What is it, why do I need one?

A personal user manual contains information on you and how best to relate to you. This format has gained some popularity in work environments, and you can write one as a gift to family, close friends, and significant others. And by writing one you’ll learn more about how you work and in what situations you feel best (A great starting point would be the 16 personality test.). And if everyone wrote one the office could truly be a place of political correctness, but more importantly a safe space for all to feel comfortable.

In order for you to know who to share your manual with and where to start, it’s important to sus out the difference between your boundaries, agreements, and rules in relation to other people. In this article, I’m using the below definitions, from the Kinchi Cuddle webcomic.

Upholding your boundaries with people you care about can be hard but is essential for long-lasting, healthy relationships 🙂

The content of my manual

So how does one even start a personal user manual?

As a rule of thumb, when you are preparing to make agreements with other people (your user manual will help you know what to negotiate agreements about) you can use 2 main approaches: either strive to make an agreement on everything you want to cover and anything that is outside of this agreement is automatically off-limits OR you can strive to only agree upon things that you definitely don’t want to happen, and everything else outside of this is fair game. (if necessary agreements can always be renegotiated from time to time).

Since it’s a manual for you ultimately, you decide what goes in it, but here are some points that I suggest you think about. But remember, there are things you will only discover about yourself after you “got it wrong”, and you want to avoid that situation again. That’s okay, making mistakes or not predicting how you will feel in a new sort of situation is very human. Good luck!

Your stance on planning

The two extremes on this spectrum are “I live from one moment to the other” vs. “I have a plan for what’s going to happen in the next ½, 1, 5, 10 years and so on”. It’s pretty clear how people on opposite ends of the spectrum can quickly annoy and stress each other out. Work out what’s comfortable for you and then look for compromises with others. In my experience, the “more forward planner” can help prompt the other.

Conflict avoidance and conflict resolution

A healthy relationship isn’t void of conflict. That is not the goal here. Too much conflict-avoidance can lead to harboring resentment since the party avoiding the conflict might not voice their likes, feeling, or needs. The goal is to strengthen the skill to communicate and find ways to resolve a conflict when it arises.

A key difference between people in this area is whether they are raised in guess or ask culture. This theory was put forward by Andrea Donderi in a web posting. According to Donderi those who are raised in guess culture would essentially like you to guess their requests because they do not like to make an open request unless they are sure the answer will be yes. Those raised in ask culture by contrast prefer to make outright requests, fully expecting that the answer might be no. For example, when wanting to order food in, someone with guess culture communication might say “I really liked the last time we had Indian food.”, the underlying request being that they would like to order Indian food. An ask culture partner might say to this “Yeah, I really liked it too”, without realizing that there was a request tucked away there. More on this subject here.

See below some other overarching tendencies people have around conflicts. Where do you stand?

  • Do you blame yourself in a conflict or the other person?
  • Do you usually get sad or angry in a conflict situation?
  • Do you seek immediate resolution of conflicts, or do you prefer to talk it over later when emotions have cooled down?

An entertaining yet insightful test I can recommend is the Pooh Pathology Test. This test is based on how the characters in Winnie the Pooh each show signs of a psychiatric diagnosis. Although the test isn’t specifically about conflicts, if you fill it out, and discuss the results with important people in your life, you can see where your typical conflicts might stem from. For example in my case, you can understand how a Piglet and a Tigger personality won’t always get along 🙂 One is prone to anxiety, the other to ADHD.

Jealousy

Different people get jealous about different things and some don’t get jealous at all. Find out what triggers your jealousy and be prepared for when it happens. A theory that helped me greatly to deal with my jealousy is from the book The Ethical Slut. The book proposes that jealousy is an umbrella term we use for several different emotions. Behind jealousy most often is either fear or anger. For example “I’m angry that you knew this anniversary was important to me and you forgot to prepare” or “You hanging out with X makes me worry that they are funnier, sexier, etc. than me”. Each emotion requires a different “solution”. Do you need your partner(s) to tell you that you are amazing and important? Do you need them to apologize and endeavor to do better next time?

Introversion vs. extroversion

Introverts lose energy and get tired after social interactions while extroverts feel energized after social interactions. This is a spectrum: Perhaps you are smack in the middle or closer to one end or the other. I recommend this TED talk by Brian Little on the subject.

Where someone lies on the introvert/extrovert spectrum influences their need for space. Know what works for you. Just because society’s relationship ideal involves living together doesn’t mean it has to be your ideal. How much alone time do you prefer? Would you like a separate room you can shut yourself in if you need to? Living together can look totally different based on your and your roomate’s/partner’s schedules.

Love languages

The concept of the 5 love languages is not new at this point. Quick recap: according to Dr. Gary Chapman there are 5 main modes (languages) to express love to one another – quality time, physical touch, acts of service, words of affirmation, and gift-giving. The trick is that we all have our “top preferred” love language(s) in which we would like to feel loved and we tend to show our love in the same manner, BUT our other person’s love language might differ from ours and we might unintentionally miss their signals of love or they might miss ours. Know yours and ask around for others’. Take the test here.

So now that you’ve taken all of this into consideration, go write your own user’s manual, and remember to be mindful of yourself and your loved ones <3