Ink to Blog

Punishing those who wrong me

I tend to punish other people in a very specific way. If they do me wrong, I want to let them know. I want them to owe me one, even if it doesn't make the situation better. It is purely because it puts me in a position of power. Now they have to redeem themselves; they have to gain my favor again. And I can decide when the threshold has been reached and everything is good again. It can even happen that I want to make it more uncomfortable for them by just being silent or ambiguous about what exactly hurt me or what would have to be done to make things right.

This is not a good way of dealing with wrongdoings. Even if something really hurt me, it should be enough to just state it, and not try to increase the suffering of the other person. If they are a good person, they would want to learn from their mistakes without someone rubbing it in their face. If they aren't a good person, then I cannot expect redemption, or preferably, that they try to be better. But this is also where I am not sure, because when an individual fails to recognize their wrongdoing, it can help to show them how much their behavior hurt others. They have to feel pain themselves to have a motivation to change.

I am not being hurt often by my friends, because they are in fact good people, which makes it worse that I want to take advantage of the situation and see them in a vulnerable state. If they are in the wrong, they will come to that realization themselves, like they already did in the past. There is no reason to play the role of a victim.