She needed to be right. I suggested we agree to disagree.
She needed the last word. I wished her well.
Reading this now, you may immediately see my mistake. I was slower to catch on.
Incidents like this tended to surface first as an asking: Do you think I’ve made that mistake enough times and could move on to a new and different mistake?
That question always gets taken seriously; awareness of a pattern is a good first step, after all.
The answer to this question also followed a pattern: Well, if you’re sure you want to end that repetition, buckle up.
Because we weren’t yet at the bottom of the pile. My People Picker had been feeling broken for a while. It was my unresolved childhood need to feel loved, fit in, and belong overpowering my good sense and pure motives, causing a loop of similar mistakes.
That can sneak up on you. The story you’re about to hear was about to make an unmissable case-in-point.
My People Picker was Feeling Broken. Again.
It started as a chat with a new acquaintance. We didn’t know each other, but apparently the algorithm thought we should. I had started reading her posts. Her work – activating our energy as it related to our goals – was fascinating. I was curious how that might mesh with addressing the old emotions that shape our stories, the ones that seem to run our lives from the background like computer programming. Or maybe a computer virus.
The conversation was clipping along. We were in that getting-to-know-each-other stage – feeling out common ground, trading a little bit of ourselves at a time. We were planning to get together on zoom, then one of her posts stopped me cold. The topic isn’t important. But the energy? The emotion? They weren’t matching up with the conversation, and the disconnect was significant enough to get my full attention.
The emotion and energy of this post was sharp, angry, critical, cutting. It was aimed at people who saw things differently than she did, and I was about to trust her with something that had been giving me energetic and emotional heartburn for many years.
In the past, I would likely have dismissed my uncomfortable feeling, slipped back into people-pleasing, and forged ahead.
This time, I asked. Not about the topic. I was far more curious about the energy and emotion.
That distinction is important for what came next.
Do you remember the scene from Sleepless in Seattle when Meg Ryan tells her movie brother, David Hyde Pierce, that she feels crazy because of the fast and intense connection she feels to Sam (Tom Hanks) even though she only knows him from a radio show? She wonders if he is her destiny. Her brother deadpans a cynical, psychological response: “When you’re attracted to someone, it just means your subconscious is attracted to their subconscious, subconsciously. So what we think of as fate is just two neuroses knowing they’re a perfect match.”
It’s the equivalent of meeting someone in a bar and feeling an instant connection, then assuming that attraction has real substance and trying to build a relationship.
Hold this picture because that’s how this conversation was beginning to feel.
What came back wasn’t a response and definitely wasn’t conversation. It was a verdict. A lecture on the stupidity of anyone who might disagree with her position aimed directly at me who had not said a word about her topic.
“My apologies if I was unclear. Your stance on (the topic) is your prerogative, but I am curious about the energy and emotion.”
The next message escalated from lecture to rant. It was much longer and packed with wild accusations. It was still about people who disagreed with her stance on the topic. That still wasn’t me. My heart was pounding. My chest was heaving. It felt like a panic attack. I told myself to sleep on it, but it felt more like procrastination in dress-up clothes.
The next morning, the string of messages had multiplied, each more vitriolic than the one before. The temptation to push back point by repetitive point was strong. Instead, I ranted into my journal, giving my feelings voice privately instead of in the conversation. (Patting myself on the back for practicing what I preach.)
Getting attacked feels awful and this was going nowhere. I suggested we agree to disagree. It didn’t go well. I kept procrastinating, didn’t respond, and sort of slid into sleeping on it again.
You’ve probably figured out the pattern by now. I had figured out the part about every word getting answered with the next rant, but still hadn’t made the full connection.
The next morning, Rant 4 (or was it 7?) was waiting. I read the first sentence, quickly scrolled to the bottom, and wished her all the best.
I felt proud of myself for not taking it all in and taking the “high road.” You know what came next.
She still doesn’t know my thoughts on her topic and never will now. It seemed like she couldn’t grasp the idea that her topic never mattered. She built an entire case against me out of a position she assumed I held, and not once did she stop to see if it was true.
I’ve wondered if she’d already taken some heat from someone else, and I happened to be standing in the blast zone. I’ll never know that either. What I do know is this: the woman who reads energy for a living never once read the actual moment in front of her.
So How Was My People Picker Feeling?
By this point, my people picker was waking up, once again like Briar Rose waking from her 100-year sleep. Turns out it was never broken. That instinct for sensing who’s safe and who isn’t was waiting for my kiss of trust. Instead, I had been doing a fine job of ignoring it in my desperate need to earn love, get picked, belong.
What finally got my attention was how revealing something tender became fuel, added straight to the pile of everything supposedly wrong with me. It was quite a list. Curiously absent from it: her choice to escalate a conversation about a social media post into a referendum on my character.
The Story I Almost Believed
Here’s what I know now: people who need to have the last word aren’t chasing “closure.” They’re chasing your surrender. Any next word, even wishing them well, is denying them the capiulation they need. It’s not enough to agree to disagree and move on. They need you to admit you were wrong and they were right. (If your own story of wanting closure includes needing their admission of guilt, then perhaps you needed to become aware of both sides of this story, too.)
I’ll confess that I’ve felt the siren song of wanting to have the last word. Of course, mine would have been generous. Magnanimous. Forgiving, even. Please tell me you’ve had overly-lofty moments like that, too.
In this case, in the spaces between the messages, my panic triggering, and my silence, I’d started building a story of my own. The facts were simple and stayed the same: I’d asked one genuine question, she’d responded with a sharp non sequitur, and the conversation went off the rails from there.
The story I almost believed was different. It said my hesitation to respond meant something was wrong with me. That my People Picker – the part of me that reads who’s safe – had failed. That I was somehow the problem in a conversation I hadn’t started and couldn’t have predicted.
Turns out my procrastination wasn’t avoidance at all. Disengaging meant providing space and grace for essential information. My People Picker had been working exactly as it should, gently but firmly steering me away from a conversation I already sensed wasn’t safe. Nothing about it was broken. I’d just been too busy being “polite” and scared to listen to it.
I’d been so focused on doing the Good Girl thing – responding promptly, staying gracious, not making waves – that I nearly missed what my own intuition had been telling me from the very first message.
Have you ever accused your own People Picker of being broken and blamed it for procrastination, overthinking, being difficult, or falling for the same old “bad” relationships, all on repeat?
What if it was paying attention on your behalf all along?