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seesaw · May 20, 2019 at 01:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sarahsweets

To me there is a difference between tough love and being direct or honest. Tough love implies that you have the wellbeing of the person you are dealing with and in order to help them you must make them feel pain, humiliation-withhold love and cut them with your words. Its like someone thinks its their job to say the "hard" stuff and by doing that you will force someone to "see the light" or change their behavior because you have been "brave" enough to tell it like it is or say what people are afraid to say. The people practicing tough love sometimes think too highly of themselves and their opinions and think struggling people just need to hear the hard truth and poof! Their lives will change. And I do not think that idea of tough love belongs here.
Now, that doesn't mean if someone asks for your honest opinion you have to hide what you think. You can say something with compassion and empathy when you are asked. No one says you have to say something with fake "niceness" just so you can drop a hurt bomb on them.
For example: if someone is in a relationship with someone who keeps cheating on them and they do not leave the relationship and they ask me what I think about it... "Saying " you are so stupid for staying. You are weak and you should know better than that" is not very constructive or helpful. Saying " that has to hurt alot- do you like that sort of treatment? Do you think that its ok that your partner is treating you this way" is an empathetic way of trying to say what you feel. (doing it that way is what works in a perfect world).

When you are a direct person this is a very tough area. I am direct and especially in the written word I can come off as a tough love supporter. I am in "theory" but I do not mean to hurt anyone or lack empathy. I try and apologize if I have forgotten my empathy or compassion and make it right. But I will not lie if I am asked about something and I will do my best to get clarification of whether someone wants support and validation or an opinion. Saying hard stuff is hard-because sometimes people do not want to hear what you think, sometimes they want validation. And that is where judgement comes into play. I do not always have the best judgement-and I feel bad when I do something that is harsh or insensitive. I have to remember that my opinion is just that-mine and it doesnt mean I am right and it doesnt mean that the world needs to hear it. Sometimes I need to be a listener.

Now as it pertains to drug addiction I also feel differently about it. My daughter ran away in high school a year ago and took up residence in some older girls' house and partied and made horrible hurtful choices. She was 18 and we had no legal recourse, we just had to watch the destruction and hope she made it. We figured out where she was in 48 hours. We went to that residence and took away the car she drove (it was ours) and we shut off her phone(we paid for it). She refused to contact us so we tried with the school and when that didn't work we had to let her be and got into family counseling to learn how to cope with the loss and deal with the circumstances. She came back eventually but if we had made it easy for her by letting her have her phone and car then we would have been condoning her choices. She would have had no motivation to change because why should she? She would have had freedom through transportation and be able to snapchat and text and use social media to do god knows what. We could not allow that to indicate our support. I do not know if that was tough love, maybe someone here can tell me if it was.

I very much agree that being honest and direct is important. I'm not going to tell lies or say I think something I don't just to pacify someone. But I think being honest, and having a dissenting opinion, is not the same as "tough love." I think there are two different things being discussed there. Tough love is not the same as simply stating a different perspective or viewpoint. Tough love, as described by the OP, sounds like being harsh to the purpose of making someone behave as you want them to.

I also don't find you to be harsh or giving "tough love." I just find you honest and open with your thoughts. And sometimes that's a different viewpoint than the OP. But just because we disagree does not mean it's harsh. It's all about delivery. And we all can mess up on delivery from time to time.