Bad Behaviour vs. Clueless, How to Tell the Difference….

[Naomi99]

I can ignore him just as easily as block him.

I can see where some people need blocking because they're too weak and will respond.

I won't. I know myself. I won't respond. Blocking's out of the question.

 

Anyway, seeing his lame-ass texts just confirms in my mind we don't even share the same sense of humor.

[Seraphim]

Why is it out of the question? Why bother even getting the text?

[notalady]

Why is it out of the question? Why bother even getting the text?

 

I think she enjoys the power it gives her (to reply or not reply), knowing he's still interested and seeing his continued effort to get her back (in his own way).

[Naomi99]

Notalady is right.

[Naomi99]

Anyway it doesn't matter. Blocking solves nothing. He could still come by. He could text from his other phone. He could text from his laptop. He could text from email. He could send an email. He could simply call.

 

Actually he thought I blocked him bc I got an email saying, "Why are you blocking me?????"

 

I realized what happened…I wiped out my cell and reinstalled the operating system and he must have texted while I was in the midst of doing that and it registered "undelivered" on his end.

 

The next day, another text.

[notalady]

My solution is to block him everywhere. I don't see how he can still contact you via phone or email if you blocked him on all technology. If he contacts you from a different phone that you don't know of, block that too. Eventually he'll give up. Blocking solves everything.

 

If he shows up unannounced, well that's creepy and I would tell him so (as I did with an ex of mine, who showed up at my door because I blocked him everywhere because he wouldn't give up after I repeatedly told him it's over).

 

I believe there is always a way to stop being contacted (unless we're talking stalking), it's only up to you whether you're willing to do it.

[Naomi99]

What is the point of blocking? I don't care if he contacts me or not. That is his doing.

 

I only care about how I react to it, and right now it is not bothering me; rather opening my eyes on how clueless and unfunny he is.

 

I am not going to respond and I am very strong that way.

 

I didn't contact the doctor nor did I contact my ex for THREE years until it had to do with house stuff. I'm okay. I got this.

[Silverbirch]

So glad you dumped him. I e know. 2 men like this, and I can tell you that they didn't get better.

 

Sticking his finger in your food was eeeeeeeehhhh

[Silverbirch]

Naomi. I remember with the doc, I said I don't think you should cook. I stopped ages ago - maybe that's part of the reason I don't attract them anymore. Um, yes there are a couple I've attracted, but no thanks. Every single time I did the cooking and/or caring thing, I got taken advantage of.

[notalady]

Naomi. I remember with the doc, I said I don't think you should cook. I stopped ages ago - maybe that's part of the reason I don't attract them anymore. Um, yes there are a couple I've attracted, but no thanks. Every single time I did the cooking and/or caring thing, I got taken advantage of.

 

I've always insisted on cooking together and requesting the partner to help out if they haven't offered. Same with everything else, request for help and make it into a shared activity instead of me caring for someone. It's my way of setting the dynamic early and letting them know, subtly, I will never be doing everything for them and I expect them to participate. Never had a problem with people taking advantage of me or me caring for them too much or anything like that.

[faraday]

I agree with you all about him pushing my buttons, to some extent. I'm not sold entirely on that idea. He does do a lot around the house like washing dishes, fixing my car, fixing the toilet, things like that, and I don't even have to ask him to do it.

 

He is pretty introverted and quiet, for the most part. So experiencing this annoying part of him the last month or so was really shocking, and even now I'm wavering because I wish he could go back to that same reserved and intelligent person I remember him as.

 

Don't you think the car fixing and handyman stuff has value? I had an ex that over time renovated my house...and I bought tons of groceries and made elaborate meals...because he was totally doing me a solid and saving me money by helping me...if I paid a plumber/electrician/handyman for all the work he did...well, that stuff adds up in a hurry.

[Silverbirch]

Lucky you Faraday!

[faraday]

Lucky you Faraday!

