in relationships, there are asymmetries in communication. how you reconcile the discrepancies between your own understanding and your partners understanding is a litmus test for the health of the relationship. plausible deniability is the room within the asymmetry for misunderstanding: i tell you i’m going to the store. you tell me to get eggs. i go to the store and come back and i don’t have eggs. you ask me why i didn’t get eggs, and i tell you it’s because i didn’t hear you.
there are two scenarios here: whether or not i actually heard you.
if i heard you then chose to not get you eggs, then i would be using plausible deniability as a tool to avoid accountability.
if i didn’t hear you, then i’m simply representing myself.
plausible deniability is not a tool, and treating it as such will result in you manipulating the people in your relationships in order to protect yourself and your power in the relationship. plausible deniability is the result of imperfect communication, and in healthy relationships plausible deniability is something you consider in order to understand how someone could cause you pain without intending to.
when i was 6 years old i was living in ohio with my family. we’d moved there a year prior and we were looking for a new church to attend. we drove down a road to another road to another road and arrived at the church. i got out of the car and i was wearing flip flops with calf length white socks on. i looked like a fucking dumbass but at least i was a young child. my mom came up to me and asked why i wasn’t wearing my regular shoes and i told her it because she hadn’t told me to. she said she had told me to, i said i was upstairs and hadn’t heard her. she was frustrated. we went into church and i spent the rest of the time there being very self conscious about my stupid shoes.
that morning, when we were preparing to leave for church, i had woken up after my brother who slept in the top of our bunk bed. he was already out of the room and dressed, and i could tell that all of my siblings were up and so were my parents. no one had woken me, so i laid there. i could hear them bustling and making breakfast and talking to each other. i heard them say my name a few times. my mom shouted upstairs for me to get dressed. i knew that she had no way of knowing that i was awake, so i knew that if she asked me later about why i didn’t get dressed i could tell her that i had been asleep when she called. i laid in bed and waited for someone to take a moment to actually rouse me from bed because i did not like feeling like i was being forgotten, despite the evidence that i had not been forgotten.
later in life i began learning about abusive relationships and the patterns that they take. one of the most common patterns, which has also become a sort of cultural touchstone recently, is gaslighting.
later in my life i was in an abusive relationship with a woman who spent a lot of time trying to convince me that things which had happened had not happened, and that things that i remembered i did not remember. she used a lot of classic abuse tactics to try and foster in me an emotional and reality-building dependency so that i would be unable to leave our relationship and so that she would have power over me. i noticed early in the relationship how she implemented plausible deniability. she would hear or not hear, see or not see, remember or not remember things based on some internal criteria that she believed would allow her to build power in our relationship.
the result of this tactic was uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh an unhealthy dynamic and also an incredibly stupid way of moving through the world. i would ask her if she wanted to get dinner and she’d say yes, i would ask her what kind of food she wanted and she would say i don’t know and then ask me what food i wanted and i would say i’m not sure but i really don’t want pizza and then she would say let’s get pizza! and i’d say i just said i don’t want pizza and she’d say oh i didn’t hear you.
you may be able to tell from reading that what her goal was but i will explain it anyway.
by supposedly not hearing me this person was attempting to put me in a position where i come across as unreasonable. according to her, i’ve just asked her what she wants to eat and she does not know. she asks me and i don’t know either. suddenly she realizes she wants pizza. she tells me she wants pizza, and out of nowhere i am claiming that i already told her i don’t want pizza and that her interest in pizza is a weird response. the situation now is such that my curiosity about what food she wants now looks disingenuous, that my response to her is unreasonable, that i am being rude for no reason, while she is simply expressing herself as she tries to figure out what she wants. she is using the fact that she can plausibly deny hearing me say that i don’t want pizza to create a situation where it seems that i am lying to her, and where i am now making things up in order to get my way. she is attempting to manipulate me in order to make me doubt my experience and to trust her instead, while also making resolution of the conflict impossible without me apologizing to her.
i don’t have any more stories to tell about this because i don’t want to keep telling stories bc the point here is much more simple than i can explain with a narrative.
plausible deniability is the opposite of communication. it is what you do when you are unwilling to engage honestly with others. it is a tactic of manipulation.
when you are healthy, in relationships that are healthy, around others who are healthy, you will find that none of your interactions with others revolve around whether or not someone can prove to you that something happened. you will understand that there is a reality in which you and others are both participants, and that misunderstandings about the nature of reality will happen and can be resolved without hurting anyone.
i’ve been thinking abt plausible deniability lately and i think it’s something worth understanding for yourself bc it will come up a lot in your relationships, and you will often have to navigate unnamed plausible deniability and deal with people who will attempt to use it for their own gain. more importantly, you’ll have to figure out how to manage the conflict that misunderstandings create. if you enter those conflicts with a useful and healthy understanding of plausible deniability, you will have much healthier healthy relationships, and much shorter unhealthy relationships.
here’s a playlist of jazz. i’ve been listening to a lot of jazz lately. may also include some afrobeat, soul, funk, fusion.
playlist:
uyama hiroto - [freeform jazz CD1 #11] Departure
Ahmad Jamal Trio - [At The Pershing / But Not For Me #04] (Put Another Nickel In) Music Music Music
Osibisa (Original Edition) - [Welcome Home #08] Uhuru
Pino Palladino - [Notes With Attachments #02] Soundwalk
Dorothy Ashby - [Afro-Harping CD1 #07] Little Sunflower
Sergio Mendes - [The Swinger From Rio #08] The Dreamer
Antonio Carlos Jobim - [Stone Flower #01] Tereza My Love
Osibisa - [Osibisa #05] Oranges
Alan Braufman - [The Fire Still Burns #03] No Floor No Ceiling
Massimo Farao Trio - [Ennio Morricone - Disk. 1 #109] Canone Inverso
Tomeka Reid Quartet - [Tomeka Reid Quartet CD1 #07] Super Nova
Chet Baker - [Chet Baker in Milan #03] Tune Up
Duke Ellington & John Coltrane - [Duke Ellington & John Coltrane CD1 #07] The Feeling of Jazz
Masayoshi Takanaka - [On Guitar #01] Breezin'
Shabaka And The Ancestors - [We Are Sent Here By History CD1 #04] Behold, The Deceiver
Fela Kuti - [Fela's London Scene #03] Who're You
mega: https://mega.nz/folder/DUtWjI7S#aU8xclcVhCCet7gpmsjiMQ
youtube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4bUgvWbrZGJ-GOr2wFECAfv8DYOABUJB
plausible deniability will ruin your relationships
I'd like to read more stories like the last. Examples of plausible deniability. Real life conversions that you've had in the relationship. I think I've figured out what my problem is.