I have only one person who does this, my widowed FIL, and it irritates me no end. Setting that aside for the moment, its apparently *supposed* to go like this: friend: yooooooooo goodyou Im a hardcore introvert, most of my plans are sitting at home, not doing anything in particular and if I answer the question truthfully, and then there comes the invitation, Im in a very tight spot because I already admitted that I dont have anything serious enough to warrant me declining the offer. My Kid: No (shuts door) No.. You wonder where he'll take you. I would think that any event for which one needs to book a venue and/or hire a caterer would also be the sort of event to which one sends some sort of formal invitation, which is not really the case for the situations the LW describes. Its just a formulaic greeting. On the other hand, that was a while ago. I used this to train my mom to use text/email instead, because 1) I hate phone and 2) a written message means much less chances of either one of us getting the details wrong. Umm.pardon me, I wasn't listening. Maybe shorter comments go through immediately but longer ones need mod-approval? It is handy because it has a friendly tone of I dont want to go into detail while still participating in the conversation. When I am planning an event I usually offer a description of what I have planned first and then we move to scheduling but most of that is done in social media or by e-mail these days. I don't know, you tell me. Or only if you consider it important? To those who suggested building better boundaries with my family: Good advice. Me: Not much, maybe laundry or whatever. I think youre right in general, although I dont find items 2 and 3 problematic at all. We were asking about things they like or dont like about America compared to the countries they grew up in. I think it would be odd to preemptively take that away. Its the same here. Sometimes I might even say, its okay if you dont want to, its not urgent, but I was wondering if you could possibly help babysit Saturday? (Like, Im the kind of introvert who is good with people but I know a few who are just exhausting and who drain my battery super quickly), Could you have a conversation with her about, Were gonna have to schedule when all of our kids are walking to school. Most of what I get out of asking that conversation is sharing of day to day stuff about what we both have happening and are maybe looking forward to [that I can be happy or excited about for them] or things coming up they are anxious about or having other difficult feelings about [that they can talk about if they want to, or that I then know they might be having a difficult time on Tuesday so I should give them a ring then and see how it went/offer support if they want to process through talking]. Question bugs me too, so I figured out some noncommittal answers that hit the tennis ball back into the askers court where it belongs. Later the grad students said the table turned to remarking on the professor as soon as she was out of earshot, including their surprise that she could be a professor of engineering. Im sure to him thats bewildering, but to me its bewildering that for so long he simply refused to choose to behave with appropriate respect. If its just a soft open to an invitation, you can be annoyed by it, or you can say, I dunno, you?. That's why this is one of the funny responses to "what are you going to do with your life" that you should keep in mind. Am I? Me: .No. People here may be disagreeing that it should be a normal social rule, but if you change your behavior to meet that, youll be wrong by other standards. If I have no specific plans, she thinks my time is hers (but you said you were doing nothing! and she likes to be like cousin in example 3, re her children doing lots of stuff for her because thats what good kids are supposed to do (and if were not performing like good kids, then shes a bad mother ~guilt guilt~) and she doesnt like to ask directly* so it often comes across as manipulative or passive-aggressive). After some reflection, my normal version of this (me asking) is You free this weekend? E- Enjoying. The first time I heard this, I wondered who opened my brain while I was sleeping and pulled the song out and put it in a movie soundtrack. Yeah, I get that it is a soft invitation, but it also feels that the hard invitation has been tossed into my lap. They have the right to call on us and expect us to come through. Never trust Calvin, even if you see Hobbes! Sometimes this takes several rounds before everyone realizes theyve done their line but missed their cue. And they come up organicallyI dont invent them just to make her jump through hoops. If they mean well then they will try to stop when you explain that you prefer to be asked directly. I usually end up saying something noncommittal like I might be doing xyz, but Im not sure yet why? and waiting to see what the actual deal is. One girl mentioned the How are you? and said shed learned not to answer it truthfully because people dont actually care. All of us Americans responded that, well no, its not that we dont actually care. (And boy howdy, did she get pissy when I responded with not really. We did NOT live together well.). There are several possible moves in response to this gambit. More detailed/truthful responses are typically only shared with close friends or family. If Im bothered by the question, I usually answer back with why ? or why do you ask ?. If you are an academic assigning my posts in your courses, Id appreciate an email with a copy of the relevant syllabus/assignment for my records/CV. Thanks, I woke up like this. That is my current standard response. This says "I'm doing well.". I just had a talk with my DD about this- she will text me do we have plans Saturday I usually respond with Why? Obviously we have a different relationship than a friend to friend thing. Just wow. (Id definitely use this for the likely-to-request-babysitting