Sir Hurt Your Feelings and Somehow Your Reaction Became the Problem

A man can do something hurtful and still come out of the conversation looking rather surprised that everyone is discussing him.

It is one of romance’s more curious little tricks. Sir says something cruel, behaves carelessly or does the very thing he knows will upset you.

You tell him it hurt, which seems simple enough, yet somewhere between that hurt me and whatever happens next, the thing he actually did begins fading politely into the background while your reaction becomes the most fascinating subject in the room.

Were you too sensitive? Did you misunderstand? Are you making too much of it?

Goodness. Sir did the hurting, and somehow you are the one being asked to explain it.

Perhaps this little trick becomes much easier to spot once we give it a table, two desserts and somewhere to misbehave.

Imagine a lovely little patisserie. You and Sir are sitting together, and in front of you is a beautiful dessert you chose for yourself. Sir has his own, of course, but for some reason yours has caught his eye.

Nothing unusual about that. Sir merely wants a bite.

Sir Was Only Having a Taste

He reaches across, takes a small spoonful and smiles. Fine. Nobody is ending a relationship over one bite of chocolate mousse, and the afternoon continues with everyone behaving beautifully.

A little later, however, Sir’s spoon returns. This time it takes slightly more, and then, while he is telling you something completely unrelated, it wanders over again and removes the best bit from the top with the easy confidence of something beginning to feel rather at home.

You look at him. “That was mine.”

“I only had a little,” Sir says, looking genuinely surprised that you might actually want to eat the dessert yourself.

A charming argument, except the little keeps coming back.

Still, the afternoon carries on pleasantly enough, except that Sir’s spoon now seems to regard your side of the table as somewhere it may drop by whenever the mood takes it. At first, none of it seems quite worth making a fuss over. Each little visit is innocent enough on its own, yet somehow your dessert keeps becoming smaller and smaller while Sir remains wonderfully relaxed about the mystery.

Eventually you move the plate a little closer and explain that you would quite like to eat the dessert you ordered, which Sir seems to take rather personally. After all, he was only having a bite.

Ah.

And just like that, the spoon quietly disappears from the story. Sir is no longer particularly interested in how much of your dessert he has eaten; he would much rather discuss why you are making such a thing of it.

Your Reaction Has Become the Main Event

And once your reaction becomes the part Sir finds confusing, suddenly he has questions. How much did he really eat? Was it honestly that much? Had you not mentioned earlier that you were getting full? And if this mattered so much, why did you wait until now to say something?

And now, for some strange reason, the man who was just eating your dessert has you explaining the dessert back to him, while the original problem quietly slips out of sight and you are left defending the simple fact that it bothered you.

Just as that begins taking up enough room, Sir finds another useful place for the conversation to go: what he meant. He did not mean it that way. He would never deliberately hurt you. And before long, what Sir intended has become far more interesting than what actually happened.

Before long, you are choosing your words carefully enough not to create a second problem with your tone. Quite a lot of effort for a woman who began with four perfectly ordinary words: That really hurt me.

Sir, meanwhile, remains beautifully calm. Why wouldn’t he? He is not the one having to explain his own feelings.

And on top of all that, just when the conversation seems to have wandered far enough from the beginning, Sir manages to move it somewhere else entirely.

Somehow Sir Is Hurt Now

Somewhere in all this, Sir has managed to become upset that you could think he would intentionally hurt you. Quite a turn for the man who began the afternoon with the wandering spoon.

He thought you were sharing, he would never knowingly do something cruel, and he cannot believe you would see him that way. Before long, the nearly vanished dessert has become strangely unimportant while Sir’s feelings about your opinion of him take center stage.

And because you are a reasonable woman, you find yourself reassuring him that you do not think he is terrible. You are simply trying to explain that what he did hurt you.

Madam, somehow we have left the dessert behind and ended up discussing Sir’s feelings.

A few minutes ago, you were asking Sir to stop doing something that bothered you. Now you are comforting him because finding out that he bothered you has hurt his feelings.

Once you stand back, the trick is wonderfully easy to spot: Sir only has to keep the conversation moving until your reaction becomes more interesting than what he did.

And where did all this begin? Sir did something hurtful, you said it hurt, and somehow your hurt feelings became the problem while Sir’s hurt feelings became the ones requiring attention.