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Message: <blockquote data-quote="takyris" data-source="post: 1804593" data-attributes="member: 5171">Bummer.  S'not a pretty picture.  But glad I could emote. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Yep.  People who compromise and try to see both sides and understand that someone is just lashing out because they have issues and are scared and lonely end up taking a lot of grief from people willing to abuse that.  This is an unfortunate fact of life.  If you're willing to compromise and someone else isn't, then at best, you end up 75/25 in their direction.  I wouldn't turn off my empathy if I could, but I do sometimes have to stand up for myself.The way to stand up to these people and tell them to knock it off is, I think, kind of like the way I plan to spank my kid -- not until you're sure it's the only way to successfully resolve the situation, not as an instant reaction, and never in anger.  Make sure you've thought about it.  Make sure you've considered the options.  And then do what you have to do to protect your own emotions without regret.And yeah, it's very possible that this well send them into a spiraling fugue of self-destructive depression.  But if getting called on being a jerk in your weekly roleplaying game sends you into a spiraling fugue of self-destructive depression, you were pretty much headed that way somehow regardless.  Something was going to set you off -- waiting in line at the DMV, hold music, your cereal getting stale because you forgot to fold the plastic inside packaging down, something.  If you do it without malice toward him, hopefully it will serve not as a reinforcement for his "My life sucks, I only receive positive feedback when I tell everyone how much they have hurt me" behavior, but as a kick in the butt to move him in the right direction.</blockquote>

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