Stop Trying to Win
There is a particular kind of optimism that survives far longer than it probably should. It is the belief that somewhere in the English language exists one perfect combination of words that will finally make a difficult person say, “You know what? I see your point.” So we keep looking for it. We explain more carefully, soften our tone, remove anything that might sound accusatory, add context, provide examples, anticipate objections and occasionally produce something so diplomatic it could probably be used to negotiate a minor international treaty. Then we deliver our masterpiece and discover that, somehow, we are now arguing about our tone.
This can be especially confusing when you are accustomed to relationships in which explanation actually works. Most reasonable people misunderstand one another sometimes. You clarify what you meant, the other person tells you what they heard, somebody admits where things went sideways, and eventually you get somewhere. You may not agree, but at least you're still discussing the same subject. In a chronically high-conflict relationship, however, you can begin with one perfectly manageable issue and find yourself forty minutes later defending your character, your motives and apparently several decisions you made during the Obama administration.
The temptation is to assume you haven't explained yourself well enough. Surely if they understood that you weren't trying to hurt them, they wouldn't be this angry. Surely if they remembered everything you've done for them, they wouldn't call you selfish. Surely if you showed them the text message, they would admit what they said. So you gather more evidence, choose gentler language and try again. But as I discuss in The Narcissist Beside Me, evidence cannot force another person to accept responsibility. You can produce the message and be told you misunderstood it, took it out of context, caused the response or shouldn't have saved the message in the first place.
This is where things can become almost absurd. You say, “I can't come Sunday,” and somehow end up presenting evidence that you are, in fact, a loving daughter. You ask why a deadline was missed and find yourself defending whether you're controlling. You tell someone that a comment hurt you and ten minutes later you're comforting them because they're devastated that you could think they would ever hurt you. The original issue has disappeared so completely that if somebody walked into the room halfway through the conversation, you might need a flowchart to explain how you got there.
One of the most useful things I've learned is to ask a very simple question in the middle of these conversations: What were we originally talking about? That question can be surprisingly revealing. If I raised a concern about money and am now defending whether I'm a good person, something shifted. If I declined a request and am now proving how much I love my family, something shifted. If I asked for an apology and am now apologizing for having asked for one, something definitely shifted. The book's Six-R Protection Method begins with Recognize for precisely this reason: before we can respond differently, we have to notice that the conversation we entered is no longer the conversation we're having.
That doesn't mean the other person's countercomplaint is automatically nonsense. Maybe I do have something to work on. Maybe my tone was unnecessarily sharp. Maybe I handled part of the situation badly. Being willing to examine ourselves is a strength, and I don't particularly want to become the person who learns a few psychological terms and suddenly concludes that every criticism is manipulation. But two things can be true at once. I can have something to answer for without that erasing what the other person did. Fairness does not require responsibility to travel entirely in one direction.
The real shift comes when we stop treating another person's agreement as proof that our decision is legitimate. That can feel almost unnatural if we've spent years overexplaining. We start thinking a boundary isn't quite official until the other person agrees that it is reasonable. A no needs supporting documentation. Privacy needs a defense. An independent decision needs to survive cross-examination. Before long, explanation has quietly turned into an application for approval, and the person most likely to dislike the boundary has somehow been appointed chairman of the committee deciding whether we're allowed to have one.
Sometimes the more useful response is much less satisfying. You say what needs saying. You answer the practical question. You correct an important fact when there is a reason to correct it. You maintain the boundary. And then—and this is the part I personally find irritating—you allow another adult to remain wrong about you. They may think you're selfish. They may think you're unreasonable. They may insist that your motives are something entirely different from what you know them to be. Unless their version creates a practical consequence that needs addressing, you don't necessarily have to chase it down and wrestle it into submission. An unanswered accusation does not magically become true.
There is an important distinction here between disengaging and surrendering. Surrendering means abandoning something important because the pressure became unbearable. Disengaging means realizing that another hour of the same argument is unlikely to produce anything useful. You can stop explaining while keeping the decision. You can stop arguing while preserving the evidence. You can stop defending yourself while maintaining the boundary. The other person may announce that your silence proves they won, but if you continue arguing solely to prove that they didn't, they are still controlling your participation.
This doesn't mean every difficult person is a narcissist, and it certainly doesn't mean every disagreement is manipulation. The book is deliberately careful about that distinction. Narcissistic Personality Disorder requires professional assessment, and people can behave selfishly, defensively or badly without having it. What matters in ordinary life is often less about finding the perfect label and more about noticing the repeated pattern: what happens when you disagree, say no, ask for accountability or make a decision the other person doesn't like?
Maybe the goal, then, isn't to finally discover the sentence that makes another person understand. Maybe it's to become clearer about which conversations deserve another explanation and which ones have already given us the information we need. Some relationships improve through better communication. Others consume enormous amounts of communication without producing better understanding. Learning the difference can return a surprising amount of time, energy and sanity to your life.
And, mercifully, it means you can retire from your unpaid position as attorney for the defense in The People v. Your Entire Personality.
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