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Art Dispute


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Hi Guys!

 

I'm having an "argument" with my girlfriend as to the quality of her art (with whom things are going much better, thanks in no small part to the great advice I got here not too long back).

 

I created a poll on my "blog" that makes it incredibly easy (one click, no name no nothing) so if anyone is so inclined, check it out and give a quick thumbs up/down. This is hardly an extensive piece of work, just a cute little sketch she did for a webcomic she wants to make that she thought was terrible and I thought was adorable (the little drawing she did for me on the back made it all the more so, but I didn't post it yet). It took far too much wrangling than it should have to keep her from trashing it.

 

Yes, you might point out the relative dumbness of this type of poll, but she's got low self-esteem (which I'm trying to fix), and if I can get a ton (a relative term) of people to vote on this, it might help. Visiting her DA (yeah, I know - link right at top of blog post) wouldn't hurt, even if you don't look through it. Very little there since she hides/destroys most of her stuff.

 

Mod is looking great. Cant wait until summer so I can get back to mapping (not been my best semester...).

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Thanks Komag ;)

 

She knows I'm doing it, and its adorable how she is acting disinterested, but notices when anyone votes and wants to know what forums I posted it on so she can read what people say, but passes it off as just curiosity.

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Yep, talented. Obviously low self esteem.

 

Fact - You cannot be your girl's psychiatrist AND boyfriend at the same time.

 

If you are any good at it, eventually you will hit her wall, and she'll hate you for it, because she can't face that issue, and will project that anger and confusion onto you, for directly addressing it.

 

If you aren't that good, then you'll go round and round in circles constantly giving her "helpful advice" and "words of support" as she keeps coming back to you with the same problems and using you as a "what do I do next?" guidebook, and hence can blame you for any advice that went bad. Your relationship will be reduced to talking about her problems all day, and she'll associate that negativity with you.

 

Either way, her attitude towards you will slowly turn sour, and of course your natural reaction to that is to be nicer - which will look like trying to suck up to her, and will keep making things worse.

 

The best course of action I've found, over the years, is to get to her point sooner, give her the facts straight, and when she comes back with a similar issue, you have to tell her "Well I told you what I thought about that already." Ideally you want to be able to say then "You're probably better off talking to your girlfriends if you just want someone to tell it to" or something along those lines, or at least let her talk about it and not give her any advice, just say "Gee that sucks" "Yeah I know what you mean" etc.

 

You can't "fix" her, not the way you think you can anyway, trust me. Ultimately, low self esteem has to be dealt with internally. You have to enforce independance - if she learns to constantly go to you to whine and complain to, she'll stay in her low self esteem mindset.

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Yep, talented. Obviously low self esteem.

 

Fact - You cannot be your girl's psychiatrist AND boyfriend at the same time.

 

If you are any good at it, eventually you will hit her wall, and she'll hate you for it, because she can't face that issue, and will project that anger and confusion onto you, for directly addressing it.

 

If you aren't that good, then you'll go round and round in circles constantly giving her "helpful advice" and "words of support" as she keeps coming back to you with the same problems and using you as a "what do I do next?" guidebook, and hence can blame you for any advice that went bad. Your relationship will be reduced to talking about her problems all day, and she'll associate that negativity with you.

 

Either way, her attitude towards you will slowly turn sour, and of course your natural reaction to that is to be nicer - which will look like trying to suck up to her, and will keep making things worse.

 

The best course of action I've found, over the years, is to get to her point sooner, give her the facts straight, and when she comes back with a similar issue, you have to tell her "Well I told you what I thought about that already." Ideally you want to be able to say then "You're probably better off talking to your girlfriends if you just want someone to tell it to" or something along those lines, or at least let her talk about it and not give her any advice, just say "Gee that sucks" "Yeah I know what you mean" etc.

 

You can't "fix" her, not the way you think you can anyway, trust me. Ultimately, low self esteem has to be dealt with internally. You have to enforce independance - if she learns to constantly go to you to whine and complain to, she'll stay in her low self esteem mindset.

Hey, i learned something there!

 

 

The drawing is really good, i think. Just the hand looks a little reptilian, but thats it.

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Yep, talented. Obviously low self esteem.

 

Fact - You cannot be your girl's psychiatrist AND boyfriend at the same time.

 

If you are any good at it, eventually you will hit her wall, and she'll hate you for it, because she can't face that issue, and will project that anger and confusion onto you, for directly addressing it.

