I believe most of us (at least on the forums) are defensive listeners.

I try to keep my school life and my family life completely separate. I give them a single piece of information regarding my life and school and they decide to bombard me with questions, I'll post an example. Some questions will have background information in parenthesis regarding the question) >Dad tells grandmother and two aunts regarding Hoosier Boys State >Grandma: "When is that?" Me: "I don't remember, sometime during June." Aunt 1: "Where is it at?" Me: "Trine University." Aunt 1: "Is it going to be fun with the rest of your quiz team?" (First of all, I have told my family multiple times that it's not a damn quiz bowl team, it's called an Academic Decathlon team, huge difference. it frustrates me each time they do this.) Me: "The team has nothing to do with this" >Grandma: "What's it about" Me: "Politics and stuff" >Aunt 2: "Is the band going to go? (I seriously can't believe that my aunt is stupid enough to believe that it's possible for the entire school band is going to go to a special non-music related event just because one member was selected) Me: "No" They continue bombarding me with questions until I make this statement: Me: "Listen, so far I've only been NOMINATED. I don't know much about this thing, I'm not even selected yet. As soon as I know stuff about this, I'll tell you guys, but right now I know nothing." Then they ask a couple more questions and I end up repeated myself. It's really frustrating and I'm trying not to raise my voice. Then my dad accuses me of being rude because I'm trying to stop them from asking questions rife with misconceptions that I don't know the answer to and because it's really none of their business. Then for the next week or so my dad will constantly remind me that I need to stop being rude to my family even though they were the ones trying to get their noses into my private life despite repeated requests for them to stop. ... This was more of a rant then a reaction to the OP. But yeah, I do feel threatened whenever they ask me any question regarding my non-family life because it's damn frustrating and it's a lose-lose situation regardless of whether I answer the questions or not. It's going to be glorious when I'm in college and away from them.