 

Yeah, great for when I sold my house...but that guy was a total jerkface...he needed a few redeeming qualities to make him tolerable lol.

[Jibralta]

I've always insisted on cooking together and requesting the partner to help out if they haven't offered. Same with everything else, request for help and make it into a shared activity instead of me caring for someone. It's my way of setting the dynamic early and letting them know, subtly, I will never be doing everything for them and I expect them to participate. Never had a problem with people taking advantage of me or me caring for them too much or anything like that.

 

Another good thing about cooking together is that you learn to work together and find your groove.

[tiredofvampires]

Why is it out of the question? Why bother even getting the text?

 

I can ignore him just as easily as block him.

I can see where some people need blocking because they're too weak and will respond.

I won't. I know myself. I won't respond. Blocking's out of the question.

 

Anyway, seeing his lame-ass texts just confirms in my mind we don't even share the same sense of humor.

 

I think she enjoys the power it gives her (to reply or not reply), knowing he's still interested and seeing his continued effort to get her back (in his own way).

 

Notalady is right.

 

*Blinking* -- wait -- this isn't the thread about the doctor, is it?

 

Major deja vu.

[tiredofvampires]

I'm not into blocking people, unless they give me a really flagrant reason to block -- like, not respecting my asking them to not contact me (and I've yet to need to do that.)

 

But I am totally not a fan of this "silent treatment" approach.

 

Here's the problem with what you're doing, Naomi:

 

It's cruel.

 

It may give you some satisfaction, and a little extra feeling of being flattered by his attention, but he's trying to get your attention and you're playing with him.

 

Frankly, I HATE the "disappear/block" approach.

 

Why are people so afraid of SPEAKING to eachother?

 

Are we in 7th grade?

 

Or are we adults, who can say, "Hey, I think I should let you know that I really do feel through with this relationship. I have realized we are in too many ways, not compatible. It could never work, even if you were staying here, but you're also leaving, and to a place I don't intend to ever go. So I think we should cut ties. I wish you all the best, and did enjoy a lot with you while it lasted."

 

What you are doing isn't all that strong, in my opinion. Texting him the above would be strong. Because it would be taking a stand, it would be sacrificing the attention you're getting to kindly keep the other person from keeping wishful thinking alive, and you'd be able to have finality. Right now, you're just letting him twist in the wind and read silence as an open invitation to keep trying to wear you down.

 

Be straight. Upfront. That is the strong stance.

 

Only you really know what you might have been able to negotiate with him, had you been upfront all along in a more direct way. It's very likely that you would have gotten nowhere with him, given the things you've said. But it's also possible that he's SO unused to the norms you have, and your standards (such as thinking of daytime clothes as "dirty" -- I don't like dirt in my bed, but my everyday street clothes aren't grimy, and I've never heard of someone so finicky that they will not allow anything other than pajamas and lingerie to be worn in bed), he simply couldn't keep it all in his head.

 

And I don't like the "you're cute when you're angry" types of comments -- that would really turn me off. But again, I would have said, "Look, we need to talk about things. I ask you to do things and you seem to go out of your way to do them anyway, even laughing about it. You seem to like getting a rise out of me -- putting me on edge, doing things that make you enjoy the effect it has on me. I find this very disturbing, and can tell you that if it doesn't stop, this is going to be over, because that's not a dynamic that is healthy for either of us. It makes me feel unheard, disregarded, and resentful, and that's toxic to a relationship." Just barking out "STOP this, STOP that!" might in some way have read to him, "cute little tantrum," which he may not have truly taken seriously, for whatever reason in his world a bossy girl might be a turn-on.

 

Then on the other hand, I think very honestly, Naomi, the level of disrespect you have had for him got dragged out too long, especially knowing in your heart, I'm guessing, that you would never want to move with him and it had an expiration date. I think you weren't leveling with yourself or him, which is again...one of those things that I think you really should look at. (I dragged out a relationship for over 4 years with someone I didn't respect, but I was scared to end it and it's one of the things I regret the most in my life. It wasn't fair to him.) Why did you try to continue with him when you knew it was going to end? How were you rationalizing this to yourself? You've talked about his dirty fingers, his dirty clothes, you've really spoken about him here with such contempt and haughty disdain, that I think in the end, you two have equally disrespected eachother, just in different ways.

