Spite stops meaningul conversations

When a person acts out of spite, it means that person is not interested in having an actual dialogue. They either just want to push their own ideas without listening to you or they've gone into full defensive mode out of emotional impulses or some other reason unrelated to the actual conversation.

Whatever that reason may be, it means the conversation is not a meaningful dialogue anymore and that you should just give up on it since it won't go anywhere anyway. They don't want to hear what you have to say, they just want to counter it. The most common tactic is trying to shutdown the conversation by making you feel inferior.

Yes, there might be some cases when, after through explanation, the other person might start hearing you out again, but it's usually not worth the stress you have to go through until that is finally achieved. So you have to quickly ponder if that argument and/or that person is worth the negativity, the time and effort.

Although the most logical thing to do is to just walk away when someone puts up a spiteful attitude, that can be very hard if the conversation was meaningful up until that point, because you probably wanted to see it through until you could understand why the other person disagreed with you and vice-versa.

How to deal with spite

1. Think about how it's angering and stressing you out and how that will become more intense as the conversation goes on. Usually this is enough to realize how much letting it go outweighs sticking with it.

2. Write them off with your own spiteful attitude and leave them to deal with it. Just leave them hanging. You can be sure they really wanted you to keep replying and they are frustrated that they failed to manpulate you.

3. Just block them or stop the conversation, even if that lets them feel like "they've won". It might make you feel very uncomfortable and it might sit with you for a while, but you can shrug it off by getting busy watching a youtube video or something. Next time, try to identify spite sooner so you are less affected by it and lose less of your time.

4. If you already have experience with them, think about the track record of how spiteful that person is and if they are persistent at it. This will help you decide what you'll do next. The person might be a consistent jerk. Or maybe the person might just get a little emotional sometimes and you could calm them down.

In my personal experience

Last but not least, I guarantee trying the above many times will make it easier. As with everything else, practice makes perfect! It will be that much quicker to walk away from the negativity after each attempt, no matter how late you were previously succesful.