We spend a lot of time thinking about the difficult people in our lives—the friend who can't take feedback, the partner who always has to be right, the coworker who turns everything into a fight. But there's a question most of us are slower to ask: What if, at least some of the time, that person is us?
“We’re all the difficult one," says Jefferson Fisher, a Texas-based lawyer and author of The Next Conversation: Argue Less, Talk More. “Every one of us.” The hard part isn't accepting that in theory, he adds: It's learning to spot it in the moment.
We asked experts to break down the signs that you might be contributing to the conflict in your life more than you think.
You reach for “always” and “never”
In the heat of an argument, it’s tempting to go big: You always do this. You never listen. But leaning on absolutes is one of the surest ways to derail a conversation. “Hands down, what will most often contribute to problems is using the extremes,” Fisher says. “All you’ve done is add another argument about whether you always or never do it.”
In other words, the moment you deploy an absolute, the original issue gets buried. “It becomes a question of who can remember the most,” Fisher says. “It becomes a timeline—and now you’re not really addressing the main question.”
Couples therapist Atalie Abramovici sees the same pattern in her Los Angeles practice. Absolutes tend to make the other person feel generalized or misrepresented, she says, which puts them immediately on the defensive. Focusing on specific, fact-based scenarios, she adds, gives both people a clearer roadmap for actually resolving things.
You attack who they are, not what they did
One of the most damning mistakes people make during arguments is conflating identity with behavior. Think: “You’re a horrible person!” “You’re so selfish.” “You’re just like your mother.” “You never change!” “You’re a liar!”
“We as humans tend to become immediately defensive when we feel like our identity is attacked,” Abramovici says.
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It’s more effective to focus on how a specific behavior made you feel. For example: “I feel dismissed when you walk away,” “I feel overwhelmed when I’m handling everything on my own,” or “I feel hurt when you interrupt me.” As Abramovici puts it: “You can’t really argue with somebody's emotion or felt experience,” which helps keep the focus on resolution rather than blame.
You keep score
Scorekeeping turns intimacy into accounting. “Nobody wins if you're trying to be right,” Abramovici says. “It’s so important to have a sense of team and to feel like it’s you and me against the problem.”
People tend to keep score—or tally grievances—when they feel unseen or under-appreciated, she adds. If you’re arguing over the fact that you do the dishes more often than your partner, for example, the root of the problem probably transcends dirty mugs and crusty pans and has more to do with the level of effort you feel you’re both putting into the relationship, Abramovici says. That’s why it’s important to learn to recognize this pattern and, when you catch yourself doing it, ask yourself exactly what you need in the moment.
People walk on eggshells around you
This one can be hard to spot, because it shows up in what people don’t do. They may not invite you to things as often, for example, or bring up certain topics. They’ll choose their words with unusual care, bracing for a reaction that may or may not come. “They feel like they have to be really careful so you don’t set off about something,” Fisher says. “They’re always afraid you’re going to interpret it the wrong way.”
If you’ve noticed you’re being included or sought out less or that conversations around you tend to feel oddly careful, it’s worth sitting with why. The people closest to us often have information about our patterns that we aren’t able to see, Fisher says.
There's always drama in your life
Everyone goes through rough patches, but if conflict seems to follow you from relationship to relationship—with friends, family, coworkers, partners—it’s a good idea to explore why that is. "Maybe you're the common denominator," Fisher says. It's an uncomfortable question, but an important one: If there's always drama around, and you’re at the center of it, is it possible you're drawn to it?
Some people seek out conflict, Fisher adds, even unconsciously, because the intensity of it fills an emotional void that healthier outlets aren't meeting. That doesn't make someone a bad person—but it can make them harder to be around, and recognizing the pattern is the first step to breaking it.
You hold yourself to a different standard than everyone else
Here’s a telling exercise: Think about the last time you were late to something. You probably had a perfectly good reason. Now think about the last time someone else was late. Did you extend them the same grace? If the answer is no, that’s a double standard, Fisher says: a tendency to rationalize your own behavior while judging others for the exact same thing.
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“‘It's very easy to say, 'I ran into traffic, so I'm late—everybody should forgive me,’” he says. “But if somebody else is five minutes late, you think, 'Well, they don't care, they're lazy.’” It happens in bigger moments, too: the way we explain away our own sharp tone in an argument, then bristle when someone else is equally harsh. If you notice you're quicker to excuse yourself than others, that gap is worth confronting.
Your anger outlasts your clarity
Everyone loses their cool sometimes. But Fisher draws an important distinction between people who get heated and then return to baseline—and those who stay in that heightened state long after the moment has passed. “If your anger lasts longer than your clarity,” he says, “that’s a sign.”
Festering in a state of fury tends to narrow our perspective to a single point of view: our own. Fisher notes that people who struggle most in conflict "usually only see their side of the problem—that's it." Those who navigate it better, he says, can hold both perspectives at once, acknowledging what they contributed to the situation alongside the other person’s role. It's a small but meaningful shift, and it starts with being honest about how long you're staying in the heat after the fire should have died down, he says.
Your defensiveness is running the show
Of all the ways we contribute to conflict without realizing it, defensiveness may be the most universal—and insidious. “Defensiveness is the archenemy of listening and connection,” says psychologist Harriet Lerner, author of The Dance of Anger: A Woman’s Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships. “It keeps us stuck in fighting, complaining, and blaming that goes nowhere.”
The tricky part is that defensiveness rarely feels like defensiveness in the moment. Instead, it feels like self-protection or setting the record straight. Lerner describes it as that immediate, knee-jerk “but—but—but” response that kicks in the moment someone criticizes us. When we’re in defense mode, she says, we automatically scan the other person’s words for inaccuracies, exaggerations, and distortions—not to understand them, but to build our rebuttal. “We listen for the errors so we can refute them, make our case, and remind the other party of their wrongdoings,” she says.
As defensiveness rises, Lerner adds, we're also more likely to reach for what she calls below-the-belt tactics: lecturing, diagnosing, preaching, shaming, blaming, name-calling, stonewalling—all of which escalate conflict rather than resolve it.
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The first step is simply to name what’s happening: to notice when your nervous system has shifted into that tense, on-guard state where real listening becomes impossible. From there, the goal isn't to suppress your defense entirely, Lerner says—it's to set it aside long enough to actually hear what the other person needs you to understand. And when you do, don't underestimate the power of a genuine apology. "You can apologize for the part you can agree with, even if it's only 2%," she says. Failing to take any accountability, Lerner notes, is itself a form of escalation. You can always make your case after. “If only our wish to understand the other person were as great as our wish to be understood,” she says.
