Tannen's main suggestion is at least if you're aware that someone communicates differently than you do, you might either make accommodation, or better understand things that might frustrate you.
My experience is the opposite. I grew up in New England, and it seemed like there were a large number of unspoken norms (in both business and personal culture) that were really hard to grok. Moving out to the Bay Area, people are refreshingly direct. "Want to come work for equity on my crypto startup?" "No, you're crazy." "Okay goodbye!"
I think that where hypocrisy and indirection are ingrained in Silicon Valley, it's because of diverging incentives and a lust for power. In other words, people won't unconsciously hurt your feelings because they assume you would've consciously spoken up; they will consciously screw you over because they want that billion dollar deal. It feels very much like an ask culture, though, regardless of how crazy the asks are.
1) A substantial number of individuals in the bay aren't originally from there.
2) Assuming the role of a startup founder inherently demands a familiarity with ask culture.
One of the initial steps frequently involves requesting significant amounts of money from individuals, with minimal consequence to the borrower if it doesn't materialize to anything!
Bay Area startup culture is an extreme example of Bay Area culture in general, which is an extreme example of Western U.S. culture, which is an extreme example of American culture, which is an extreme example of general western European culture. But they're all marked by fluid, transient groupings of people that came from all over.
To phrase it differently, a significant number of the people you’re thinking of probably wont establish lasting roots in the Bay and thus wouldn't be passing down that culture to the subsequent generation of Bay Area youngsters.
It's a thought-provoking query indeed though, pondering what characterizes the "prototypical San Franciscan" and how that might evolve over time!
Weird, I moved from Boston to the Bay Area and I have the opposite experience.
In Boston if someone asked me to have dinner with them it was always just dinner. If they had other intentions they would state them up front.
In the Bay Area a good fraction of the time the other person has an unstated intention (hiring, dating, asking for intros to dates, asking for intros to investors, asking for other help ...) that I usually need to dig up before I say yes or no. The thing is, sometimes it is a yes, I just wish people would be more upfront that there is an agenda around this "dinner".
“Gee, that startup sounds cool. Let me get back to you.”
I think ask vs guess is a good start, but looking at my experience and looking at what people are talking about here, there is at least one more dimension at play here.
The person on the corner asking “excuse me sir may I please ask you a question” almost certainly has ulterior motives. Locals in a busy neighborhood ignore a guy like that a few times a day.
But the person on the corner who says “hey which way is the 7 train?” with no preamble is gonna get good answers, despite being less traditionally polite.
Where there is constant stimulation, the cultural norms get a lot more direct
I'd never do this in Los Angeles where I live part time.
I context switch based on which home I'm at, North Georgia or Los Angeles.
To quote Jerad/Donald at Silicon Valley:
“I like when people yell at me, at least I know where I stand”.
This is pretty frustrating as 90s-kid who had a Good Childhood™ and struggles with interpersonal issues. I have a close friend from childhood who also had quite a Good Childhood™ and he can't shut up about "trauma" and it seems like every two years he has this big epiphany about how he addressed some "trauma" he was previously repressing and how now that he's done so he's All Better Now™. His behavior and overall life outcomes do not have any correlation with these epiphanies. Both of our lives absolutely pale in comparison to the lives of average children in previous generations in terms of 'trauma'. Minimal bullying, no fights, always plenty of toys and food, loving parents, etc.
I know some people with real, legitimate trauma (verbal and physical abuse) and they said that visiting a therapist really helped them to feel a lot better. In such cases of legitimate trauma, I agree that one should do something about it if it's making you feel bad. However, many of those people were already. interpersonally excellent before and after 'addressing' their trauma.
I have had people (including the friend from the first paragraph) suggest I need to "work on my childhood trauma" but really and honestly I can't think of a single thing that was legitimately traumatic. I could take my worst experiences, which I have moved on from and don't feel any need[0] to think about, and inflate them, but I'm pretty sure that would be creating a new psychological problem.