 

I have to say, one of the saddest things I've seen happening more and more in our society, as I get older and older and there's more and more technology to hide behind...is that people treat eachother like TV channels, instead of human beings. If you want to change the channel -- you just click on something else, and they're gone. You can change the channel back to them if you're curious, but you can always flip them off, literally. It's really just very cold and it never asks the question, "How would this feel to me if I were on the other end?"

[Naomi99]

I'm not into blocking people, unless they give me a really flagrant reason to block -- like, not respecting my asking them to not contact me (and I've yet to need to do that.)

 

But I am totally not a fan of this "silent treatment" approach.

 

Here's the problem with what you're doing, Naomi:

 

It's cruel.

 

It may give you some satisfaction, and a little extra feeling of being flattered by his attention, but he's trying to get your attention and you're playing with him.

 

Frankly, I HATE the "disappear/block" approach.

 

Why are people so afraid of SPEAKING to eachother?

 

Are we in 7th grade?

 

Or are we adults, who can say, "Hey, I think I should let you know that I really do feel through with this relationship. I have realized we are in too many ways, not compatible. It could never work, even if you were staying here, but you're also leaving, and to a place I don't intend to ever go. So I think we should cut ties. I wish you all the best, and did enjoy a lot with you while it lasted."

 

What you are doing isn't all that strong, in my opinion. Texting him the above would be strong. Because it would be taking a stand, it would be sacrificing the attention you're getting to kindly keep the other person from keeping wishful thinking alive, and you'd be able to have finality. Right now, you're just letting him twist in the wind and read silence as an open invitation to keep trying to wear you down.

 

TOV, I may have not made myself clear. I've responded to everything that was of importance, like thanking him for letting me know he was there safely; responding when he asked am I still planning to visit. There's no reason not to answer, so I did.

 

The things I haven't responded to are the txts of silly memes that deserve no response. (They're not as cool as Wiseman2's memes.) In fact, it's just another facet of him not taking me seriously. We broke up, yet a few days later he's sending silly duck memes as if nothing happened. Those type of texts deserve the silent treatment.

 

I won't block. He's not a malicious person, nor did he abuse me. I don't see any reason to block someone who I have a history with unless they put me in harm.

[Naomi99]

I couldn't sleep at all last night. It's kind of settling in me how everything panned out and maybe he's not who I thought he was. I painted this pretty ugly picture of him being cheap and infantile, which is true to some extent. But last night tossing and turning I kept remembering all the instances where he is not infantile, but the opposite.

 

Once I was parallel parking and there was another car trying to squeeze into an illegal parking space behind me. He jumps out of the car and tells me pull up to like an INCH behind the car in front of me so the car behind me can fit into my space as well. I told him, "Then we are both going to get tickets! She needs to find her own parking space! I'm not sharing this one!" I even pointed out the hash tags on the street indicating my stall is just for one single car. He said, "No..it's raining and the meter maids are not ogign to give you a ticket. Pull up so she can park."

 

So I did what he said, pulling my car up way up. Now my car is locked tightly in between the car in front of me and the idiot girl behind me who he seemed so intent on helping. I'm highly irritated because this means I'll get dinged either in my front bumper or my rear bumper, and it will take me foever to get back out of that parking spot. But he cared more about her getting a spot than my car getting dinged or me having difficulty pulling my car out later.

 

The multiple instances where he doesn't chip in for groceries, but gives people on the street money.

