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> Every single guy I have ever gushed at about how keen he is has, without fail, promptly turned into a psycho asshole monster and made me wish I never met him.

> Every single guy I have ever gushed at about how keen he is has, without fail, promptly turned into a psycho asshole monster and made me wish I never met him. I have seen / heard of many guys getting complimented over the years (including myself a few times), and never heard of one of them turning into a “psycho”, “asshole”, or ”monster”. A couple times I saw a guy get complimented out of the blue and then kind of stammer something and hurry away looking embarrassed, because he didn’t have any idea how to respond. A couple times I have seen men brush off / refuse compliments it looked like because they wanted to seem modest (e.g. “oh it was really no big deal, please don’t think anything of it...” after someone had just directly said their action was very helpful/meaningful). Once I saw a guy get complimented and respond “yeah, everyone says the same thing”, which I admit is a pretty obnoxious response. I have also heard plenty of stories of guys who were monsters (physical abusers, stalkers, spreaders of nasty rumors ...), but to my knowledge none of those came out of a compliment. I believe you, but I’m having trouble imagining quite what happened. Maybe you can elaborate a bit? Do you mean that those men turned around and demanded something more from you? Stopped treating you with basic respect? Wouldn’t talk to you anymore? Chased you around? ...

DoreenMichele 8y ago
I don't want to get into a lot of details, but I will give one example. I had an affair in my twenties with a man whose life could have been absolutely ruined because of it. He wasn't especially good looking, but he had beautiful blue eyes and I had a thing for blue eyes and told him how much I liked his blue eyes. We were not sleeping together at the time and it wasn't an unreasonable thing to say, given circumstances. This was a huge turning point in the relationship and he ended up nutcase levels of obsessed with me. This man is the reason I did not use my first and last name online for many years -- because it is a fairly unique combination and I didn't want to be easily and readily found by him. Five years after I ditched him, he hired a fucking detective to track me down and called my house where I answered the goddamned phone in front of my children, like that isn't awkward as all hell. No, he hadn't filed for divorce from his alcoholic wife. No, he hadn't left his incredibly conservative career. No, he absolutely was not in any position whatsoever to say "Oops, sorry. You can move in with me." if his phone call outed me to my husband and resulted in a divorce. I'm not exaggerating when I say psycho asshole monster. It's only not been more of a debacle because avoiding drama is one of my skills, thankfully.
- jacobolus 8y ago
  Sorry you had to go through such a shitty aftermath. That sounds terrifying. It sounds like he took the compliment as a sign that you were really serious about him and the relationship, whereas you intended it just as a statement about his eyes. The “nutcase levels of obsessed” part sounds like a pre-existing problem / part of this guy’s temperament, rather than a normal response to receiving compliments. The people I know who attracted stalkers didn’t so far as I know trigger them with any particular action. Dunno, I’m not a psychologist. I would be interested to hear more about this kind of compliment-as-behavior-switch in other kinds of circumstances.
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    I think a key detail is he wasn't especially good looking and I complimented him on a physical trait. I've known lots of people over the years who had baggage over X and who made X into some big damn deal where it was impossible to say you liked them without it going weird places. Short men do this a lot and make it impossible to say "Eh, your height doesn't bother me, but I like X about you." Men who see themselves as ugly do this. Men who are heavyset and hung up about it. Etc ad nauseum. At some point, my personal policy became "Sorry you have so much baggage. I'm not your goddamned therapist. I wouldn't touch you with a ten foot pole, not because you are short, but because, Oh. My. God. BTDT, got the t-shirt and life is too short for this shit, geez." People paint themselves into a corner and make it impossible for other people to make X trait into a non issue. And then it becomes this hill to die on and god help you if you stupidly are oblivious and genuinely didn't think they were too short, too ugly or whatever.
    - compcoffee 8y ago
      >"Short men do this a lot and make it impossible to say "Eh, your height doesn't bother me, but I like X about you." Men who see themselves as ugly do this." Wait, you think telling someone, "Don't worry, your ugliness doesn't bother me. After all, you're friendly!" is a reasonable thing to say someone? That's the exact opposite of making X trait a non-issue.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
> A couple times I have seen men brush off / refuse compliments it looked like because they wanted to seem modest You make that sound like it's some kind of deliberate manipulation or something, some of us were just brought up with the idea that doing helpful things for people is expected and not really that big a deal, and it makes us uncomfortable when people make a big deal of it.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  It's also actually socially very problematic to have praise heaped on you publicly. It makes other people jealous and causes lots of backlash. The single most effective thing I have found for reducing forum drama is to mostly ignore any compliments. Saying "Thank you" is inevitably followed by multiple people feeling compelled to openly and publicly hate on me.
  - Jeff_Brown 8y ago
    A way to avoid that dynamic could be to compliment only when no competitors to the receiver are around. A more direct solution would be to make sure those competitors all feel secure.
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- jacobolus 8y ago
  Sorry, that was not my intention. I agree that in many cases a modest “no big deal” or “it was nothing” is an appropriate response. In the particular case I am thinking about the guy being complimented (probably unintentionally) hurt the other person’s feelings by basically rejecting the very sincere compliment, even though he could have easily said “I’m always happy to help” or something similarly impersonal and satisfied the complimenter without making anything bigger out of it. Or even used the same words he had but less dismissively. Tone of voice matters a lot in face-to-face communications. My point was just that I wouldn’t consider even the most insensitive such responses to be “monstrous”, so I was wondering more specifically what Doreen Michele meant.
sdfsdfffff 8y ago
Maybe for women, a likely outcome is that men think they might have a chance to bed her.

