Also, what I meant to say by reading between the lines is that you may get hints of hidden or unconscious, even subtle messages that people may not be fully aware of that they are giving them away. It’s like and added value, to me. But, yes, it does take a lot of (hard) work to learn to read between the lines properly and objectively so as not to misunderstand or misread the person.

I also find that people use the anonymity of the Internet to say things that in person they find harder to say. Like when therapists use a puppet to make children speak up.

Exchanging ideas here is really good, since I had not thought before of reading someone in a negative way. Just thought about reading between the lines as metaphoric way of unveiling unconscious messages, like when you read a book, for instance. You can imagine a thousand faces, gestures and voice tones for the characters of that book (unless it’s an audio book or it has pictures) but still, the essential message, the core idea, the main thing lies right there, in what they say and how they express it, the choice of words, etc.

In my opinion, there’s a lot more to reading between the lines than just making the mistake to read someone negatively.

Fairly recent, I did a lot of reading between the lines when reading the press articles on Judge Sotomayor’s “wise latina” remark and how -in the press’ words- she was “grilled” for that remark. It would be a lot easier, if people were able to be more genuine and be themselves instead of masking what they want to express, but usually, emotions get in the middle and that’s where we need to read between the lines (in a positive way, separating concepts from emotions and understanding how emotions affect the ideas, thoughts or concepts.)

Of course, this is just my subjective opinion.

Marisol, you’re right, it is complicated. Reading between the lines can certainly lead to negative assumptions when things are fine – and also to positive assumptions when things are not fine…maybe the latter is even more likely, as you can’t see the look on someone’s face when they tell you things are fine!

Hope your ‘fit’ materializes soon…

Mariana, Never say never… ;)

I think that when we learn to read other people between the lines we can get a pretty good idea of the traits and issues of another person, even if we never meet with them face to face. It might require more questioning, more clarification, yes, but I believe it’s perfectly possible to get an accurate picture of the person and the problem or challenge they are facing but analyzing other things.