A hazard to long distance venting...

No, I’m not talking central heat and air systems 101 today… as if I’m not already boring enough for most… lol.  But I want to point out a situation that I’ve personally seen and that I’ve seen in problem situations others have described to me.

We get irritated, but we keep our cool and hold our breath until it boils over and we have to let it out.  Sometimes we purposely make a call to a confidant and vent our frustrations while other times we tend to spew on the first person we come across who will lend us an ear. Venting is healthy and necessary, but remember that venting is letting out negative energy.  It helps us to process information and emotion verbally, and it allows us to analyze ourselves and our reactions while we talk out loud to someone outside the situation.

So, what’s the hazard then in venting?  It really depends on who we choose to vent to and how are they related to the situation- if at all.  Let me set this up for you.  Let's say a husband and wife are having a reoccurring issue come between them and they can’t seem to find a solution.  Let’s say it’s the wife spending too frivolously.  They argue about it a lot lately without much resolve.  The husband’s parents live 100 miles away, so they don’t have first-hand knowledge or witness too much of the couple’s marriage business.  The husband vents to his mother about the situation when she happens to call one day after he just had a tiff with  his wife about her spending.  And then he does this on several other occasions since then per happenstance... (he doesn't set out to call mom and complain, but in conversations it comes up).  Okay, where’s the danger in confiding in your parent about a problem you’re having with your spouse?  It could be here:   Mom is now seeing a different side to her daughter-in-law.  She’s forming opinions about her and making assumptions based solely on what she’s been told.  She doesn’t speak to her son often about his wife’s spending problem and honestly it may never come up again.  Mom is now watching and questioning every purchase her daughter-in-law makes (or that she hears about from 100 miles away) and mom assumes it’s spontaneous and frivolous.  In the meantime, the couple goes through a budgeting and financial class and gets a household budget in place.  Both follow it to a tee.  No more fights… complete financial/marital harmony.  Great solution!  But… no one tells the husband’s mom.  In mom’s mind the financial picture never changes.  There’s still money stress and strife, and mom unavoidably sees her daughter-in-law in a different way… through the lens or stereotype as a frivolous spender.  Only years later does mom find out that her daughter-in-law is actually quite good at managing her budget and shopping for her family’s needs... (by that time mom's opinion of her is a habit and will be very difficult to change regardless of the new information… the truth).  How we perceive someone inevitably plays a role in how we treat them or speak of them to others.  Seemingly harmless venting can be a hazard.  In this situation it’s hard for the mother-in-law to see his son’s wife in a positive light.  The true detriment is the strain it puts on the in-law relationship.

So, judgment and misperception are the hazards to venting.   Honestly, how many times to we go back when a situation finds a solution and inform the person we vented to of the change?  So many times, we’re so thankful for the relief from the stress it was creating, we want to be done with it while forgetting who we talked to about it.  And never do we think through the effects of our venting on the person we vented to. Think about it.  It makes sense.  Substitute any of the three people in this example… could be a parent venting to a grown child about another relative… a child venting to a grandparent about his parent… a child venting to a parent about a teacher or another child (a friend)… a parent venting to some third party about a person in her child’s life and her child overhearing it…  The possibilities are endless and the misunderstanding, misrepresenting, and misjudging are virtually unavoidable, and relationships are strained.  

Food for thought.