Occasionally I see people make the distinction between “listening” and “obeying,” and assert that it’s a dangerous manipulation tactic or something, to accuse someone of “not listening” when you mean “not obeying”

but honestly? I feel like in most cases it’s the opposite?

if you disregard the baggage that the word “obey” tends to have, and take just the meaning of “do the thing that I need/want/ask them to do”

because “not obeying,” in that sense, almost always is what anyone is upset about, regardless of the circumstances

like. for example.

If I lived with someone who never helped with the dishes when I asked? ….accusing them of “not listening” to my request would be the charitable, benefit-of-the-doubt interpretation.

I’d be much more understanding of someone who had just… zoned out and failed to listen when I asked for help with the dishes.

…compared to someone who fully listened and understood every word, but then privately thought “fuck that, I will not obey you. I’m not doing any dishes, that’s beneath me– you can just stay in the kitchen and do all of them yourself, or else they can just sit there until they attract rats”

that would seriously piss me off.

And the same pretty much goes for any request! Even the most unreasonable ones!

Because, if you are being asked to do something and you consider it an unreasonable request, and you think obeying it would be a bad idea–

then the only helpful response is to have a conversation about why you find it unreasonable, and what compromise you could come to.

And– by the time anyone’s making accusations of “not listening” because the request wasn’t obeyed? By that time, it’s pretty much certain that this conversation did NOT happen. 

Either the person actually didn’t listen/hear/remember the request– 

or they did, and then just chose not to do the thing, but refused to communicate about why.

And the second option is worse!

…And yes, of course, there are circumstances where that communication wouldn’t actually help.

Like, when the unreasonable instructions come from some control freak who refuses to compromise– and if you tell them that their request makes no sense, they’ll just keep arguing until you give up and obey, no matter how right you are.

And in this case, the more valid complaint might be that they’re not listening to you. 

…Or that they are fully hearing and understanding everything you say, but just not caring. 

And again! The second option is worse! 

I feel like the problem isn’t exactly that “some people act as if anyone who doesn’t obey them isn’t listening”

I think the problem is more that… that type of toxic, controlling relationship has gotten to a point where the communication of all the nuances between “I heard the instructions” and “I’ll follow them” doesn’t get to happen.

I dunno. To make sense of the “obey/listen” dichotomy, I think we gotta agree on what each word means.

If “listen” just means “hear and pay attention and comprehend,” and “obey” just means “do whatever you’ve been told or asked to do”… then that’s a problem. Because then we don’t have a word for the thing that actually should be happening 

(hearing and comprehending and then honestly communicating how you feel about it and what you intend to do)

And we need to be able to talk about when someone did or didn’t do this.

Or when they did but the other person didn’t acknowledge them, or it just turned into a fight that accomplished nothing.

Because, as it stands, people seem to just categorize all of those different things under either “listen/not listen” or “obey/not obey,” and can’t agree on which goes where.

(Can’t even agree with themselves. Because most people’s definitions seem to depend on whether they’re the one doing it or someone else.)

Anyway…. whenever I hear some type of behavior described and then labeled as a red flag or an abuser tactic… I always ask myself how easy it’d be for abusers to use that exact description for some totally reasonable thing their victims do, and turn it around to accuse them. 

And usually that is VERY easy.