You don’t have to buy in to every fight. You don’t have to correct every person you disagree with. You don’t have to educate everyone that you see is wrong. You can just NOT. You can just refuse to engage. You can just continue to disagree and not make it the central feature of your interaction. You can choose to let people be wrong and let them figure it out for themselves. Turns out most of the time, the less-is-more approach tends to build better and healthier interactions.

In my divorce practice a lot of people bring in videos of a fight they’ve had with their significant other or during an exchange of the children or some screenshots of social media or texts arguing back and forth. Most of the time they feel this is “gotcha” evidence that will show a judge just how terrible the other side is. But invariably my client or PC is just as terrible. They are being just as snarky in the text conversation or they are fighting back and making a scene in front of the children in the video or, even worse, they’re letting the other side scream and be awful to the children in the video while they just sit and record it all rather than being a parent first.

The opposite of love is not hate. That kind of arguing and fighting shows that you still care. It shows passion. The opposite of love is apathy. You disengage. You stop caring. You stop buying in. When a relationship is done, you stop caring. You stop engaging, you stop fighting because it takes two to fight and you’re not here for it.

Be silent. Not because you don’t have things to say, but because this situation doesn’t rise high enough on the scale of things that matter to you. This situation doesn’t get a share of your limited energy. They only matter if you let them and you’re done letting this person or situation matter. They can make the narrative or story whatever they want because they don’t matter to you anymore.

When I was young the common teaching was to just walk away from a bully. You walk away, you ignore them, you don’t let them ruffle your feathers. It mostly worked. People that wish ill on you, are doing it for themselves. They want the attention, they want the validation, they want to matter. When you refuse to give them that and refuse to let them impact your life, you steal their power.

Disengaging is the worst nightmare to a person that attacks you for the validation it brings them. They need to matter, they need to fight with you, they need you to care enough to fight back. You refusing to give them that? That’s the power.

Your silence is your power. Your disengaging is your weapon. Your refusal to be treated in certain ways and disengaging from those that won’t abide by that requirement is your secret to future happiness. Draw that boundary. Refuse to engage with people that won’t honor it. Be ready for the consequences of the people you may lose. But the people you keep and the people you gather will be people that treat you well and who will not use your relationship as a weapon.

Hold out for those people. The ones that restore you. They’re out there.