I came pretty dang close the other day.
If you have, did it make a difference? Or did they continue to be unabashedly negative and/or judgmental?
Anyone willing to own up to this personality trait?
Never told her, just quit talking to her.
I thought I was going to scream.
She doesn’t work, doesn’t clean, doesn’t cook, doesn’t shop, doesn’t do laundry.
Her house is a mess and her husband does everything
and all she does is bitch about how miserable her life is.
I feel sorry for him.
Actually, once or twice, I’ve said that to a friend…and they’ve nodded sadly and agreed.
(And…more than once, people have said it to me…and I have to nod sadly and agree!)
There are a lot of people who are on that narrow ledge of sanity: they’re bitter and whiny…and they damn well know it.
I had a person that I couldn’t avoid who complained all the time. I finally told her that there must be something that she liked about the [unbearable situation] because she has done nothing to change it. There was a marked reduction in complaining after that.
I personally complain about my cat all the time. I’m not a cat person and they aren’t particularly useful here on the farm (my JRT puts all cats to shame). Since I don’t have the heart to do anything about her until she goes on her own terms, I keep my complaining to fantasies about duct taping her into a box and FedExing her to a friend who once shipped a cat to me. (If the friend were on this side of the country, little miss kitty would have had a cat friendly human years ago)
OH, and I complain about cold, wet, windy weather… I hate the stuff.
I’ve been told this. I didn’t disagree.
My husband complains too much. I love him deeply and hope to be married to him for the rest of my life, but I sometimes have to tell him flat out to knock it off. He’s capable of going off on a rant for an hour or more about things that piss him off and will do so unless I tell him to stop. I typically try to bring him out of it with grumpy old man comments, but when that doesn’t work, I have to level with him and tell him that I can only listen so long before his negativity starts making me feel really terrible.
He once spent half an hour bitching about how much he hates baseball and spots in general (he was complaining because our son is on a baseball team for the first time this year). I was at work at lunch and had stepped away from my desk for the first time in weeks. I was going to enjoy a short time relaxing, but it was all sucked away. Then I spoke to him on my way home to get the kids and he picked up where he left off, all the damn way to my son’s school, which takes about 45 minutes in the evening. He was so wrapped up in his complaining he hardly realized I wasn’t even participating. Finally I asked him, “How long has it been since you heard me respond?” He said, “Ummm…” So I said, “Exactly. You’re really upsetting me. I’m happy to hear your complaints, but only if it can be a productive conversation.”
He’s been wonderful lately about everything else, but he’ll get stuck on a jag sometimes and you practically have to hit him with the equivalent of a verbal brick to get it to stop.
When it reaches that point, I don’t generally care anymore if they keep talking to me. Given that, what I generally start to do is give honest advice, and not just “uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh” when they say unreasonable shit the way I would if someone were a good friend having a bad day and needing to vent. I play devil’s advocate, suggest other avenues of thought . . .basically, I quit being nice. But I don’t actually address the meta-issue of the constant bitching, because then they will want specific examples, and every specific example they will defend as an exception. So I just basically say the shit I want to say, and either they find more sympathetic listeners, or they keep bitching, but at least I got to say my piece, and I don’t feel like I am enabling their crazy worldview.
I once had lunch with a friend of a friend. Interesting… The guy was incredibly negative! EVERYTHING was rotten, cruddy, stupid, ugly. My sports team? Stupid losers. His sports team? Jerks. Picasso? Ugly. Einstein? A fool. Beethoven? Just a lot of noise.
It got to be a personal challenge to me, to find SOME topic of conversation he would say something positive about. Chocolate! Disneyland! The Apollo program! Something!
Turned out he kinda likes the Beatles. So…we talked about that! (Whew!)
Mixed results. Sometimes they have agreed and improved, at least around me. Sometimes it’s made them complain more. It seems to depend on how close the person is to you.
