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Genuine Compliments That Don't Appear to Be Compliments

By Judith Sherven, Ph.D. and James Sniechowski, Ph.D.

From The New Intimacy Newsletter

Loving endearments can pop up even from what looks like the opposite.

JIM: I've been working on a project which was very important to me and found that I was stuck. I tried a number of solutions to no avail. I stewed for it for about two weeks until finally I asked Judith for her help. Well, she solved the problem in less than a minute. I was dumbfounded, to say the least, and very impressed. Her solution was so simple and so obvious, as it is with all genuine solutions. They are obvious to everyone except the person stuck in his or her own blindness. I also felt a bit sheepish. Here I'd been struggling and Judith says, "Oh. That's Easy." and boom, there it was.

My first response was appreciation and I told her so. My second response, however, was resentment. How could she have done so quickly what I had been mired in for some time. I told her that as well.

"I appreciate you and I resent you."

"That's a compliment," she said, "isn't it?"

"Yes it is," I told her. "This is a case where feeling resentment is actually an act of admiration and respect."

How's that for a loving endearment coming out of what appears, on the surface, to be just the opposite?

— © Copyright, June 7, 2002, Reprinted with permission