[0]I don't feel any hesitance to thinking about them either. I can sit and ponder them for a whole afternoon if I like, without emotional fluctuation. They're just memories.
We live in the safest, least racist, least sexist, least antisemitic generation in history. At the same time, automation and productivity has reduced demand for human labor, and people increasingly can’t afford the rent. Perhaps the answer to many disparities isn’t systemic sexism, racism etc. but economic factors. Whatever you are worried about, your grandparents had it much worse.
Also, let’s improve our systems to stop polluting the environment for instant gratification at the expense of future generations.
We have approximately the lowest unemployment rate in modern history.
It doesn’t count the people who have opted out of the workforce.
It doesn’t count the job insecuroty of the gig economy. Or the people with terrible conditions.
It actually underscores the fact that both sexes flooded the labor pool in the last few decades, automation increased and wages got depressed due to all these factors.
USSR also had near-total employment, for men and women, way earlier than USA did. And ironically, the rent cost a ton less. But people overall couldn’t afford that much.
Your grandfather could have supported an entire family on one man’s paycheck, and paid for an entire house. Today, millennials onwards can’t afford any of that. The generation of adults with the least savings in probably a century.
But, as I said, we still have it amaing. Medical advances, technology like air conditioning, electricity and so on. The Internet spreads so much knowledge around the world. I’m just saying that the remaining problems are often rooted in economic issues, more than a rise in “systemic X ism”
Gig economy and short stints at jobs are an example of how little employers really value their labor force, as opposed to the “company man” who worked for decades and got a pension.
Not the headline number, but in the US you certainly can find this data if you want it, in the U4, U5, and U6 rates:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U4RATE
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U5RATE
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U6RATE
It only goes back to 1994, but these measures are currently all at or near the lows over the that period.
Given the juxtaposition of the claims above, I think it is useful to note that demand for labor is still relatively high (unemployment rate at ~3.5% in the US). The reason for unaffordable rents is driven more by the supply of housing not growing along with demand IMO.
The way our primary caregivers relate and respond to us when we're a) in our most rapid periods of development and b) completely dependent on them for everything absolutely has an influence on the way we turn out. How could it not?
So there's no such thing as Neutral/No Influence, there is only identifying what effects there are and learning how to lean either into or out of those influences on a situational basis. All of this definitely applies to childhood trauma, but it doesn't HAVE to be trauma for that logic to apply. Figuring that stuff out is a helpful part of maturing, and it doesn't have to be a critical or negative thing.
In many ways I've come to appreciate and love my parents even more as I've worked through the ways they raised me the best they could, given the resources they had, but in ways that I can now see preferable alternatives to.
I think it's the biggest "I Love You" in the world to self-consciously seek to grow beyond the limitations that were passed on to me, just like I want my little girl to outgrow the ones I consciously or unconsciously hand down to her.
It helps a lot of people, but it’t also a trap for those who have more deep things to work through, having spend 6 years stalled out in CBT before coming to grips with the deep trauma and neglect, and the dissociation that was so prevalent in my life that CBT therapists never even bothered screening for. Ask anyone with an emotionally neglectful or abusive upbringing what CBT did for them and you’ll get quite a few nasty answers.
Yeah. That's one of the dangers the book I had talked about. CBT is a tool for rewiring the brain. If you have deep things to work out and don't recognize it, CBT will do exactly what it says on the tin and rewire around things that need to be explored.
That's very not good.
I'm bipolar and use CBT a lot. Identifying if the problem is logic-based is key to its application. Logic cannot override depression or mania, which means CBT doesn't work and alternative strategies are needed. Usually I switch to some variant of DBT techniques. (It's so automatic at this point it's hard to identify all of what I'm doing.)
In my experience, learning when to apply CBT is much harder than learning CBT.
If there's a sure-fire way to create a mental health problem, it's to tell yourself you don't deserve to have a problem because other people have worse problems.