 

If you aren't that good, then you'll go round and round in circles constantly giving her "helpful advice" and "words of support" as she keeps coming back to you with the same problems and using you as a "what do I do next?" guidebook, and hence can blame you for any advice that went bad. Your relationship will be reduced to talking about her problems all day, and she'll associate that negativity with you.

 

Either way, her attitude towards you will slowly turn sour, and of course your natural reaction to that is to be nicer - which will look like trying to suck up to her, and will keep making things worse.

 

The best course of action I've found, over the years, is to get to her point sooner, give her the facts straight, and when she comes back with a similar issue, you have to tell her "Well I told you what I thought about that already." Ideally you want to be able to say then "You're probably better off talking to your girlfriends if you just want someone to tell it to" or something along those lines, or at least let her talk about it and not give her any advice, just say "Gee that sucks" "Yeah I know what you mean" etc.

 

You can't "fix" her, not the way you think you can anyway, trust me. Ultimately, low self esteem has to be dealt with internally. You have to enforce independance - if she learns to constantly go to you to whine and complain to, she'll stay in her low self esteem mindset.

 

That is good advice, thank you. I need a lot more advice than I had previously thought ;)

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Usually I don't agree with Domarius but in this case I do. I also had once a friedn and she came to me every time complaining about all kind of things. I gave here advice in the beginning because she asked for it, and I thought I could help her. But after some time I realized that she doesn't follow my advice anyway (which is not reall the problem) but she still came always to me asking me for advice the same things over again. After realizing this, I told her that she doesn't heed my advice anyway, so why bothering with me, and since she persisted I told her to leave me alone with this crap. Well, it was not my girlfriend, so it was not really that bad for me. :)

 

As for the drawings - I don't really like that anime stuff. The drawing on the frontpage of the voting I thought not so good and almoste voted for bad, but when I noticed that there are other images I changed my mind. The only issue I have with the characters and also the animals is, that they look to static. They don't have much personallity IMO and look to stylized to me. But I think that can be worked on with time. Nobody starts at a professional from the first moment. :) Apart from that the images look quite good and some really got a nice atmosphere in them, but of course characters are always harder to catch.

Gerhard

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I get the impression Domarius has had a lot of needy girlfriends. :laugh:
I have had a few of them yes, was it the "over the years" part that gave it away? :D It applies to anyone really, not just girlfriends, but it's easier to fall into the trap if its your girlfriend because you have an emotional investment with them.

 

I tended to attract more low-self esteem or needy girls than normal because I tend to be really good at talking people through things and making them feel good. I'm at the stage where I can very soon get to someone's "issue" pretty reliably after some time of them telling me their problems, and is what made me come to the conclusion I posted above.

 

Nice to see you agree Spar, but I wasn't aware you usually don't agree with ANYTHING I say, cripes... :blink: my view on life has changed a lot since even only a year ago, so maybe that's not so true anymore, if you're referring to arguments long gone.

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I've heard it said (in general, not applying to everyone, discalimers^infinity!) that women sometimes talk about a problem not to get advice on fixing it, but rather to feel better when they share their experience with someone who now knows what they're going through. Whereas when men hear about a problem, our first reaction is often "How can I fix this!?!?" This leads to a lot of conversations that don't go anywhere. :)

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Yes that is very true, and that's the part in my post where I mentioned the option of just listening and saying "Gee that sucks" etc.

 

I like the "go and talk to your girlfriends about it" version much better :P

 

Btw,voted for good, she can draw much much better than I can do :)

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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After 9 nears of marriage (last week), and wanting it to last forever (which it's looking pretty good so far!), I've developed some responses to when she tells me of problems at work or something like that.

 

Sometimes I can just tell that she's only venting a bit, and doesn't want any suggestions or advice, so I don't give any and it's fine. Other times I can tell she really wants me to help her figure out what to do about something, so I say some ideas of what she could do, what she could say to someone, how she could approach the subject and how to say it, etc, and sometimes she right away actually uses my advice!

 

Other time I'm not sure if she just wants to talk about it, or if she really wants advice, so I just ask her flat out "I'm listening, but do you want me to just listen and talk or do you want me to actually try to help with it and give advice?".

 

Plus, no matter what, I'm never bossy, I never say "You HAVE to...this" or "You GOTTA...that", rather I say "you might try...this", or "they might respond better if you said...that". That way we never try to rule over each other, but respect each other's individuality and personal judgment. And even if the girl WANTS to be told exactly what to do, it's probably better to just suggest some alternatives so she has to think and decide still, and then she'll have a better growing experience and gain some confidence after the fact, rather than just doing what she was told which gains no confidence.

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