Tone of voice with loved ones.?

Question

A question here made me think of a story: A woman was shopping and bumped into another shopper, a complete stranger. She quickly appologized, feeling horribly for knocking their stuff to the floor. Later that night, she was cooking dinner. Her 6 yr old son was standing silently behind her. When she turned around and ran into him she yelled at him to get out of the way and go sit down. The child went to his room crying. When dinner was done, she noticed something on the floor by the stove. It was the flowers her son had picked to give to her.

Question here is, why are we so polite to strangers, people we'll never see again, and so mean to the people we love most?

*** My theory: Because we know they will always love us. We take that love for granted and abuse it. Food for thought.

Answer 1

An old saying, "we hurt the ones we love the most." Another saying, "when we last see someone, we may not always remember what was said but we always remember the feeling they left us with." And your theory seems right on target too.

Answer 2

you are right, i think it's true that we do take love for granted from our family once in a while, and sometimes we don't realize it. i have this situation here and there. it has to do with tolerance. after tolerating everybody everyday, the brain creates a shortcut and just gets to the point. the brain only does this because there is a strong connection established with the family. it has its good and bads. this just happens to be a bad. however, just the strong connection with family is a good thing itself. =)

the reason why i am polite to strangers is, i start out by giving everyone a 50% respect level, the nicer they are, my respect goes up, the meaner they are, the respect goes down. if i were to run into a complete stranger like that, i would feel that i lost some respect and try to get it back by apologizing and if appropriate, picking up whatever i knocked to the floor.
and sometimes im just nice, i opened a door for an older woman in a wheelchair before. i earned some respect from her, and my grandma too because she saw what i did so i got a treat. that was a while ago. =)

Answer 3

You are so right about this!!! We need to think ahead about the kind of person we want to be. How do we handle upsetting circumstances? WE are acting on our emotions instead of our hearts. The love is there for the child, but the emotion of a hot stove, bad words with the husband or friend, lost a job have taken precidence, and all common sense has gone out the window. We need to think before we react before we lose a beautiful bouquet of flowers.

Answer 4

This is true-but not everyone would have been nice in that first situation. I know if I was having a bad day and someone bumped into me I would take it out on them because I don't know them and I am cranky-not anyone's fault.
The mom was probably more startled than anything by her son which causing her reaction to quickly burst into yelling. But we do befriend strangers and yell at loved ones because we know they will come back to us with love.

Answer 5

Wonderful story! I'm going to share it with other people. It's so true!

We allow ourself to get irritated too easily at those we are most familiar with. I've heard about husbands and wives getting into fights over things as trivial as what canned vegetables to have for dinner. We don't have to be this way. We can respect and cherish our loved ones with the same level of honor for all the time that they're in our lives. We need to remember: sometimes we will not have them there as long as we expect.

Answer 6

You are so correct. We hurt the ones we love the most because we feel safe enough with them to think that they will forgive us and still love us. Plus being nice to strangers and others we don't know is more about giving out a good impression. We can hide behind their ignorance of who we really are. With family, there is very little to hide. They know the good, the bad and the ugly.

Answer 7

I agree with you. It often makes me sad to see moms and dads lose their patience with their kids. I know how hard it is to be a parent and I know how tired and stressed we can get. When I see a parent become impatient with their child, I just think about how quickly the kids grow up. They are children for such a short time.
I also notice people (like my husband) ask to give someone a hand or take the time to explain something. When it's me that needs the help, he'll make a face (like roll his eyes) and say (begrudgingly), "I'll do it". I'm pretty sure it's because he knows I love him and it's not going to set off WW3.

Answer 8

I think it is because we not only take them for granted but we also expect our own needs to be fulfilled through their actions. In other words I expect my kids to act a certain way because I want things to go my way. Blindness and selfishness.

On the other hand this may be the mother had tripped over this kid 45 times that day and had enough!

Answer 9

Very good question. I think another reason that some are so harsh with family members is because of unrealistic expectations. It is expected that family should know what we think, feel, what we mean when we say things, it is expected that certain family members put up with certain behaviors because it is family. These ways of interaction are very prevalent in modern day families, and they do not work in terms of having healthy, functioning relationships. I have some family members who have hurt me deeply and refuse to apologize saying that they never meant to hurt me. My answer to that is do we ever really mean to hit someone in our car in traffic? No, but when we do, we acknowledge our error, we apologize despite it being accidental. Again, very good question.

Answer 10

I agree we sometimes are tougher on our loved ones than a perfect stranger