Kids with bad childhood will not categorize semi bad childhood as trauma, but have worst interpersonal relationships, worst stress handling, abuse drugs or alcohol more often and display whole range of at risk behaviors
It is simply not true that being poor or abused or neglected makes people resilient.
I also had Good ChildhoodTM by your definition.
Still I’m pretty sure I have been traumatized by the two big moves of my childhood, loosing my childhood friendships twice.
It doesn’t look big, I am ok at socializing so I have friends but I know that when shit hits the fan, it happens that I dream of my first childhood friend and I’m pretty convinced that this is why I sometimes feel alone even when I’m well surrounded.
The point wasn’t to tell my life but to say that you can’t really judge other’s "traumas". It’s highly personal how you feel about something and when someone doesn’t have something you have (in my case childhood friends) it’s easy to feel like it’s not important (maybe you can’t understand because your own childhood friendship eroded normally and you don’t feel like it’s an issue)
Some of these people absolutely fell apart. It was the first time they’d ever lost anyone and they couldn’t process it. When gently pressed, we would find out they had no pets growing up. They had not lost so much as a goldfish.
A painless life can set you up for failure when real adversity comes. You lack the resilience, and in some cases the empathy, to navigate these situations.
Those experiences gave me a whole new perspective on peers whose parents got them goldfish or hamsters at a young age. Some of these parents were setting up object lessons. Basically the chicken pox party of loss.
At that point I had lost a dog, and as a sensitive kid it wrecked me. And the worst part of it was every time I caught my breath some new asshole would offer his condolences. Thanks, I wasn’t thinking about my dog for ten minutes and now I’m thinking about her again. Can we just stop talking about it please?
I learned to offer sympathy without an agenda. Engaging them is trying to make them process on your timeline. It’s thoughtless, even a little cruel. A good friend will step in and push if weeks later you have not mourned. But the next day? Give them space, Jesus.
I really appreciated, in that moment, the northern midwestern trope of bringing the bereaved food and just sitting with them. Let them talk, or not. I almost pulled a muscle watching Lars and the Real Girl. The little old ladies sitting in his living room, knitting, surrounded by casseroles and hot dishes. Just talking to each other and watching him out of the corner of their eyes. Talking about anything else. Yep that’s about it. Here if you need us, not holding our breath for you to say so.
Having a kid lose a pet at that age is a major thing for them to process.
I love the school, but the disorganised over-parenting libertarian hippies can be overbearing at times.
I'm all for growing children with creative teaching and avoiding rote memorization, but I'd be horrified if that was at the cost of missing the best years for setting the pillars of rational thought.
Reading is taught later in a Steiner school than at most schools, but not to any detriment measurable later in schooling.
I’m not sure how one would accurately quantify the final outcome as demographics etc come into it. From my time at school there are surgeons, physicists, engineers (or various types), lawyers, mathematicians, accountants, tv producers, teachers etc. We had our share of dropouts too.
I also don’t believe that the early years are the most important for what is learned, and that they are more important for learning how to learn and how to enjoy the process.
The worst thing that's every happened to someone is still the worst thing that's ever happened to them. Though it might not be something like mental/physical abuse, it's still their bottom even if it pales in comparison to someone else's. Also, lots of families have secrets and can portray a healthy image when in reality we generally see people at their "best" in social settings. I think the key here is self-awareness without diminishment, which can be difficult.
Also, at least with my algorithms, there is just so much bombardment from social media about things like trauma, mental illness, and neurodivergence where one can get lost in what they're being presented and be convinced that just because they read the dictionary for fun when they were younger that they're neurodivergent instead of possibly just being a curious child. If one is in a vulnerable state or just worn down from seeing all this, it almost incites a FOMO response of "hey, I was traumatized too!"
