If you want to heal a conflict with a loved one, you need to listen to everything they need to say and consider it carefully, without getting defensive or angry. This tricky process requires talking about harmful patterns in the past, behaviors on both sides that led to the conflict. No one (even fucking historical revisionists) can change the past, of course, but with the desire to heal a valued relationship we can safeguard each other’s feelings going forward — once we know best what the other person needs. We can only do this if we honestly hear what has caused the other person pain, learned our role in causing the other discomfort and anger, and both parties make merciful adjustments in the days ahead.

The need to win is much easier. All you have to do is assign blame. One side is right, the other side is 100% wrong. One side is moral, human, good, and perfectly justified in their anger, the other is wicked, inhuman, willfully hurtful and eternally, unforgivably unforgiving. Life, to a winner, is about convincing allies to support you in a war to the death. Do this repeatedly and you win. If you live in a culture of Narcissism, such as hyper-competitive America 2023, you are seen as a winner every time you righteously smite a hated enemy, no matter how many lies you must tell in order to “win”.

The reservoir of pain each of us carries inside ranges from a gigantic sea in a traumatized person to a fairly small pond in someone who was supported and treated lovingly in their formative years. We each maintain a wall that protects us from this pain in a variety of ways, some healthy, some harmful. Take a wrecking ball to someone’s wall and repeatedly smash that dam and you create a flood of pain that will sometimes drown a hated enemy. If there is something praiseworthy in doing this, I can’t think of it. Outside of being an undefeated winner in the psycho sweepstakes.