What I wanted to say after an hour of splitting wood

[greenstorm]

You're right, brother, I can't be curious about it now because it's a sensitive subject for me. Thanks for understanding; it sounds important to you so hopefully someday we'll be able to talk more about it.

What I'll actually say

*crickets*

_______________

The whole exchange is super interesting, though, in hindsight. It has a lot of the classic patterns I've had to change in myself in order to be a good partner:

-Wanting to engage with someone but making repeated provocative statements about the subject instead of being forthright (This is what this dude says about the charter of rights and freedoms! But no statement about what he thinks about it)

-Taking someone's stated boundary personally

-Finding someone who's at fault when emotions are in play

-When feeling personally rejected or misunderstood, making it about something the other person did wrong

-Never acknowledge weakness or vulnerable emotion (this is huge)

-Invalidate the person's boundary ("I didn't state my position so how do you know what I was going to say")

-Ideally phrase everything in a clever and mean way that shuts the conversation down ("thanks for not asking!")

-Never be curious.

Then the flipside behaviours, that go hand-in-hand:

-Don't explicitly set boundaries, just try to ignore and elide and distract

-Never challenge or contradict

-Especially it's not ok for people to hold opposing points of view, but if you're going to try you'd better have a ton of references and peer reviewed studies

-Vulnerability is still dangerous

-Just because something hurts you, that isn't a good enough reason to ask someone not to do it