I do think that normalizing and acting to remove the stigma from discussing these things is a net positive overall but it can be damaging for sure
In a way it is the perfect excuse, a childhood determinism of sorts. Blame everything just to avoid ANY change of the self.
Not discounting that some people have terrible childhoods that are legitimately damaging, but losing a pet or a friend moving away or a grandparent dying is not that unusual and well within the scope of "normal things that happen" that normal people can (or should be expected to) handle.
The 'taking responsibility for ones own life' has a perverse failure mode where an individual is genuinely incapable of doing something, yet at the same time incapable of seeking help for the issue. These tend to lead to harmful downward spirals in those peoples lives.
if you have unresolved childhood trauma (people forget this is conditional) then resolving it is one of (not all) the requirements for fixing chronic interpersonal issues you may have (not everyone does).
If they make all those mistakes at once, you get people telling you to heal your childhood trauma to fix your relationship disasters and it's like "I had one argument with one person. I'm just gonna go talk to him about it..."
Let me just copy/paste an older comment of mine:
---
Imagine you've lived in the same house your entire life. There's a big couch taking up half the living room, but one of the legs is broken. When you were really little, it tipped over when you sat in it, so you just learned to walk around the couch over to the not-very-comfortable armchair and sit there instead.
This was so long ago that you don't even remember learning not to sit in the couch. You don't think about how much room that couch is wasting or how much time you spend walking around the couch to get to the chair. Sometmies you stub your toe on the way around, but everyone trips every now and then. You've been doing this so long that it is completely unconscious. Hell, you can and do navigate the room in the dark.
Friends ask you about your living room furniture and you—completely honestly as far as you know—say it's all fine. You describe your chair in detail. It's not perfect, but it's serviceable. Certainly lots of other people have furniture that's in worse shape. At least you don't have any of those problems.
Then you sit down with a therapist for a few hours and they say, "Hey, what's up with that couch?"
But thank you for providing readers an example of the kind of condescension I was describing.
At least from your writing I believe you're a very introspective person. The trouble with introspection is that it is an imperfect mirror. We tend to self find solutions for our problems, but we do so at the risk of completely missing the blind spots in our life.
Coming back at the previous person with the term condescending is concerning. At least my observation is you believe you have covered all of your bases, but this gets problematic in cases of omission. Yea, your parents did not hit you, but that does not mean they taught you how to have healthy relationships, for example, something that leads to a lifetime of trauma in some people due omissive ignorance.
Simply never being in a car accident while growing up doesn't mean you spontaneously know how to drive a car.
Personal example, I had a good (girl) friend when I was like six, I was very lonely / isolated before she came around and we played together and the like. But then her parents moved and I never saw her again.
And for many years, that was it, it happened, couldn't do anything about it, nothing abnormal about it. But then because of Reasons I ended up going to therapy, and that event (plus others) are probably linked to a fear of abandonment / commitment, of a pessimism when it comes to relationships (as in, don't get too close, it'll end and there's nothing you can do about it).
But also there's a factor of "My 'trauma' isn't that bad because others have had it worse". Doesn't mean you aren't valid either.
People by and large don’t understand how their brains work, but if they’re suffering or struggling psychologically, they seem to want some sort of explanatory model to make sense of it. So it’s easy for people to buy into these models. The trauma model is one of the more fashionable ones these days. The problems with this model, especially the more pop-psychology version, are (a) it doesn’t fit what we know about actual, serious trauma anyway and (b) it seems to encourage people to catastrophize their past experiences in order to try and make their life story fit the model. This is also counterproductive because catastophization is itself a cognitive distortion that should be corrected rather than indulged. Focusing on childhood trauma in particular also sounds suspiciously Freudian to me.
Another thing to point out is that even serious traumatic experiences don’t necessarily lead to psychological issues in the future. Most people have a natural resiliency to them. But if people believe that any unpleasant or negative experience is going to give them full blown PTSD, it’s more likely to happen. There are cases of this happening cross-culturally when well meaning western aid workers offer to counsel people in third world countries who experienced natural disasters.