DoreenMichele 8y ago

I don't want to get into a lot of details, but I will give one example. I had an affair in my twenties with a man whose life could have been absolutely ruined because of it. He wasn't especially good looking, but he had beautiful blue eyes and I had a thing for blue eyes and told him how much I liked his blue eyes. We were not sleeping together at the time and it wasn't an unreasonable thing to say, given circumstances. This was a huge turning point in the relationship and he ended up nutcase levels of obsessed with me. This man is the reason I did not use my first and last name online for many years -- because it is a fairly unique combination and I didn't want to be easily and readily found by him. Five years after I ditched him, he hired a fucking detective to track me down and called my house where I answered the goddamned phone in front of my children, like that isn't awkward as all hell. No, he hadn't filed for divorce from his alcoholic wife. No, he hadn't left his incredibly conservative career. No, he absolutely was not in any position whatsoever to say "Oops, sorry. You can move in with me." if his phone call outed me to my husband and resulted in a divorce. I'm not exaggerating when I say psycho asshole monster. It's only not been more of a debacle because avoiding drama is one of my skills, thankfully.

jacobolus 8y ago
Sorry you had to go through such a shitty aftermath. That sounds terrifying. It sounds like he took the compliment as a sign that you were really serious about him and the relationship, whereas you intended it just as a statement about his eyes. The “nutcase levels of obsessed” part sounds like a pre-existing problem / part of this guy’s temperament, rather than a normal response to receiving compliments. The people I know who attracted stalkers didn’t so far as I know trigger them with any particular action. Dunno, I’m not a psychologist. I would be interested to hear more about this kind of compliment-as-behavior-switch in other kinds of circumstances.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  I think a key detail is he wasn't especially good looking and I complimented him on a physical trait. I've known lots of people over the years who had baggage over X and who made X into some big damn deal where it was impossible to say you liked them without it going weird places. Short men do this a lot and make it impossible to say "Eh, your height doesn't bother me, but I like X about you." Men who see themselves as ugly do this. Men who are heavyset and hung up about it. Etc ad nauseum. At some point, my personal policy became "Sorry you have so much baggage. I'm not your goddamned therapist. I wouldn't touch you with a ten foot pole, not because you are short, but because, Oh. My. God. BTDT, got the t-shirt and life is too short for this shit, geez." People paint themselves into a corner and make it impossible for other people to make X trait into a non issue. And then it becomes this hill to die on and god help you if you stupidly are oblivious and genuinely didn't think they were too short, too ugly or whatever.
  - compcoffee 8y ago
    >"Short men do this a lot and make it impossible to say "Eh, your height doesn't bother me, but I like X about you." Men who see themselves as ugly do this." Wait, you think telling someone, "Don't worry, your ugliness doesn't bother me. After all, you're friendly!" is a reasonable thing to say someone? That's the exact opposite of making X trait a non-issue.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago

> A couple times I have seen men brush off / refuse compliments it looked like because they wanted to seem modest You make that sound like it's some kind of deliberate manipulation or something, some of us were just brought up with the idea that doing helpful things for people is expected and not really that big a deal, and it makes us uncomfortable when people make a big deal of it.

DoreenMichele 8y ago
It's also actually socially very problematic to have praise heaped on you publicly. It makes other people jealous and causes lots of backlash. The single most effective thing I have found for reducing forum drama is to mostly ignore any compliments. Saying "Thank you" is inevitably followed by multiple people feeling compelled to openly and publicly hate on me.
- Jeff_Brown 8y ago
  A way to avoid that dynamic could be to compliment only when no competitors to the receiver are around. A more direct solution would be to make sure those competitors all feel secure.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
jacobolus 8y ago
Sorry, that was not my intention. I agree that in many cases a modest “no big deal” or “it was nothing” is an appropriate response. In the particular case I am thinking about the guy being complimented (probably unintentionally) hurt the other person’s feelings by basically rejecting the very sincere compliment, even though he could have easily said “I’m always happy to help” or something similarly impersonal and satisfied the complimenter without making anything bigger out of it. Or even used the same words he had but less dismissively. Tone of voice matters a lot in face-to-face communications. My point was just that I wouldn’t consider even the most insensitive such responses to be “monstrous”, so I was wondering more specifically what Doreen Michele meant.

sdfsdfffff 8y ago

Maybe for women, a likely outcome is that men think they might have a chance to bed her.