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I'm one of those strange people that gets offended and defensive for others but not so much for myself unless I am feeling unheard or misunderstood. And yes sometimes I shouldn't, and yes sometimes I should keep my mouth shut LOL! But I always seem to justify it at the time by saying I'm doing it for the greater good, and sometimes even that is not necessarily a good thing. So thats something I have to work on.
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Yep I used to do this too
. I try not to though because I've realised that different things offend different people.
Recently, I was having a friendly debate with a close friend. We both know each other well, know each other's opinions, and use debate to sharpen ourselves (iron sharpens iron). In this case he was playing devil's advocate with me. Another friend who didn't know us as well, came into the debate and got mad at my close friend for saying something that she considered would have been offensive to me. But of course it wasn't!!!
I found it annoying. The statement wasn't offensive to me. It interferred with a debate that had good intentions (to sharpen our thinking) and then it took awhile to explain. It also made an innocent debate between two friends into an overly emotional event. Even if I did find his comment offending, I would have wanted to choose for myself how to respond. Sometimes it's easiest to just let it slide, ignore it.
I understand there are some situations were it is very appropriate to defend another against offense, but I try (and often fail) to pause and consider first whether or not I know enough to be able to do so.
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