If you're an average American of today, you're living a life of comfort and abundance that could not have been imagined 100 years ago, and yet you'll have about the same trauma as did your equivalent back then, even though they would have dealt with things that would have killed you, figuratively or even literally.
Kind of related to Durkheim's "Society of Saints" idea [1].
This suggests a therapeutic vector: increase the variance in your own life. It probably won't be technically hard, though it would be psychologically very difficult. If the theory is right, many of your minor traumas should quickly dissolve.
It would take some amount of will to pull this off, of course. Though probably less suffering than the aggregated suffering conferred by the traumas.
[1] https://www.tutor2u.net/sociology/reference/durkheim-on-devi...
Schemas are just your set of inbuilt, instantaneous responses to common situations or thoughts.
You don't need trauma to have maladaptive schemas.
"One of the strangest fixations of AFWL metaphysics is on a substance called 'trauma' that they believe is 'stored in the body' in small saclike organs where it constantly threatens to be 'triggered' and erupt out of its ducts. They assert life itself is about 'processing trauma'"
Along with a bunch of other more medical reading
I'm late 30's and same btw.
In fact, I was proud of being so “responsible” as a kid, not that I was neglected and parentified.
“What works for you only works for you, so you might not have discovered that it works for anything else, but only if you were really paying attention.”
Some people are lucky to not have significant childhood trauma which means it was never needing to be resolved
If it worked for you, that's great! No joke, that's fantastic. But not for nothing, too, is there the old joke about the guy who just started a 12-step program and now no sooner sees someone take a drink in a bar but assumes they're an alcoholic.
- Ben Franklin
I wonder how much it's about individual family background and not strongly regional?
"yall doin okay?"
Speaking as a Southerner, this sentence is so on point.
This is jarring to people who cannot receive a no, or who cannot articulate one.
This is abstract, but stay with me here
I'm also Southern, and I think that the inclination towards that kind of belligerent helpfulness comes from trying to figure out what your guests want, and making sure they don't have to ask you for anything.
in my experience the response is "we're all good out here, but thank you!" -- which is classic Guess culture
In my own experience, I once had an obnoxious colleague who asked "How was your weekend?". I didn't like the question because one, I don't like to talk about what I do / did in my spare time, and two, it was leading because the guy was really really eager to talk about HIS weekend, but... I didn't care, or else I would've asked.
If it's said as a greeting, "how y'all doing?" usually means "how are your family?," which also tends to be meant very genuinely.
Even outside of a host-guest dynamic, I do think Southerners tend to care more about pleasantries; when they ask about your weekend, they're a little more likely to really want to know.
Of course, this is all very broad strokes based on anecdotal experience. Plenty of cold/self-aggrandizing jerks in the South, too!
I said this down the thread but my experience (grew up in the south) has always been that Southerners are very up-front about trying to meet your needs before you can even ask for them. That was always how I was taught to host, anyway.
And I think that weirdly, that's more aligned with Guess culture: the person who needs something should never have to ask for it.
As a southerner, I don't agree. It's split by the directionality of the request. And I think that's what makes southern culture distinct.
We'd never "ask" when we're the guest, only when we're the host. "Ask"-y guests are considered rude. "Guess"-y hosts are considered unwelcoming and inhospitable.
You can "ask" a stranger how they're doing or if they need anything, but you don't impose upon them. It's often common to strike up conversations this way.
It's a directionality. "Ask" when you're the giver, "guess" when you're the receiver.
You always hold the door. You don't ask for someone to do it for you, but you probably feel miffed if they don't, because it's expected that everyone extends each other courtesy.
"Southern hospitality".