I’ve heard or read so much for so many years (well before the Internet) that has convinced me that losers, whiners, complainers, get nothing but scorn and contempt coming from all quarters (yes, even here on SDMB) that I’ve known all along:
When I have something negative to say, just sit on it and keep my mouf shut.
Depending on the person…
Sometimes it’s more complaining, if this is possible, particularly when it’s about a certain topic. As if that helps…
Other times, I get the silent treatment for even bringing it up, and get this stony anger for several days. Just depends on the mood, the person, and the time of day…or month…going for both genders here, too, hah…
I had an aquaintence once tell me that he chose to not listen to negative comments from those around him. The “negative vibes” just got him down. (I had been complaining about something on the job that neither of us could control).
After I thinking about this quite a long time, I agree with him. Now, I also will tell someone who is just “complaining to be complaining” the same thing. I choose to not listen to negative comments from those around me.
This has kept my attitude much more positive then it was at that time. For me this refusal to listen to negativity has resulted in a happier life! So, as I often say, don’t let the buggers get you down!
There are some folks that just like being unhappy. Most of my sisters are just not happy unless they are complaining about something. I have never understood this. I choose to be happy most of the time.
Note: I also choose my friends very carefully. While I do not have tons of friends, The friends I have are not Negative Nillies, they do not bring me down. IHTH.
I don’t have anything against complaints, as long as they are not an every day thing. Bonus points if they are somewhat humorous. I’m certainly not a cheery person, so I wouldn’t expect others to always put on a happy face around me.
The thing that gets me is complaining. Especially complaining about the same thing over and over again…or complaining that is so over-the-top that I don’t know whether to laugh or scream.
The one time I tried to point out someone’s negativity so that they would lighten the hell up, they went all, “You do it too!” Thank goodness someone else was with me to back me up. But it didn’t do anything.
When my mom was still in the most angry phase of her divorce, I was 18, and I would occasionally ask her to stop bashing my dad in my presence. For instance when we were on a car ride. It never helped. She would usually look guilty, get even more pain in her eyes and say: ""Oh I’'m so sorry honey, but your dad makes me so MAD when he… "and off she would be on another angry complaining rant for another half hour.
I just never got in a situation with her anymore where I couln’t get away.
But yes, it seems remarkably difficult to adress this issue.
I’ve told my brother, humorously, that he sounds like a PVV-voter (That’s our current populistic Dutch blame it all on the furreners"-party). With him, that helps, as does changing the subject.
I guess the difference between people with an actual psychological disorder, and normal negative people, is that the nrmal negative people stop with this behavior once the people around them adress it.
I’ve worked with several people who are like this. Some of their complaining was valid as far as their life/home situations were concerned, but when they kept up the same fervor of complaining X years after the fact…OMG, my imagination went into overdrive.
I stopped being friends with them.
I later learned that constantly complaining about something specific means that you feel powerless in trying to change it; it’s a fear reaction. Easier to bitch than it is to actually DO something. And, of course, if you cannot DO anything about what it is you’re complaining about it, it the powerlessness you subconsciously feel just fuels you further.
I wouldn’t call myself cheery all the time, but I’ll only complain if I have a legetimate reason to do so, then I’ll shut up. If I were the type, I’d retaliate with “Put on your big girl/boy pants and suck it up.” Because, seriously, I HATE complainers with a passion.
Probably more than once, but I only really remember one time.
I was the music director for a light opera once. There was a cast member who would complain about everything. The music sucks, the stage director sucks (coudn’t disagree with him about that!), the lead soprano sucks, the set sucks…
Before every show, in the dressing room, he would rattle off a litany of everything that sucked. One day I just told him that I was sick of his complining. He looked like I’d just slapped him, then he looked really ashamed. He was alright after that.
I feel the need to clarify my post, since I outed myself as a complainer, upthread. I have been told to quit my bitching, but I’m not one who’s never happy with anything/complains about everything, like others mentioned in this thread. That’s just obnoxious, and I’d feel compelled to slap some of these people. I just sometimes get into self-pity mode, is all, and occasionally need to be reminded that not everything is about me, and life isn’t shitty 100% of the time.
