Everyone is fully aware of the various swear words that exist. I won't repeat them here. But did you know that they're not really "bad" words? Perhaps words that certain audiences don't care to hear, or terms that may offend certain groups. But they're not "bad" in that they don't do direct harm. There are a number of words that do harm others, even if you don't realize they are harming. The harm may be to a friendship, a relationship, an interview, a business meeting, or some other social event. I call these Really Bad Words, and we're going to start with one of the worst: "Busy".
What?
"Busy" is the worst word you could ever use in a conversation. It's a demeaning, degenerate, dismissive word that, by simple definition, is used to identify a condition of unavailability. You might be thinking to yourself that such is the point; however there are better ways of expressing this than to just say you're "busy". It's often modified as "too busy", "terribly busy", "crazy busy", "very busy", etc. to try and emphasize just how unavailable you are. You're only making the situation worse when you do that. To try and outline this a bit more clearly, I'm going to share a story, broken up into sections to address each issue.
Many years ago, when I was a teenager, I met a girl that I really enjoyed talking to. We'd have telephone conversations spanning hours on end. I never thought of us as being married one day or anything serious, but I did want to keep engaging with her as I felt she had a keen mind, and I assumed she felt the same. As time went on, the telephone conversations grew shorter and shorter, often ending after 15-30 minutes rather than an hour or more. From what I could tell, nothing changed as far as the nature or entertaining value of the conversations (i.e. there was no "breathing into the phone" as was common when people get bored), but she would just terminate the conversation rather abruptly and without reason. There also were less opportunities to talk on the phone. When I confronted her about it - as is my nature - she would say, "oh, I was busy".
There are a couple of problems with this. First, if a person is truly "busy", they should probably be clear about what's going on that causes them to not be available as much as they used to. Second, if a telephone conversation does happen but not the same length of time, the person should probably be clear as to whether there is something preventing them from talking as long as before. Finally, if there is an underlying reason for the change that's not being disclosed, the person should own that, and be clear about it. In other words, if they're using "busy" as an excuse to avoid talking to a person, they should simply come out and express that they don't want to talk to the person. Now, many people I've spoken to have suggested that they "...don't want to hurt the other person's feelings". I'll get to that later, but that's an excuse.
I accepted her answer at the time because I didn't have any reason to doubt what she was saying, and honestly I was grateful for any opportunity to talk to her, even for a few minutes. This continued for a number of weeks, and the time of conversation grew shorter with each passing day. I started to wonder if there was a value in continuing the conversations, because I didn't feel she was really into me like she was saying. One day, as she was about to abruptly terminate a conversation, I told her plainly that if she did not want to talk to me, she should just come out and say so. To my surprise, she got defensive and angry, telling me to stop assuming I know how she feels, I don't know how busy she is, and that if she didn't want to talk to me, she wouldn't.
I can't tell you how wrong this situation is, but it's common enough that I feel the need to speak to it. There's a psychological reasoning to the above. On the guy's side, he has an interest in talking to the girl and does assume she wants to speak to him at first. When the conversations get inexplicably shorter, and when their frequency lessens, it's perfectly logical to assume that there may be a loss of interest. The girl takes the confrontation the wrong way; she becomes defensive because she's caught. Instead of attacking the statement, she should analyze why the statement is being made; there is likely a reason it's coming out now. Ask that reason. If there is fact behind the observation, own it. Admit what's going on instead of turning it back on the guy as if it were him imagining things. If what the guy is saying is not true, the girl should assess what she could do better to improve the situation, whether that's spending more time talking with the guy or trying something new if she's just tired of phone conversations.
I decided to take a different tact. Instead of calling her proactively, I went off and did other things. This was painful; I did want to talk to her, but I needed to know if she felt the same, and her rather unexpected anger got me feeling even less confident that she was telling the truth. Days went by, and then I got a call from her. She was seething with anger. "Why haven't you called me? What's wrong with you?" she asked. I just didn't understand her reaction. It wasn't the response of a person who really was eager to talk to me, but rather one that felt offended that I didn't want to talk to her (this was getting confusing). Calming my nerves, I explained that I just wanted to give her some time and space so she could get her affairs taken care of without having to take time to talk to me. This made it worse; she got on my case about assuming her feelings again. The conversation was left off with neither of us being happy about things.
