There’s a specific kind of emotional fatigue that comes up after a conversation where you were never really heard.
Where you spoke, but your words bounced off a wall of someone else’s self-importance.
Where presence was absent. Where connection was replaced by performance.
These are discussions with people who listen to respond, not to understand.
And you know these ones - you can see it in their eyes, even mid-sentence.
While you're opening your heart, they’re already rehearsing their rebuttal. While you're offering vulnerability, they’re reaching for a punchline, a pronouncement, a platitude, or a pat on their own back.
They speak in declarations and dismissals. Exchanges with them don’t feel like shared space, but like stages they’ve hijacked.
What they say is always more important.
What you say is always misunderstood, minimized, or maneuvered into a segue back to them.
And if you’re especially unlucky, you care a whole lot about this person.
The Anatomy of a One-Up
These individuals are often dominated by two seemingly contradictory traits: enormous ego and fragile self-worth. They are driven by deep-seeded psychological demands to be the smartest, the most informed, the most interesting, the most right.
But it’s all camouflage. Beneath the surface lies a raging insecurity they haven’t named and probably don’t even recognize.
This isn’t just annoying; it’s damaging. Especially in close, intimate relationships - the pattern of constantly being talked over, corrected, or condescended to can wear down your sense of value in the relationship.
Over time, you find yourself sharing less. Saying less. Offering less.
Because what is the point?
The Tactics of Disconnection
In these interactions, there’s typically a pretty predictable repertoire:
Condescending laughter: the kind that says, “You poor thing, you really don’t get it.”
Flippant responses: quick retorts that signal boredom or disdain.
Unsolicited advice: not offered with care, but with superiority.
Judgments disguised as concern: “I just worry you’re not thinking this through.”
Proclamations: dramatic, absolute statements that shut down dialogue rather than invite it.
You begin to notice that your voice no longer belongs in the room. Not because you lost it, but because it is constantly muted.
You start editing yourself in real time, not for clarity but for survival.
You weigh every word, anticipating the interruption, the correction, the smirk. Eventually, the conversations stop being spaces you enter fully and become something you endure quietly.
And when you walk away? You feel disheartened, disregarded, disparaged.
Why This Hurts So Much More Sometimes
If this person is a colleague or an acquaintance, managing expectations and navigating the relational landscape isn’t too tricky - you easily distance yourself.
But if it’s a parent, a partner, a child, a sibling, or a close friend, the stakes are higher.
You want to be understood by them. You want to feel safe with them. You want to be met.
So, when they consistently miss the mark, not because they’re incapable, but because they’re unrelentingly unwilling or unable to meet you where you’re at, it wears and tears. It creates an inaudible ache, a particular sort of relational erosion.
Over time, it teaches you to expect less - not because you want to, but because you’ve learned you must.
What’s Really Going On…
The scarcity of self-worth is overcompensated with an inflated sense of certainty that all too often comes off as bravado.
They don’t know how to sit in ambiguity or admit they don’t have the answer.
They don’t know how to offer presence without performance.
They frequently storm off their own stage with tantrum-like indignity.
Somewhere along the way, they acquired an understanding that their value came from being right, being impressive, or being in control.
Empathy, in their world, is a risk. It requires stepping outside of themselves, and they’re often not ready or equipped to do that.
So instead, they “listen” with a shield up and a script ready.
How to Protect Your Peace Without Playing Their Game
You can’t change these people, but you can change how you engage - not to punish or provoke, but to preserve your peace and reclaim your power.
1. Stop Seeking Emotional Bread from an Empty Bakery
You keep going back to them for empathy, understanding, or support and every time, you leave starving. At some point, the onus is on you to stop expecting emotional nourishment from someone who simply cannot provide it.
It’s not personal. It’s their limitation, not your lack.
2. Don’t Explain Yourself to Be Understood
If you find yourself over-explaining or trying to say it just right so they won’t twist your words - pause.
You’re not responsible for decoding yourself to someone committed to misunderstanding/undermining you.
Speak your truth simply. Let go of their reaction.
3. Use Clear Boundaries, Not Covert Hints
Trying to subtly shift their behaviour with passive cues won’t work. Be unabashedly concise about your needs.
As in: “When I’m sharing something important, I’m not looking for advice. I just want someone to sit with me in it.”
Whether they can meet that is up to them, but at least you’ve named it.
4. Limit Vulnerability with Perilous People
Just because you love them doesn’t mean they’ve earned front-row seats to the entirety of your inner life. Love does not require total transparency - it requires knowing who can hold what.
You can be full-in with someone and still decide they’re not the right person to be by your side in certain circumstances.
They likely won’t be on your side either.
5. Resist the Lure to One-Up Back
This is crucial. It’s tempting to mirror their energy - to prove you know better, to interrupt, to push back, to win. But when you do, you join the same ego spiral.
Stay grounded in your intention to connect. Lead by example - even if they never follow.
Lastly, Grieve What You Wish the Relationship Could Be
This is the hardest part. If this person happens to live in a sacred corner of your heart, you likely have an internal aspiration of what the relationship could be. And every disappointing conversation reignites that longing.
Grieve it. Mourn the closeness you hoped for. Accept what is - not with bitterness, but with bright intention and affirmed resignation.
This grief is not weakness: it’s a form of release. It’s a way to stop trying to excavate gold from a quarry of nothing.
Your worth is not diminished by someone else’s inability to hear you.
You don’t need to be louder, sharper, or more convincing to be deserving of understanding. You just need to be you.
Offer your words where they can land, take root, and grow.
Not every person deserves your full voice.
But that doesn’t mean your voice is any less valuable.
Speak anyway.
Just be wise about where and with whom.