation reasonable? May I demand it? I guess this is a trick question - it all depends who you're demanding it of - it might be an okay thing to demand, or a kind of aggression, or a true need, or a deeply narcissistic thing to do, or a very adolescent thing to do (all I want is for you to understand meeee) - or all of the above (trick answer).
* For my purposes pretty much the same thing. I'll just say 'need', since every want feels like a need to the want-er.
Update: the answer is clearly no, it's not okay, don't do it. Accept what you're given with a glad heart. It's too late for that kind of openness and vulnerability, if ever it were possible. If you were a better person, you wouldn't even ask this question. But since I'm not, and I can't pretend to be on a consistent basis, which is probably just confusing and upsetting for everyone - and we're not going to talk it out, are we? - what should I do? Beyond the usual unsatisfactory mix of politeness and embarrassment and kindness: pretend it didn't happen, be kind when you can, nurse your resentments in private if you have to. Accept such means as will give you your ends, your stated ends, even if those ends were conceived of, and repeatedly affirmed, in moments of high-mindedness which you find increasingly difficult to sustain.