Just a guess but could be that attitude has lots more to do with how many are poor or not and how many generations they've been poor, or lived in cities, like a lag time sorta thing. Nothing I really know about just sharing because it might be interesting even if wrong
The upper classes of the Deep South, where people are very religious and often call folks "Mr./Mizz. First Name" as a mark of both respect and familiarity at the same time, seem to skew Guess culture. But then the upper classes generally seem to skew Guess culture.
The South is also a place where people are more likely to own guns and join the military. Military culture is mostly Ask culture. They tend to be very direct and some people find this refreshing/no BS and others find it rude, crude and socially unacceptable if you are influenced by that.
Working class stiffs in the South may be more influenced by the very direct Ask culture of the American military.
So it's probably a lot more complex than regional cultures.
Just that there are variances across the region and those are some influences I know of.
For some people that can be rude or shocking. For others the opposite can be exhausting. The middle ground of mind games is the fucking worst. “Go do that thing I don’t like. It’s fine.” “Why did he go? He knew I was upset!” He answered your passive aggressive bullshit with his own passive aggressive bullshit. That’s why. Good luck in couples therapy.
You're American, your wife is American.
When it comes to talking about US history, people are quick to denigrate the US and explain how young of a country it is. When it comes to talking about the evolution and origins of American culture, people are quick to denigrate the US and explain how far removed it is from its European origins.
Pet peeve from a European: the American habit of using their distant ancestor’s European ethnicity as a shorthand for stereotypical personality and culture today a) undervalues the massive political and cultural changes in Europe since their ancestor’s emigration und b) undervalues the regional differences inside their ancestor’s origin country. Being german I find both Ask and Guess culture here, just 50 km apart. And often in the same place, differing by class or the rural/urban divide. Describing „German“ as just Ask culture is rather wrong from my perspective. I know the outside and Hollywood stereotypes differ.
(And c), I think, distant ancestors ethnic stereotypes undervalues the melting pot/salad bowl effect over generations of the US itself.)
Now try to figure that across the pond with zillions of native cultures merged with an (older than North America itself) Southern Hispanic culture from Mexico to the Patagonia close to the South Pole.
The US is the opposite of a monolithic culture.
And even in regions themselves you can find alien customs to each other. For instance, in the Basque Country from valley to valley. Or in Andalusia with huge differences between East and West. Yes, like a Mandelbrot fractal. Spain it's like that.
You can find here any climate. Desserts? Glaciars? Tundra like climates? Cold winters down to -30C on high peaks? Dry heat? Windy heat? Dry cold? Windy cold? Rainy weather, like London if not more? All of them across the country. Now, from these megadiverse climate diffs you can guess you will find zillions of cultures and subcultures because, you know, traditions and architecture change a lot if you live between ponds in Cantabria with more mist than in a Stephen King novel compared to a dry dessert in Almeria were "Spagetthi Westerns" were filmed here and white homes with Arabic architecture reflecting the Sun was a must in order to just survive the Summer.
One person from London, the other from Belfast? Both British.
One from Barcelona, the other from Madrid? Both Spanish.
One from Prague, the other from Bratislava? Both Czechoslovakian, until a couple decades ago.
Do you think American doesn't have cultural differences within? Or that those cultures don't correlate at all with geography? Or with ancestry?
Edit: I want to move to the Netherlands, if I have kids there they'll be Dutch
> she had been brought up to feel extreme insecurity
This reminds me of a quote from Buffett from about 40 years ago. He said something along the lines of "when women are raised, they hear and see a million reasons why they cannot do things whereas men see and hear a million reasons why they can do things". If I would be convinced by the world that I am not good, then sure I would treat guests amazingly well. If I would be convinced by the world I‘m amazing, then why bother treating guests well? They can say it if they need anything.
I‘m happy to hear counterarguments if you have them
All this seems like good old stereotyping to me. It often comes down to the individual family or even the individual person. Maybe their social skills, maybe their level of selfishness. Maybe also how much they care about how they're seen by others vs how comfortable they are being themselves. A lot of factors can play into this.