 

His hobby where he takes groups camping and water activities. I've seen him in action and he is probably the best leader I've seen…paying attention to everyone and a really hard worker. He would paddle an old man and his child despite how tired he was, just to make sure they made it back in time. He is not a lazy person

 

When I had people over at that party he wanted, one of the couples brought their dog. He said to me, "HEY, why don't you give X's old sweaters to their dog?" right in front of them. X was my dog that passed away last year and I was NOT ready to part with his sweaters at all. I shot him an unbelievable look…how could you offer my dead dog's sweaters to someone you don't even know? Those are not for you to give away. (A few days prior to the party, I pulled out a keepsake box of X's sweaters that were all folded neatly and showed them to him. I started crying because they still smelled like X, his leash, his toys. So he knew how hard his death was on me, so for him to offer the sweaters was like a punch in the stomach…so oblivious to my feelings.)

 

There are a zillion other instances that I thought about last night where it seems like he puts other people's needs ahead of mine. The girl in the car, my friends and their dog, homeless people. He doesn't think, "how are my actions affecting Naomi?" He just thinks either I have zero feelings or I'm a money tree. I don't get it.

 

Yet those are the same qualities that made him special to me…that he can remain unattached to material things and places more importance on humanity.

 

I'm really confused. Perhaps I'm the cheap and infantile one.

[Seraphim]

Ok, I can see helping homeless people. Come on now.

[BritterSweet]

I'm back and disagreeing with something again, and it's on how "strong" you are. It sounds like you're not over him. Which is why I think you should block him (even if it means blocking email, texts, multiple numbers and everything else you mentioned, as well as telling your friends not to let him use their phones in case he tries to get around the blocks). To keep letting him message you is unhealthy for at least two reasons:

 

1. You refuse to block him because you seem to get a power trip from giving him the silent treatment. That sounds pretty toxic and unnecessarily mean.

 

2. You're still thinking of him, to the point where, as you said yourself, you spent a night without sleeping.

 

The point of no-contact is to let go, distance yourself and recover. Get him out of your sight, out of your mind, out of your life. At this point it doesn't matter how good or bad a person he is. You have to move on.

[tiredofvampires]

I think that is a really good reflection, worth pondering.

 

One reason this kind of thread is hard to speak to, on ENA, is because it's almost impossible to re-create a fully accurate picture of a partner's many-sided attributes. Invariably, people who break up here report in a highly subjective way, one which favors their own viewpoint, no matter how hard they try to present the other side. It's always going to be incomplete and somewhat skewed. That's predictable. That's why couple's therapy can be so challenging -- it forces people to look at the world from the other person's perspective, rather than just offering a token acknowledgement that there are serious differences.

 

It is very possible that what you read as, "I don't care about how this affects Naomi" in actuality, it is you defining "caring" in a way that is very specific to YOUR IDEAS about what caring looks like, rather than some universal doctrine of "How to Care about Your Partner." So he may care a lot about you and show it in a variety of ways, but they don't matter as much to you as they would to him in HIS book of CARING; or, you devalue them because you value other displays of caring more.

 

So, you two are just on different pages; or maybe, you don't have the same book.

 

For instance, when you first aired your anger at him for wanting to crash with an ex when he was out of town (but he was also upfront about it), you were appalled and posted, "Who does that?" At that time, I posted that I, for one, would do something like that, and it was absolutely nothing to do with how much I cared about my partner (though he took it that way, and so did many people on ENA who said it's just plain disrespectful -- as though such things are FACTS OF LIFE, like we all know that the sun rises in the East.) I loved and cared about my partner -- I just didn't think this was a sign that I didn't, and he did. (And in the end, I was not willing to overhaul my entire value system just to please him [though I tried so hard to placate him in other ways, but it just was never good enough]; that would have not been being true to myself, it would have been losing myself just to be with someone.)

 

He told you that were if you to spend time at his place more, you would not only be free to help yourself to anything, but he would make sure you took his stash of food so that you weren't hungry later. So to HIM, this was the spirit of caring about you, but you didn't really want any part of that sort of agreement. And in his world, because he was prepared to offer what he was taking, it was not cheap, nor a double standard; it's just that you did not want to take advantage of the offer. So in his world, he was honoring give-and-take, it's just that he ended up at your place often enough to be the one taking.

