A few days ago, a friend was telling me why this one aspect of a tv show sucked, and he left no space for me to interject until he said all his opinions about the subject.
I didn’t really find that weird, but then he clarified that he’s tired of me always arguing against his points whenever he shares a negative opinion, implying that I disrupt conversations and force him to spend more time arguing about it.
This might make him seem rude on the surface, but coming to think of it, I do sometimes argue in favor of things I don’t even care about that much, and maybe my other friends just accepted this one dumb reflex I have in conversations and learned to ignore it. This is a fairly recent friendship though, and this guy clearly appreciates what I have to say and considers all of it… Which might be why those comments that suddenly derail conversations are really annoying.
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I have a friend who does this and it’s very annoying.
Yeah I stopped being the devil’s advocate cause people really hate when you disagree with them, that’s where you risk losing most friendships imo. Some battles aren’t worth fighting for.
Because instead of listening to what your friend has to say you’re telling them why their opinion is wrong. Listening and agreeing are two different things. They might not care if you agree or not but not hearing them out before including your own opinion is annoying because
A) you didn’t let them finish speaking, which implies not listening
B) instead of exploring why else they don’t like something or what’s frustrating, you might be coming off as pushy. “oh you don’t like chocolate? It’s so good tho and so affordable, you should really just like it”. Idk if that’s how it’s going down but that’s just an example.
If you want to add your opinion after your friend is done speaking you can say “I can see why you think that, I saw it more like this, what do you think?”
It’s about remaining neutral with your words and not turning a discussion into an argument.
I never understood people that like playing devils advocate, you’re just turning a discussion into an argument and not everyone wants to have a debate they just wanna talk about stuff even if they have negative opinions. You can even say,” I notice that you tend to have a skeptical opinion about stuff, do you know why that is?”
Even that can encourage your friend to change their perspective. Or if they’re a new friend, I would observe their behaviour and opinions over time. The negativity can be an insight to something deeper and you might find out that you don’t like this person after all.
One of the keys to good conversation is to get down on someone’s level. Friend is ranting about how ugly crocs are while you’re wearing crocs? Well, let them hash it out, see where they developed that opinion from and stand confident in yourself and say, yeah I can see why they can be ugly, but for me they grew on me over time and now I love wearing them as slippers. If your friend is a good friend they’ll be happy for you.
What I am seeing in what you wrote is that you may not actually care about the thing you’re arguing for. I say that because you, in this example, do not appear to be arguing facts but opinons.
Someone’s opinion factually *can not* be “wrong.” It can be ill-informed, it can be stupid, it can be mean, it can be any of those. But an opinion has nothing to do with a factual basis and is entirely the matter of the person holding it.
For example, you are of the opinion that you may be starting arguments in bad faith more than you actually want to, but don’t really feel like it because arguing is a normative behavior for you.
So. How often do facts come up in your discussions, and how often do you ever come to consensus with who you are arguing against? If never, then yeah, you may be exhibiting contrarian behavior IE calling someone wrong because it is something for your brain to do.
I used to do this and I ended up losing friends over it. It was how I learned how to interact with the world from watching my classmates growing up in school. But it never actually made sense to me. I was exhibiting that behavior because of habit, not design or desire. I was under the impression that everyone did it – so why were people getting mad at me? They argue all the time! Why am I different!?
“Because you’re being an asshole, Portobox. That’s why. Your friend said they weren’t fond of dinner the other night because they didn’t feel the quality of their food was up to snuff. That’s not a thing to argue over. You can’t be “Right” about someone’s feelings being wrong in their own mind.”
Discretion is the better part of valor. Would you rather be Right, always? Or have friends with differing opinions from your own?
The choice is yours. They are just as much allowed to think and feel as yourself, even if you don’t agree with them.