In this sense, the guy has managed to at least verify that there is some passive interest. But that interest manifested itself in a dependency situation: the girl was depending on the guy to make the moves each time, without realizing that her lack of reciprocation was causing questions. The guy did his best to understand and accommodate her situation ("busy"), only to get chewed out for his efforts. This can only mean one of two things: she's not really "busy" as she says, or she's going further on the defensive because she's caught. The first instinct is to assume she's juggling too much and can't handle all of it. He's flying blind, and doesn't know where the landing strip is.
I decided to lay everything out. I needed to free my mind from what was going on, because it was stressing me out unnecessarily. I was a young guy and such stress was not going to be healthy at my age. So I called her. She cheerfully answered the phone, and apologized for getting angry the other day. At first I was tempted to accept her apology and let things go, but I knew that would just make things worse; so I told her that her behavior made it seem like she did not want to talk to me like she used to. I told her that I liked her a lot, but it wasn't fair to me to string me along, and to just be honest if she did not have the same feelings for me. To my surprise she did not get angry this time. Rather, she stated simply that I should not take her inaccessibility as an indication she didn't like me, and that her even getting upset at the situation should be obvious proof that she wants to talk to me. She just doesn't have as much time as she used to because she's "too busy" at the times I was available.
It might seem as though the girl is accepting what the guy is saying, and at least making an attempt to mend things. In reality, she's giving excuses like crazy, and has not owned up to the problem. There's no apology anywhere, and her actions still contradict what she's saying, as we'll see in the final snippet.
A few days afterwards, I called her for our regular conversation; she didn't answer. She had told me that she was "too busy" at the time selected, so to be courteous I figured I would wait a bit and try again. Still nothing. I got a bit concerned at this point, since it was highly unusual for her not to respond to my call or at least try to call me in anger, so I checked her online status. It showed she'd been online all day. That wasn't unusual by itself, but it at least gave me some confidence that she wasn't hurt or something happened.
However, I wasn't really prepared for what I encountered when I viewed her status updates. She'd been chatting up a storm with tons of her online friends, giving updates about TV shows she was watching, and talking about going to the mall and shopping for some stuff she wanted. All of that was great, she was living life as she should; but I felt she should have just come clean and told me that she wanted to do other things rather than talk to me that day. My other issue was that I didn't consider any of those activities to qualify as "busy", and I got offended that she used that as the reason for not spending time talking to me. It turns out she was doing the same other days we were talking, and there was a lot more of these activities during the times when our conversation times went down. Obviously she started to get interested in other things.
Here we see a clear situation where the word "busy" is misused, and an example as to why it's a bad word to use. The girl wanted to do other things. She did not want to talk to the guy, at least not that day. Her obligation was to tell him she didn't feel like talking that day, she wanted to go and spend some time with her friends and/or spend some time online. Maybe she felt smothered. Maybe she just wanted a break. All of that's fine, as long as she owns up to how she's feeling so the guy doesn't feel tethered. It's also difficult for the guy to understand whether it's personal or not if the girl is not honest with what's going on.
So what's this all mean? It means that when you are "busy" it normally means you are occupied with things, people, or tasks that you have no choice but to attend to, and are therefore unavailable. You might have things going on that are optional things that you want to take part in where there's a time conflict with other optional things. That happens all the time. If you're confronted with such a situation, simply explain to the conflict in advance that you are not going to be available, and be honest about what's going on. If you're going to watch some TV, tell them you're going to watch TV. If you're going to read, tell them you're going to read. Avoid saying "busy", because it might be assumed that you are doing something you can't be pulled away from, and if that turns out not to be the case, you might be thought of as a liar.
Some people say they aren't flat out honest because they don't want to hurt someone's feelings. In the story above, if the girl just didn't want to talk to the guy, she should say, "I'm not really as interested anymore as I used to be". That's not a hurtful thing to say, she's being honest, and any guy with stones should be able to accept that and move on. He may want to know why, but she probably won't have an answer, at least one she can give at that moment. If there's a loss of interest it's usually internal and not something a person can control, unfortunately. That's fine; what's important is to recognize that condition for what it is and act upon it accordingly, and honestly. At least own to what you can own up to, instead of leaving people in the dark.
Honestly is never a bad word.
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