I have noticed something already during childhood and ever since then too with other people. I always found it sort of peculiar that we are either fore or against on this one.

It is, if I should use my parents first of all. My mom said to me that one time she had this huge fight with my dad and he left and they were not living together at the time, and she had arranged before a beautiful dinner for them to eat. For some reason (this made logic to her) she made then a lunch-bag, and she took a cab (I'm guessing she was not 100% sober at the time) and she dropped it off outside his front door, rang the bell (so he would open) and then told the driver to drive her back home. I guess she thought he still has to eat, right?

Now to my dad's reaction…according to her she was surprised (and floored) that he took so much importance to what he thought other people might think about her behavior that evening. What the driver thought. And she was like are you more concerned about what a driver, a stranger, someone you have never met, someone I will most likely never meet again - what he thinks? Or what he doesn't think? So you care more about that driver's feelings than mine? (He was on the job, he got paid, she had actually done that driver/his company a favor by even hiring a cab so I am guessing his feelings didn't get hurt. Not like my mums).

What I myself have noticed is that some people put so much importance to what they might think a bunch of strangers they have absolutely no strings attached to, that can't do nothing either fore or against them - what they might think.

As for me, if i should use 2 examples, one boyfriend I had, he honestly did not care a rat's eye for anyone. He was a psychopath. But he did care about image. I care about people. I don't care about image. People are gonna think what they want anyhow. One of the things I did when leaving his world, at the split up, was to decide that I am just going to leave our world to him - all alone. He will have all these people to himself. I will not say a bad word about him. He can keep them all. He can keep his 50 or more masks to disguise who he really is. I figured the less this boat gets rocked the better it is. He, I learned, would then suddenly have the time (he who had no time before, the months before we split up as he was so busy with all these other important people and activities and I was invisible at home, if I was even at home, I don't think he noticed) to strategically work through a bunch of these people just so they would like a marionette go to me and deliver these different messages of his. And he had also during this journey of course created a story. It wasn't a true story. And it was so that he succeeded in making people feel sorry for him. Even if he had been the one to initiate the split. They felt sorry for him. They didn't feel sorry for me. I just stayed out of that game. It was one of his specialties really - to manipulate other people and to make other people know my business or not, even years later I came to realize he was still doing that and he wasn't even in the room. He had his little spies placed all over the room. He had after initiating the split at some point suddenly decided he wanted me back and would use this strange campaign of at first trying to boss me, scare me back, use his "authority", power (which he had none of at the time, I wasn't his marionette no more) to then try to speak great words of love and missing me and taking the blame for everything (he had one time too taken the blame, and then told me that it was basically an act, he did not think he had done anything wrong then and I was to be punished for having been "disobedient" I guess, again and again, so I knew from experience even if he was saying nice words to me - what was gonna come sooner or later. I was afraid of him so I got this sort of built in expectation anxiety or what it now is called, each time I went against what he wanted me to do, afraid to be punished, s he would punish me a lot in all sorts of ways while we were together, but people didn't know that of course. if i one time tried to say something to what I thought was my friend that friend immediately jumped to his defense. It was really messing with my brain at the time. I really was questioning my reality, it was as if he and the rest were just gagging up on me and I did not dare to say anything else).

One other example is my current luv. It has us colliding at times. He too had this thing - and may still have it, the future will tell, about what he thinks other people might or might not think about something, and he takes that as more important than if he has hurt my feelings, and take about zero consideration to my feelings. Then again I know him and I know he does not care about all these other people, and if he does care about some bunch of those people he cares in reality more for me. Yet he has done it, again and again. He is very much into that you should adapt and read off the room so you should not do anything that nobody else does, as if it is them to say it is OK or not. Even if you were to just do it and not notice a response either positive or negative it is as if it is still so important to not do that. The psychopath, he was something similar. He would watch people in silence. He was no narcissist - he did not want nor need to be the center of attention. And then both the psychopath knew about himself that even if he could read people there were some things he couldn't and that was what he had me there for, I was suppose to signal something, so he would not take it too far, and one time I deliberately didn't because I wanted that person to see who he really was and honestly because it wasn't my job, and he then got angry with me because of that and said "Why didn't you stop me?!" and I said "Why didn't you stop yourself?". Something similar has been going on with my current luv in the past as he would take things too far, joking, and I would have to like put my hand on his leg or something (sitting next to him) as he clearly could not tell he was taking it far more than acceptable, someone else he was directing these jokes at were getting hurt. He has yelled at me before, the classic being "you're so sensitive!", but at the same time he has understood when I signal something that it's time to stop.

How can it be so different?
So far what I have discovered, and I could be wrong, is that the people who in all honestly, deep down, do not really care that much about other people - they do care a great deal more that these strangers might think (or not). In my book it should be the other way around? Or am I seeing this wrong?