sister, for the recordany time youre asking someone a favor, you lead with that, you dont try to trap them into it!). You get to notice pretty fast that your opinions, feelings and thoughts dont matter if they dont conform to a view of the world that doesnt let them look like heroes and you like a cultural clich. You might not know exactly what you want to do in life, but you certainly know what you don't want to do. It gets exhausting dealing with Got any plans this weekend? starting on Wednesday and then What did you do this weekend? again on Monday. I used to feel guilty about that until I framed it in my mind that its disingenuous to ask about my weekend as entrapment instead of asking me an honest question. So yeah, I think your Swedish approach is fairly standard for American culture as well. Its not so much about stopping the question before it comes (pretty much impossible!) I also use ooh, Im not sure whether Im driving my stepson to his Dads that weekend, Ill have to check for longer-term put-offs. )in a way that seems to be back firing. "You know I can do this anytime.". 1. So finding out if you have plans at a given time becomes an underhanded way of tricking you into agreeing to something, like LW mentions in point number 2. I usually just respond with I have tentative plans with a friend why do you ask? Lots of wiggle room there. As unfathomable as it is to me to want to be out and about with other humans pretty much every night, it is unfathomable to them to want to spend a whole weekend under a blanket with a book. Most of those projects and research were for fanfiction. At the same time, someone can just say oh not much if they dont wanna share, which is what I do if my plans that night are private eg therapy. Trust issues and controlling family? @Helen Huntingdon, that is good to know, re feelings and setting off yellow flags. Saying no at that point feels rude, and yeah some people have reacted badly. As for rentpart of my problem with that is: I would never, ever rent a room to a non-family member. not? I prefer living and working in places with a major international contingent for that reason so that different is what is normal. Leisure time is notI give up my leisure time to hem her pants or help her move back from college or make her dinner. My range is from fine, thanks, and you to tired but otherwise good to a real answer but nothing too dark or detailed. To them I am this exotic other they feel entitled to treat in a certain way because their goodness and its expression is more important than my real and complex experience as a human being. Another good script Ive heard for when the person is clearly trying to invite you to something is What did you have in mind?, If theyre small-talking, you can say something like Hopefully relaxing and destressing. Someone responding with why do you ask? would basically make me instantly take a mental step back from that person in terms of comfort level. I was going to say, my experience with We should hang out some time! and the like are that theyre more of a social gesture. No, just running some errands. What works for you? I sympathize with their reasons for having trouble planning, but I also do find it a little irksome that they only initiate actual plans once a year for their birthday while still making all the sounds about wanting to hang out. Our college was selling cheap tickets for an outdoor ice skating event. I get the where are you from? question all the time. Things have a funny way of working out. Tell me more! Of course I would never do this it would be returning the aggression but its a real puzzle to me. 96 views, 2 likes, 0 loves, 0 comments, 2 shares, Facebook Watch Videos from J.Cano: Law & Order: SVU - Best Episode Ive now got a standard policy of dont know, Ill have to check my calendar and get back to you. Instead we got stuck attending an MLM pitch. I had a hard time staying employed and taking care of myself because I have a chronic illness, and the alternative to living with my parents would be to figure out how to apply for section 8 housing and Disability, both of which have a long wait list. Its only a trap when the same people use it repeatedly to rope you in to doing something you would otherwise be able to avoid gracefully. Whereas a lot of us see the advantages, like the precision you noticed, to some form of rapid written communication that wasnt around decades ago. What are you up to this weekend? Because shes a family member. Its really cool to see how other people approach this stuff and I liked learning from your comment! I love organizing events and I confess to having asked that annoying question several times, mostly in order to know if a particular friend I would love to invite is available on that date. My family are a bunch of hyper-social weirdos for whom my introvert-ness is very confusing. And sometimes its due to the other person not grasping the soft no/non-answer to drop the conversation (generally people I am not already friends with, like the one bank teller who keeps on asking* and that I do find nosy/irritating). Why do I feel entitled to her assistance with something I am doing for her grandmother & grandfather while she sits in her room and plays Minecraft? Good to know! "Better days are coming. There are a couple of questions my Mother asks that trigger a Pavlovian eye-roll from me because I know they are invariably followed by a request for a favor, to the point where if someone else asks me the same question in a totally innocuous way, I still react to it. Turning oxygen into carbon dioxide. I cant see into the future and neither can the people in my life. As a little anecdote my ex-husband and I had just started attending a new ward in his church when a guy our age wed chatted with a few times asked us what we were doing on Halloween. Mostly they arent great at invitations. Theres a great body of research on the pileup of mental stress on the interrupted person, and the habit encourages