Treat everyone, no matter who they are, like someone you admire and you can’t go wrong anywhere in the world.
When you make a huge generalization like "the northern states I'm from primarily developed their culture from Scandinavia and Germany and tend to be more 'ask' than 'guess'", it's possible to immediately find tons of counterexamples. It tends to make people feel good to find flaws with generalizations, but they then argue too far the other way. "Since there are many counterexamples, your claim that the North is mostly 'ask' and the South is mostly 'guess' doesn't hold water."
But what exactly are they saying? The Northern US and the Southern US are exactly the same? There's no possible generalization to make about the cultures from either place?
Instead, at every possible delineation people have made in their counterarguments (poor vs. rich, urban vs. rural, man vs. woman), I find the same generalizations mostly apply. A poor northerner is likely more "ask" than a poor southerner, based on who I've met. Northern men are generally more "ask" than southern men. My wife's father is certainly less intensely curious about my needs than my own mother, but he's far, far more curious about my needs than my father, and almost every other northern father I've met. I've met a great many people, and lived all around the US, so I'm not just shooting from the hip here.
I think we're generally a high-context culture, and the "guessing" culture as postulated in the post immediately reminds me of that. I don't know if other Northern European cultures are less high-context but it makes me wonder if high vs. low context (possibly similar to guessing vs. asking) is not quite the same axis as bluntness.
As a somewhat tongue in cheek example -- if you have guests over you should to offer coffee three times. They may refuse the first two and accept the third time. But if you do not offer thrice, they'll go home and complain that you were too stingy to even provide coffee.
You should read the manner of refusal in these kinds of cases, and offer more profusely if the situation demands.
I am built this way. It's weird to admit, but not only I will not ask directly; I am very hesitant to accept things even when offered. Definitely very high on the guess culture scale, and I know that's incompatible with how some other cultures operate, so I'm trying to be mindful about it and behave more directly when situation demands.
I always saw it as a way for a host to try a couple of alternatives before working on the actual need.
> You say which one you want or you get nothing. Your choice.
It doesn't work if I'm visiting you, that's for sure. It works well and without any friction in my own culture. So there's the need to be mindful of the situation and perhaps consider a bit longer before going with my instincts.
And if the worst comes to pass and you don't offer again, then maybe I'll realize our differences and just ask for that coffee after all.
From there it continues towards my knowing that when I arrive somewhere they are sort of socially obligated to offer whatever they have to me regardless of whether they have the means to or want to. Maybe I feel like they would be more comfortable sitting and chatting with me but they are insisting on standing and serving me with drinks and such. So I say no initially, I want them to rest for a moment. But they indicate, by asking again, that it's no problem, and that in fact they will be making something for themselves regardless of what I say, at which point I think about if I actually want something.
it it's sort of like instead of primarily looking after yourself and your own needs, it becomes more of a collaborative project
This to me is ask culture. On the other hand, guess culture would be someone making tea before I even arrive and serving it to me, expecting me to like it and drink it. Sorry but I don't drink tea. Please just ask me if I want one because if you don't have coffee, I'd rather just have a glass of water. But now that you've served this I won't say no because my guess is that it'd offend you, so I just nip a bit but don't drink it.
My family is a bit on the extreme of guessing culture to the point where we won't say anything and often folks find us very cold. I am made acutely aware of this everyday - from romantic partners, friends, and even strangers. My siblings and I were simply raised this way and it's all but impossible to change my behavior.
When we visit family in both Norway and Sweden it's almost like "whew" we can relax and breathe and everything feels very comfortable because the pace of society is slower, at restaurants and during normal activities out and about in the towns, you generally do not have to worry about folks approaching you.
My current partner is also a 3rd generation American, her family on both sides is Irish. They are incredibly social and outgoing and just 10 minutes she informed me we are having our neighbors over (he is a 2nd generation American of Irish descent and his partner is a 2nd generation Dutch). They are all very social and won't hesitate to offer a beer or help or anything really, which I certainly appreciate it but I'm uncomfortable accepting anything.