 

And in his world, if you wanted one of his pens, he'd say, take 3! Take 10! Hell, take the vase if you like it so much! The fact that that was not reciprocated on your end, in spirit, was ironically something that was causing you a lot more suffering and fretting than it was causing him.

 

When he took the fruits from someone's house for you, that was CARING about you, thinking this is something you love. He was not asking himself in that moment whether it was something more valuable if he bought it from a store. It was there, and he felt, no one will miss these, they have so many, and Naomi would be so happy. But all you could see was, "What sort of sense or propriety is that? And a REAL MAN BUYS me the fruit, spends his money." So that display of caring was not only not noted, it was dis-noted.

 

Let's go to the parking incident. He knew that your car would likely be fine -- and it's not something he, himself, would ever give thought to. "My car is going to get dinged" wouldn't occur to him, or it would be so inconsequential, it wouldn't matter. He was thinking, "I'd FIND a way to get out of this space, one way or the other." So he could not conceive that THIS IS A PROBLEM, but because in your mind, it was one, you interpreted his lack of concern about it as a lack of concern about YOU.

 

And in the sweater incident, he may well have been sympathetic about your grief, but in your place, might have felt, "What better way to honor X's memory than to give his clothes a new, happy home, instead of just sitting in a box." Sort of like organ donation. That would be one legitimate way for someone to work through their grief, and it doesn't mean you're selfish for not feeling like doing that, everyone grieves differently, but him being one step ahead of you was just an expression of his idea of another way to handle grief. But again, you're saying, "Who does that? How can you not see that I'm not ready to part with them?" as though he should be inside your own head and heart, be a mind-reader, have exactly the same interpretation of life. How would he know that you are not ready to part with those sweaters, in that exact moment? Someone else might have been.

 

You are never going to find someone who is a mirror image of your sensibilities. You can try to get really close, and you might find someone a LOT closer than he is, enough to pass many more tests...but then they'll have something else that you don't like, and you'd be surprised to find that it may even be that they are as quick to ask the question, "What about ME?" as you are.

 

Perhaps there was some truth in his saying he saw "complementarities", where you saw incompatibilities. I would guess his life motto is, "Don't sweat the small stuff" and so he was willing to ride with your habit of "sweating the small stuff" as a difference, but not one that was a dealbreaker to him. Maybe he even saw it as, she makes me more aware of structure and protocol, whereas on my own, I'd be an even looser cannon. Maybe his laughing over your getting your panties in a twist was more like him just thinking, it's endearing to see the small stuff being sweated, as long as at the end of the day, we both realize it's small stuff. (Only, it WASN'T small stuff to YOU, that's where I do think he was clueless, but you didn't give him a chance to fully understand that.) And on the flip side for him, "maybe I'm helping her to loosen up, like she was on our first freespirited road trip." Maybe some of my nonchallance will be liberating to her. But he miscalculated as well, since these things don't translate well into a day-to-day relationship. If you have to have everything "just so", with everything in it's proper place, and are a bit of a neat freak, and these clothes are for this, those clothes are for that, and my car is gonna need breathing room, and my plate is my plate, yours is yours...this is not a freespirited person. This is someone who needs a very orderly, controlled zone for themselves and a tight ship. So for you, that roadtrip was an escape from a very controlled way of life, a breaking away from your rhythm to take a walk on the wild side...for him, it was just...living the way he lives.

 

In other words, you have been taking very personally many things that were not statements about his respect or caring for you. Rather, they may have been statements about how little he cares about certain other things. And there IS a difference there.

 

The fact that you want him to care about things he didn't, probably means that you're incompatible. You care about the things you do and want your partner to value you them along the same hierarchy that you do. And you view demonstrations of "caring" in specific ways that he will likely always fail on, as a test. So I don't think the break-up is wrong...but maybe, it's not because he's wrong. You're just wrong for eachother.

