Today's Argument

Today’s argument came about because Duv believes that the woman, the dietitian, that he originally spoke with to find out what foods he could eat lied to him.  I stated that he had no knowledge of whether or not she intentionally lied to him, or merely gave him inaccurate information.  We did figure out that his definition of a lie is when wrong information is given, whether intentionally or not, and that my definition is when the information is given incorrectly on purpose, as in someone is trying to deceive someone.  But that was not the real crux of the fight.  With people that I am on a friend level with, I have learned to hold my tongue, to curb the impulse to speak my mind.  With those that I am close to or I am comfortable with, that reserve goes down and I usually speak my mind.  This is a real problem between Duv and myself because I think that a lot of his views of the world are skewed, due to his spending so many years homeless and outside of the system.  It seems to me that a lot of the times, he speaks in terms of the world/system/etc being against him and out to get him.  And I do admit that I am very optimistic when it comes to my views of the world, that I think of people in general doing good, unless proven otherwise, so yes, I have a hard time automatically assuming that someone outright lied to a potential patient and gave information that she knew to be wrong and could cause harm.  That in itself is not the major problem here.  I guess it is that I feel that because I am close to someone that I should not have to hold myself to the same careful standards as I would to a mere acquaintance.  Maybe it’s more a matter of impulse, that I have never trained myself to check my thoughts before I give them.  The reason that it winds up hurting Duv (as it did Jim) is because when I am around people that I am not close to or don’t know, I am working to not appear the idiot, so I am watching everything I do and say.  In other words, I don’t want to be judged badly, so I don’t do anything that would get me judged.  When I am around boyfriends and husbands, I am not worried about being judged by them so I don’t put that barrier into place, it does not occur to me to think before I speak to them, to watch what I say.  I know that I hate having to do that around others and I pretty much feel freed from the confines of living that way around those I’m close to.  I guess that I’m always supposed to be confined that way, to rarely allow myself to truly speak my mind.  Am I supposed to be more reserved around those that I’m closer to, just so that I don’t hurt their feelings?  That, to me, is so sad.  I don’t like having my feelings hurt either, however I’d rather learn from that than to think that people are just patronizing me, giving me what I want to hear.  I don’t know.  We will probably continue to have problems of some sort from this.  I will either never remember to hold my tongue, which will continue to hurt his feelings because I didn’t automatically give Duv my 100% support on something, or I will never want to give my opinion to him on anything, for fear that it will hurt his feelings again.  Which is better, and which is worse?