When people allow someone to believe their name is something different than what it is, and never correct them on it.
I have read bizarre and funny stories about how people were neighbors for years, completely friendly with each other, even exchanged Christmas cards…and they found out somehow that the neighbor they thought was John was actually Mark, or something like that.
It's so triggering and hard to wrap my mind around, for a variety of reasons:
- It seems the epitome of anti-social. Do thpey truly believe letting it go is better than the temporary awkwardness of a correction?
- Basically, it's like, "Tell someone they don't matter to you without telling them they don't matter to you." Very few things are snobbish, anti-social, weird, phony, and mind-bending all simultaneously.
- Is it a self-esteem issue? How could someone stand to repeatedly not be identified correctly?
Has this happened to you, or worse, have you done this to somebody? What is the logic?