Are You Being Pugnacious?

You said something to him, and you saw a change in his facial expression and body language.  He did not agree and was about to react to your statement with an argument against you.  So, what do you do?  Some people are pugnacious, that is, eager or quick to argue, quarrel or fight.  How do you defuse a pugnacious person and not react to the escalated emotion? Or maybe you are the one who is quick to argue and it seems you are always upset and quarreling with someone.

Some people are reactive and believe everyone is out to get them so you need to be quick to defend and not let another person get the upper hand.  Pause for a moment, has arguing, raising your voice, getting angry and being upset at another person ever solved the issue?  When a person argues, you just want the other person to stop talking and accept your point of view.  You do not want to listen.  You just want the other person to admit you are right and they are wrong.

The world is reactive and social media continues to feed into accepting that it is the right way to deal with something that does not fit your view.  When you react quickly, you are responding only emotionally without thought or consideration of the other person.  You treat them as if they do not matter to you.  You become the center and most important.

When you are pugnacious, you like hearing yourself speak and controlling the environment.  You call attention to yourself believing the louder you are, the more others will listen and accept that you are right.  Some people like to argue just to argue wanting to confuse others and it becomes just a game.  Fighting with words tears down another person and makes you appear not to care about anybody except yourself.

People fight with words to protect themselves from not dealing with what is really going on inside of themselves.  It is placing the blame for everything onto someone else so you do not have to look at how you are behaving.  Being pugnacious takes away another person’s self-esteem and worth.  The one yelling and arguing uses words that tear down, diminish worth and tells the person there is no value in them.

How do you turn this around and not argue, fight with words and degrade others?  The opposite of being pugnacious is being friendly, agreeable, amiable, non-combative with an easy-going temperament. So how about a balance between the two extremes?  To start changing is to choose to listen before reacting.  Slow yourself down.  Take a deep breath.  Evaluate the situation.  What is really going on and ask questions instead of yelling and being angry.  You may need to take a walk or at least walk away for a moment to prevent yourself from fighting and arguing.  

It is also accepting that fighting and arguing does not solve anything.  In reality, it makes the situation worse.  You just make another person angry, resentful or shut down.  Each person is entitled to his/her own opinion, and it is not your responsibility to change their view to your view.  It is a willingness to listen and even agree to disagree.  You may need to ask yourself why you believe you are always right.  Do you care about how you treat others?

It is changing a behavior of being reactive and arguing and fighting to listening more, slowing yourself down and paying attention to what is really going on around you.

Elaine’s website – www.livinginthedifferent.com – has her blogs, columns and books.

Elaine J. Sturtz

Living In The Different