The thing with someone who can never acknowledge they were wrong, or behaved hurtfully, is that it comes from a terrible insecurity. We all have insecurities, it is part of the human condition to wonder and compare yourself to an ideal you have of how you should be able to act in the world. People who can’t be wrong live in a different world than the rest of us fallible earthlings.

If you admit you’ve hurt somebody, it makes you a bad person, in their crabbed, black and white worldview. People who hurt others are bad, they need to be perfect, so it is impossible that they could have hurt someone without a very good reason. That reason is always the same: “that person who claims I hurt them, that liar, actually hurt me, really, really badly. I am the victim, not them! How dare that morbidly oversensitive defective attack my perfection, and expect me not to react!”

“I was only reacting, like any normal person would, reflexes got the best of me. You made me shoot you in the gut, because I was rightfully afraid you were going to attack me. You didn’t see that terrifying look on your face, I had to stand my ground. Everyone has a right to self-defense, that’s all I was doing when I shot you a few more times just to make sure you couldn’t get up and beat the living crap out of me, pistol whip me with my own gun. Don’t pretend that’s not exactly what you were thinking as you were lying there, fake bleeding!”

In my personal life I’ve recently experienced this insecurity on steroids, in my face so constantly I had to grapple with the underlying principle of how these emotionally driven motherfuckers truly believe they are acting righteously. Coming from a loved one, someone you’ve long trusted, it really fucks with your mind. A person who is sometimes wrong, who apologizes from time to time, cannot understand that for someone with crippling insecurity these simple human acts are impossible. The logic is not hard to understand, once you grasp the basic principle.

I am so insecure that any criticism or complaint against me is a deadly attack. I cannot be wrong, because everyone loves and respects me. I am an exemplary person. I will not be attacked by people with mental problems. You are insane if you don’t understand that you are wrong and I am right, no matter what.

You can’t reason with these good folks, they are beyond the reach of introspection, empathy or the ability to see nuance or take responsibility for the harm we all sometimes do to others. All they see is deadly threat, competition to the death and victory. Once you realize this about them, how paralyzed they are by insecurity and anger (which hardens immediately into implacable rage) during even the most minor conflict, the only thing you can do to preserve your integrity (and what’s left of your sanity) is follow the advice of the second best fortune cookie I ever opened:

The best throw of the dice is to throw them away.