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#70 - Good teasing or bad teasing?

Dear Agony Aunt,
It would be nice if you could give me advice on how to recognize the difference between good-natured and hurtful teasing.

I've often been put on the spot before different classes and one guy still continues to do that. Whenever that happens, I feel like it's meant to make fun of me, but since I'm not sure I don't want to react too harshly. With friends, I'm fine with being on the receiving end of jokes (since I'm the same with them), but since i don't know the people doing this well it makes me uncomfortable.

But they might me doing this to get to know me better, since I've a pretty reserved personality. If they do, I don't want to push them away, even if I wouldn't necessarily want to befriend them. Being on speaking terms is always nice. But I also don't want to be seen as someone who's easy to pick on.

So how do I know the difference?

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Hello X

I will begin by saying that this is something that I too have struggled with. When I moved schools, I moved to a boarding school where the people were extremely different from me and so I stood out a lot. Sometimes some things that people said to me made me wonder whether they were mocking me or whether it was good-natured.

I think with things like that, you just have to decide to brush it off and not care about what the people you don't care about say. That's what I realized. My real friends in that school would mess about with me, and I would do the same too, and I was okay with it because I knew they had my back always. To strangers, I'm a very reserved person because I don't know you yet, so I didn't particularly appreciate people I didn't know well taking a crack at me. But all I did was simply ignore them and just say 'okay'. But because of my not-so-smiley nature, I guess they realized that they couldn't pick on me because I have no reaction whatsoever.

Once in a while I have snapped back, which sometimes I regret but other times I found it necessary to stand up for myself. I did that with people I especially didn't like and people I didn't want to let make fun of me at all. Some people think they have the right to take a dig at you, but they don't - no one does to be honest - and if you really aren't comfortable with them doing it, then you have to let them know.

Even my brother starts doing it sometimes, and I don't mean jokey "your face is an egg" type of shit, but more like "your face is so ugly but all your friends are hot" type of thing and sometimes I don't like it so I straight up tell him that I don't appreciate it. I think that there is a certain amount of shit you can take from people, but if you don't like it, then tell them straight up that you'd appreciate them talking about something else. It's okay sometimes to be a buzzkill because we ultimately need to protect ourselves from other people's words. I didn't care that my acquaintances thought I was always so uptight, because at the end of the day the people that mattered to me most were the ones who knew i wasn't uptight at all, who knew what upset me and respected that.

What I'm trying to say is that if you don't want to befriend these people, then don't you worry about pushing them away. If you do, then whatever, because you never cared for their company. It's very difficult to distinguish what good-natured and hurtful teasing, because we can never really trust people's intentions, so just use your energy to focus on the people you genuinely care about.

To the people who tease you that you don't care for, you're allowed to make fun of them back. Don't be too savage, but just be a little teasing to them too and laugh about it. See their reaction. Do they laugh too and let you insult them back? If so, then I'd say that theirs is good-natured. If they begin to get defensive and uncomfortable with you doing it to them, then I guess you can tell that theirs wasn't good-natured, because they obviously have a problem with you doing to them exactly what they're doing to you.

Another way I think you can tell is if they do it to you a lot in group situations and not when it's the two of you together. I've had several friends who are so sweet and nice to me when it's only the two of us talking,  then all of a sudden when it's a congregation of people in a room, they start firing shots at me for no reason other than just to make the others laugh. These people will take what I've told them and use it against me, or use it to embarrass me e.g. If I told them in person alone that I have some weird fetish for guys with purple hair (it's a dumb example), and it was obviously something I didn't want everyone to know, but then they go ahead and say it for everyone else to hear - "Genie told me the other day that she has a fetish for guys with purple hair! I wonder if that applies to pubic hair as well ahahahahaa Genie you say weird things somethings!" - then I would figure that they're not doing it with good intentions, they're throwing me under the bus to gain approval from other people. If those are the types of things that those people do to you, then you will realize that there are no good intentions behind them.

Another way you can know I think is through instinct. If them teasing you makes you uncomfortable, then you should listen to yourself. Trust your instinct; it may be correct as to say that their teasing isn't good-natured at all. This is because when you're with people you know well, you don't have w problem with being made fun of. Sometimes you just have to trust your intuition and say enough is enough. If you don't feel right about it, then you can walk away. You aren't obliged to take the hits just because you don't want to seem reserved. Your dignity is worth preserving, like you said, you don't want to be an easy target for everyone. It would be better to seem uptight and reserved than allow for anyone and everyone to pick on you.

Of course, our intuition isn't always correct and they may actually just be messing around, which is why I say tease them back to see their reactions, but sometimes you just have to trust it and tell them to quit it. If you don't like it, then you don't like it, and you must be bold enough to shut them up.

Hope I helped!

Love,

~ genie_us xx

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