Some coworkers [20's M] and acquaintances [35F] believe I am argumentative. I believe I'm just trying to explain my side of the story and make the conversation fair. Am I argumentative?

I have been that way too, maybe still am. But I have learned to keep my mouth shut and just apologize/address the issue more often instead of explaining. It helps to remember that often, people don't care about the why or how, they care about the result, in which case explaining yourself never helps, and instead it makes it look like you're ignoring the resulting problem. So, try to just apologize and deal with the problem at hand because chances are your reasons don't matter. And it helps to remember it's okay to take responsibility for a problem and apologize even if it wasn't strictly your fault or you were doing your best. If you really need to explain, consider waiting until later after dealing with the problem. Then you look like you genuinely just want them to know you didn't mean any harm instead of not taking responsibility.

/r/relationships Thread Parent