I got a couple of pointed comments, and one friendly pull-aside, from friends back in my young adult days in specific situations where I was complaining too much, and fortunately was able to find the larger lesson and just stop complaining in general. As I’ve aged, I’ve come to realize how much complaining just brings a lot of negativity to the listener, even if the complaints are legitimate.
The rule that I’ve chosen to follow, and wish everyone would: Just because you have the RIGHT to complain, it doesn’t mean that you SHOULD.
Unfortunately, I’m married to a complainer. It’s one of the sore points in our relationship. Telling your spouse that they’re bitter and that they complain too much is not likely to improve things much, in my experience. A little less complaining, sure, at the cost of being viewed more as an unsupportive, uncaring spouse.
I just did this last night. Looking at it externally, it was actually quite hilarious.
“I don’t want to be here!” You don’t have to be.
“But I have other things to do.” Then go do them, you don’t have to be here.
“I’m so stressed out!” Then go relax, you don’t have to be here.
“I need to leave, why can’t I go?” Go, I’ll take care of it, you don’t have to be here.
“Why is everyone so upset about me leaving?” They’re not, they’re upset about your complaining. Frankly, your attitude has been pretty shitty recently.
“Why are you being so mean to me?” I’m not. Go do what you got to do, and if you want to, come talk to me later when you’re calm.
“I AM CALM! Fuck all of you.” Don’t talk to me like that, I did nothing to deserve it.
“I’M NOT COMING BACK!” Okay, bye. Take care of yourself.
I don’t let that stuff get to me, though I don’t usually bother to just straight up tell people unless they ask, as this person did.
And Haunted Pasta writes: “telling your spouse [my gloss – friend, whatever] that they’re bitter and that they complain too much is not likely to improve things too much, in my experience”.
Concurring with sentiments expressed above. I have a friend of some half-a-lifetime’s standing, who has many excellent qualities: he’s highly intelligent, witty, interesting to know, generous, extremely loyal in friendship – but he tends greatly, to be the ultimate complainer. It would seem that he was born a grumpy old man, and has spent 6+ decades honing and perfecting that attribute. Most of what he comes across in life, pisses him off: interpersonal behaviour by those he knows intimately, or encounters in passing; the doings of politicians domestic and worldwide; the functioning, if less than perfect, of all and any services / amenities which affect him in any way; sundry habits and tendencies of the human race in general, which he finds wrong; entertainment offered to the populace; incorrect use of the English language in speech and writing; and that’s just for starters… And he finds life intolerable, if he is not free to vocalise and verbalise endlessly, about the stuff that pisses him off. Hard not to conclude that he enjoys being this way, and all that goes with it.
That’s not the way I function. However, my friend is (95%+ of the time) one of those who are totally convinced that they are always right: if challenged / “called on” his raging and venting, he will defend himself with hot righteous anger. Mostly, I just let him blather on – in the intervals between rants-and-fulminations, he is usually good company. At times, pushed beyond endurance, I remark on his very copious, seemingly compulsive, grousing, and observe that it can become tedious; but that usually produces such a storm of angry self-justification, that it’s not worth it.
One of the things which persuades me to keep in contact with this guy (I’ve often been tempted to pull the plug on him) is that, very rarely, he has (of himself, and unprompted – I feel, the kind most likely to be worthwhile) moments of contrition, and expresses regret that he has this compulsion to rage and rant about the many, many things which off-piss him – he says that he realises that by doing this, he makes life a misery for those around him. My most recent meeting with him, featured such a moment: he remarked that he should perhaps realise that he’s living in a time and place where – for physical comfort and convenience, and social and intellectual freedom of choice – he’s more fortunate than the enormous majority of people throughout history – so he should maybe rein in the complaining. Just perhaps, leopards can change their spots – even in their mid-sixties…