 

Even in this final chapter, about texting you things you don't want...didn't he say he tries to keep in touch with, or friends with, exes? He may still feel he cares enough about you to want to maintain a connection of some sort. Some people are like that, and some people think, once a relationship is over, we have no more need to be in contact. I'd be more like him, in that case. So I would, in your place, text him to say that you really don't want to carry on any more banter or contact, so you'd like it if he would stop texting you. Express that you just don't see any more point and would prefer to just completely go your separate ways. Because otherwise, he might be still seeing things through his own lens: why NOT stay friends, and in touch? Don't we still have anything to share and laugh about, together anymore, or is that all now disappeared into thin air?

 

So I would be clear with him about that -- even if he's not trying to get you back, he's trying something. And so I do not agree with you that "they do not deserve to be answered." Again -- you have a lot of fixed notions about "how things are to be done." I don't think it's wrong for you to have your own values and standards, but what's mistaken to me is expecting other people to line up with you as if your conceptualization of the world is some absolute consensus. What we decide is "accetpable" is a LOT more arbitrary than that, outside of what society has deemed to be required by law (though even that changes over time).

[tiredofvampires]

As for not sharing a sense of humor -- for me, that's a dealbreaker, really. Because I see being able to laugh together, and "getting it" together, as the best way of bonding with someone (anyone), and it's also an aphrodisiac. Laughing creates a bond like no other, and humor is essential to life. That is why so many women say, "I want a guy who makes me laugh". We've got to be able to have in jokes and fun together, sharing this human rapport.

 

I only question how it took you this long to see this discrepancy. I can tell from a few hours with someone whether their humor lines up with mine or not, and you spent day and night with him for a whole trip in the beginning. How did you share (or NOT share) jokes during that time, and not feel his humor falling flat? That's strange to me.

[tiredofvampires]

And I do maintain, I agree with this:

 

1. You refuse to block him because you seem to get a power trip from giving him the silent treatment. That sounds pretty toxic and unnecessarily mean.

 

You aren't just not responding to him because the messages "don't need to be answered". You, yourself, said that you enjoy the power trip of still feeling important. And you also added, "we had a history together" as if that means he is, at least secretly to you, still welcome in your life even though you're not letting on to him that he is. That's duplicitous, and wanting to have your cake and eating it, too.

 

I still don't agree with blocking someone without leveling with them how you feel. That feels really mean and cold, and unnecessary. It's the easy way out, because you don't have to face your own vulnerability and theirs. So I see it as far inferior, and not in line with open communication, which can and should exist until the very end.

 

I don't think dead silence has much place in a relationship...but it does continue the mentality of not having to be upfront, which has characterized this and other relationships. You seem fairly stuck in your ways about how to communicate, with being upfront in a CONSTRUCTIVE way, quite optional.

[notalady]

I couldn't sleep at all last night. It's kind of settling in me how everything panned out and maybe he's not who I thought he was. I painted this pretty ugly picture of him being cheap and infantile, which is true to some extent. But last night tossing and turning I kept remembering all the instances where he is not infantile, but the opposite.

 

Once I was parallel parking and there was another car trying to squeeze into an illegal parking space behind me. He jumps out of the car and tells me pull up to like an INCH behind the car in front of me so the car behind me can fit into my space as well. I told him, "Then we are both going to get tickets! She needs to find her own parking space! I'm not sharing this one!" I even pointed out the hash tags on the street indicating my stall is just for one single car. He said, "No..it's raining and the meter maids are not ogign to give you a ticket. Pull up so she can park."

 

So I did what he said, pulling my car up way up. Now my car is locked tightly in between the car in front of me and the idiot girl behind me who he seemed so intent on helping. I'm highly irritated because this means I'll get dinged either in my front bumper or my rear bumper, and it will take me foever to get back out of that parking spot. But he cared more about her getting a spot than my car getting dinged or me having difficulty pulling my car out later.

