This again? How interesting...!

It's late so I'm going to try to keep it short. But I've got an argument going on with someone at work. (This is related to the last two trips I've made. He's in a different office) I've been saying "You've got a gap here and should fix it." He's replying with everything but — which means he's spending way more effort to prove he doesn't have to do anything than it would take just to deal with it. That doesn't apply in this case! Show me chapter and verse in the company directives that proves we have to do this. And so on. 

Dude, just fix it. It would be way easier.

But this evening as I drove home I suddenly saw two things. First, the reason he is stonewalling me so crazily is that he's afraid ... of what, I don't know, but that has to be it. And second, this is exactly the dynamic I used to have with Wife, where she was so outrageously terrified all the time that I could say one thing and she'd hear something totally different. And I could never persuade her to put down her guard long enough to see that I wasn't attacking her. And so she could never actually hear anything I said.

It's fascinating to me that this is the exact same phenomenon. And so I wonder, ... did I learn anything back then? Did I learn anything I can use today to help make this better? Or am I doomed to repeat the same pointless, stupid cycle because I never learned how to break out of it?

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