Sometimes people want to hand you the end of a rope so you can play tug of war with them. They know just the buttons to push. They pick on the things important to you, they pick on the things they know that will elicit a response. They want your attention, they want you to tug the rope.

They shift blame onto you and they project their own bad feelings about themselves (feelings they’re not even necessarily aware of; feelings they’ve worked really hard to numb, to hide, to forget, to drown) and they throw them onto you.

Some people will forever see themselves as the victim of the consequences you give them for their own behavior but they will never acknowledge or be accountable for their behavior; they will only acknowledge themselves as the victim of your consequence. Relationships with these people are not relationships with another person, they are relationships with another person’s ego.

You want to justify, to argue, to defend, to explain. You want to believe it’s simply an issue of misunderstanding. You think* you can save them.

The narrative of some rests on not seeing the reality of others. No matter how much evidence you have, no matter how clear your argument is, no matter how many people can validate your experience, it will never get through a wall that has no door. The person barricaded on the other side has to protect their ego.

They want to kick you when you’re down. I’d even go so far as to say that they wait until you’re down and then they throw you a rope they want you to tug; So they can be reminded they’re alive, important, and powerful enough to penetrate your thoughts, to take up real estate in your head. They feel entitled to space and they take up a lot of it to feel big, powerful.

They use statements like “we both know ____” and you now know that any statement that follows “we both know” is a form of gaslighting. Of emotional abuse.

Sometimes not taking the bait is the most loving thing you can do for yourself.

Choose you.

Note to self: Never justify, argue, defend, or explain anything, ever, to someone whose own reality is dependent on not seeing yours. No response is a response and sometimes it’s the most loving action you can take.

*You can’t.