 

The multiple instances where he doesn't chip in for groceries, but gives people on the street money.

 

His hobby where he takes groups camping and water activities. I've seen him in action and he is probably the best leader I've seen…paying attention to everyone and a really hard worker. He would paddle an old man and his child despite how tired he was, just to make sure they made it back in time. He is not a lazy person

 

When I had people over at that party he wanted, one of the couples brought their dog. He said to me, "HEY, why don't you give X's old sweaters to their dog?" right in front of them. X was my dog that passed away last year and I was NOT ready to part with his sweaters at all. I shot him an unbelievable look…how could you offer my dead dog's sweaters to someone you don't even know? Those are not for you to give away. (A few days prior to the party, I pulled out a keepsake box of X's sweaters that were all folded neatly and showed them to him. I started crying because they still smelled like X, his leash, his toys. So he knew how hard his death was on me, so for him to offer the sweaters was like a punch in the stomach…so oblivious to my feelings.)

 

There are a zillion other instances that I thought about last night where it seems like he puts other people's needs ahead of mine. The girl in the car, my friends and their dog, homeless people. He doesn't think, "how are my actions affecting Naomi?" He just thinks either I have zero feelings or I'm a money tree. I don't get it.

 

Yet those are the same qualities that made him special to me…that he can remain unattached to material things and places more importance on humanity.

 

I'm really confused. Perhaps I'm the cheap and infantile one.

 

Those are behaviour consistent with his insistence to cross your boundaries when you spell them out to him and his constant taking of your food and his cheapness. It's inconsiderate.

 

I wouldn't call helping someone park illegally as being generous nor helpful. Everyone should help maintain order in society where they can and help others play by the rules for the benefit of everyone. Also I wouldn't have done as he said, and risk being boxed in between cars and/or getting my car scratched / dented. Makes no sense whatsoever. I see his action there as disregard to rules and order in general, which may also be one of his qualities.

 

His offering of your property - your dead dogs item or not, it's your property, it's not for him to offer. It's inappropriate and inconsiderate.

 

Depending on where you live, giving money to the homeless on the street (as oppose to donating money to organisations that help the homeless and other charity organisations) is not necessarily a good thing. My country and my city discourage people from giving money to the homeless on the street. In fact one of the major cities local government has declared they are committed to getting rid of people living and begging on the street because it's affecting everyone else. There are mechanisms in place for government to provide aid to poor or disabled people, and there are charity organisations that help them, no one needs to be living or begging in the street. Often the homeless on the street we see are professional, dress up for the role, they earning a decent wage from begging (there were news and interviews on this where I am). My point is, it's not necessarily a demonstration of his generosity.

 

None of these are positive qualities to me.

[katrina1980]

 

Depending on where you live, giving money to the homeless on the street (as oppose to donating money to organisations that help the homeless and other charity organisations) is not necessarily a good thing. My country and my city discourage people from giving money to the homeless on the street.

 

In fact one of the major cities local government has declared they are committed to getting rid of people living and begging on the street because it's affecting everyone else. There are mechanisms in place for government to provide aid to poor or disabled people, and there are charity organisations that help them, no one needs to be living or begging in the street. Often the homeless on the street we see are professional, dress up for the role, they earning a decent wage from begging (there were news and interviews on this where I am). My point is, it's not necessarily a demonstration of his generosity.

 

 

Wholeheartedly agree with this^! Same as where I live too (southern cali).

 

However, I never gave money to the homeless, but I have been known to offer to buy them food, if they're standing in front of a food establishment.

 

I recall once or twice I did that; I bought this one guy an entire meal from Panda Express (Chinese takeout), and after I gave it to him, I watched him as he threw it in the garbage!

 

Apparently he didn't want food, he wanted money .... I figure to buy alcohol or drugs.

 

Ugh!

 

I learned my lesson after that one!