the interrupter to indulge in constant watching and judging of how another adult spends their R&R downtime, which isnt good for the interrupter either, since it breeds resentment, often of a very petty kind. (If they didnt mean an invitation) Theyre almost certainly not trying to pry into information you consider private! Them We need to have lunch soon Soft invites in my friend circle are more just a mutually understood shorthand for I value your friendship so Im going to express a genuine desire to hang out even were both depressed and introverted and therefore the likelihood of this actually happening is pretty low.. Or at least, it will be seen as rude by many people that I know and had had this conversation with. It's nice that they want to know about your plans, but their curiosity can feel more like an interrogation. Im one of those foreigners who are mystified with the use of How are you? in the US. All of these situation have the same question in them, but they are not remotely all one situation. I need you to babysit. We should hang out sometime soon! Is something I expect people to either reply yeah that would be fun or ignore/tell me theyre swamped but wish they could do as a no. (This one will definitely keep them guessing.) I guess turning down invites is probably just a point of stress for me though, because people have historically gotten annoyed at me for being busy and turning down their invites, when its just like Please find out if Im actually available first so you dont take it personally that I cant hang this weekend?. With strangers (e.g., cashiers) and other people you dont know personally well (casual acquaintances, colleagues with whom you are not also friends, etc. Examples include: Good, nice sunny day out there. - Ogden Nash - Old timers, weekends, and airplane landings are alike. Since youre not busy, do you want to go to [event] with me? I was taught that if you are actually inviting people for something, its rude to do it by asking them what theyre doing that night first, because it traps them without a believable excuse for saying no. to add: I think if there are people youre close to who do this a lot, like your sister, you can just tell them its a small thing but it bugs you and can they please ask a different way. The person is saying something factually incorrect. Thats kind of taking it 4 out of context to say they dont understand. I was surprised what a relief it was to move to a completely different part of the country where I at least have the option of blending in. One of my long-time boundaries is I wont date a guy who cant properly carry out an invitation and follow it through. You always say Im working on my crochet projects this weekend. I really wish I had some better scripts to deal with this stuff how do I limit our contact with her to a level where the kids and I are still happy to see her, without pissing her off? Just standing here waiting for stupid questions I guess. People of just about any accent can turn up just about anywhere and be from there. On a walk with my dinosaur. LW, one of the things you could do is take a hobby (or pretend to) and have that as your backup plans. I have a rule of thumb for stuff like this, which is sometimes with a passive aggressive person, I just aggressively pretend they asked me a direct question or made a direct statement, and will respond as though they did. This is a different way of reacting to a social interaction. I do have friends who have trouble planning things for various reasons and often say things like I miss you or We should hang out more without doing anything to make it happen. I can deal with how are you, since that has an easy script for answering even if it took me a while to memorize it, and where are you from. Again with the caveat that you have to tell the person whom youve used as an excuse that youve done so! 1. Another example: My parents both corrected their local accents to American Standard Television English long before I was born, so I grew up with that accent myself. . (Like just because I have no plans, I must do the Thing she wants to do. So I got in the habit of saying, I have no plans and thats just the way I like it. I get it from friends (who usually just want to find a time to hang and thats not so bad), my cousin (who usually wants me to babysit), my mom (whenever she wants to invite me somewhere), and people Im chatting with on dating websites. Had it been a long time since shed asked him? Its a little startling to hear something super serious like life is really dark so that would be a surprise here as well. Theres also (If they meant the invitation) Them : OH! In a lot of cases I dont think its meant to be manipulative, its just a verbal tic. And it's a great way to know what's at the top of someone's mind. It is a question that can be answered or echoed and nobody minds too much. And the balls in their court if they were actually trying to set up something fun. Once in a college class, we had a group of students who had American parents but had grown up in other countries come and talk to us about the experience of having a foot in two cultures. Its great! You are hearing pressure where there is none; and even if there were a little pressure, the grownup way to deal with it is to push back firmly but politelyno whining, no yelling, no accusing, no lecturing. Also works for the similar How ARE you? @Grant Us Eyes mentioned. As long as I sound friendly, folks who have no ulterior motive take it at face value, and the ones who are being invasively nosy, or hoping to trick me into something, are taken aback and sometimes given subtle notice that I will set boundaries I read the question; did all of you who are saying its only about the manipulative cases? Thinking of seeing [movie]. And its hard to argue with. It might help to keep in mind that for most people, the question is pretty innocuous. Yak shaving is a programming term, although Ive also seen it in other contexts.