Discussing about the rules of engagement

Never realized the day would come for me to have a set of rules of engagement in the course of my marriage. I always see it as a form of legalism which marriage and love should be able to conquer.

Nonetheless, imperfect as we are, selfish as our hearts would be, we have no choice but to discuss and came to this conclusion; In order to allow and help each other to be better communicators and partners, we need to have some set of rules to allow for vulnerability..

And so we set some of ours:
1) when one talk to share our feelings, just listen and don't try to defend.
2) when we want to speak, we ask if it's ok for us to speak.

Learning about people's comments or responses

I just thought about this right when I heard my house-mate commented something about some money issue. I realized that it's not about the words that she said which made me think twice what she said... (in a not so positive way), rather it's about my judgement towards her which gave me that negative first impression.

I know of a friend whom I am quite close, who's suffering from such social problems. It just seems like everything/every word which he/she said, seems to be associated with sarcasm and a negative or critical thought towards others. Even in times when they do not mean it.

It's really beyond of being un-aware. Instead, it'll be so difficult to change to the point that they may get very-very frustrated with how other people view them.

The weird thing is, if another person said those words which these bunch said (bringing all the negative remarks), the response will be different. For example, when someone said "Owe Money Pay Money", what constitutes a difference in reaction is not determined by simply how it's spoken (the tone, the body language, the eyes), somehow, I felt as though all those doesn't matter and so long as the 'marked' person said those taboo-phrases, they're pretty much -dead-.


So question is, does what they say matter any-more? Or have we passed judgement upon them to the point of no return... even if what they say may seem so 'harmless'....