An even more extreme example is my older brother. I almost look like a social butterfly in comparison because I won't hesitate to complain about the weather, work, anything really. Whereas he is very stoic and quiet. We were in the construction industry with our father and we all would mostly work in silence building homes and apartment buildings, and when we expanded and hired new folks it made them really uncomfortable.
Once, my brother fell off a roof and he just laid there in a daze. I rushed down to him and by the time I got to him (no more than 20 seconds) he was already getting back up on the roof and just said "I'm fine". Another time his lung collapsed and he didn't tell anyone until his 5th day in the hospital! It's really disappointing sometimes.
I think you mean reluctant.
There's no social dance to it. Just don't be a leech, but accept help when it's needed and don't offer help unless you're genuinely willing to give it.
There is. What constitutes a leech varies from person to person, from culture to culture. Accepting help could easily lead to resentment, it's entirely possible they were offering help to seem generous while simultaneously expecting to be refused. Offering help at all could be offensive because you're in a position of strength while they're in a position of weakness, it implies they need you, ingratiates them with you, puts them in your debt.
Correctly navigating these waters requires instant judgements based on huge amounts of social information like status, reputation, personality, context, non-verbal cues like tone of voice and body language. It is difficult to do this deliberately because during conversations there is not enough time to deeply analyze anything. It's best left to an uncounscious mind honed sharp by repeated practice.
Every interpersonal relationship has its own dance, no matter where you're from. That's what socializing is.
And sadly, those not born with a neurotypical brain are very bad dancers.
they were offering help to seem generous
When out having drinks, it is considered (1) rude to let your friend's drink go empty, and (2) rude to refuse your friends offer for a drink.
Is this accurate? If so... one can imagine how this can get pretty messy!
As for (2) I don't know any culture where if a friend asks you to meet up with them that there isn't some expectation you'll accept the offer and if you can't you'll at least try to make the friend feel you'd really like to but for whatever reason you can't right now. If you just responded "no, I don't want meet" I'd except after a few such responses you'd no longer be friends in any culture.
I have a good friend whose parents are from Persia/Iran. He told me about this culture after we knew each other for quite some time. Even though he has never lived there, he often still has a hard time not to do this, which has resulted in some funny (at least for his friends) or uncomfortable situations over time. Knowing this, many things I ascribed to his character alone suddenly made a bit more sense.
I will say, the general lack of structure/formality in general social interactions is probably the biggest contrast between West Coast (especially SoCal) and either your New England or your wive's Southern upbringing. At least, this is my experience with transplants from those regions and their biggest complaints ("why don't people RSVP", "why are they wearing business casual to a fancy event", "why don't people bring gifts to get-togethers", etc).
So cal is in the west but most of the people didn't come over during western expansion or work on a farm or ranch. A lot came from the mid-west. So its sort of more like Arizona or even parts of Texas.
I think it boils down to people mistaking being polite to being nice.
Over the years I definitely insulted several southern guests by mostly ignoring them, and she definitely projected insult onto several northern guests by assuming that they were secretly judging us for not being better hosts. We've since realized that southerners tend to prefer "guess" culture and northerners tend to prefer "ask" culture, to use the terminology from the article. There are certainly many exceptions, but this generalization has taught her to chill out a little over hosting duties, and taught me to pick up some slack when taking care of guests.
We still both greatly prefer our native cultures. I don't like being fawned over or offered things I don't want, and she is extremely recalcitrant when it comes to asking for anything.
[1] I mention the distant ancestral backgrounds because it's amusing to me how well I get along with northern Europeans who are plainly spoken and "rude" by US standards, and how a lot of proper hosting culture from the UK reminds me of how her family operates. She finds Scandinavians and Dutch incredibly rude, whereas I find the English hilariously polite, even to their own detriment.