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[NullForceOmega]

Okay, good data there, I can see how a face to face approach would be more difficult for you, a mixed approach might have some potency here if he is as you assert already used to you communicating more effectively in writing.  If you limit the written portion of the communication to expressing the problem and hard data then built the face to face portion on a conversation stemming from that, you could possibly overcome some of the larger problems you have regarding direct speech.  If you can count on him to listen to your request for emotional consideration then it may ease a direct approach further.  Just try to focus on hard data, it is your friend when dealing with an absolutist.  (Gods I sound like  damn machine, even to myself.)  I hope that in spite of coming across as a soulless machine that this can help you, I don't like to see people hurt over misunderstandings.

[Neonivek]

Honestly my opinion is more...

You need to know him better then these artificial details.

For example you say Black and White... Well you also described a perfectionist, there is no point in doing something unless you do it right.

If you want to explain things to him you need to think on his terms and translate your terms into his line of thinking.

---

I think what you need is a language.

It is impossible for me to really say anything since I don't know him.

Yet I think the best place to start is just to assume everything he says is 100% intentional and 100% correct.

And everything you say is 100% intentional and 100% correct.

Then translate how the difference exists.

Though he sounds like people don't often get him. He is rather defensive of his views, though likely in a way he doesn't realize.

[Sappho]

He is a perfectionist, of course, but that is a result rather than a cause. "Perfectionist" thinking *is* black and white thinking, just by another name. In any case, the issue is not his perfectionism. Personally, I'd prefer if he was less hard on himself and had a more positive attitude towards partial success, but it's part of the way he is, and that's something I surely cannot change (and trying to do so would only push him away). The real issue is his refusal to acknowledge differences in opinion as being valid. He sees all his opinions not as opinions, but as facts, and anyone who disagrees with him is someone who is WRONG and needs to be "fixed" to conform to what he sees as correct. That is not a viable way to interact with other people. He can believe he is right all he wants, but he can't try to force everyone else in the world to change.

I know that you guys only have the information I've written here, so you don't know him, but I know him very well. And in the past, he has shown a desire to *not* be such a strict black/white thinker in some ways. He often says things like "I am trying to understand" and "I want to better understand how your mind works." He has a desire to see other perspectives, but it's difficult for him because simultaneously, he refuses to let go of most of his extreme viewpoints. Trying to understand a "shades of gray" viewpoint without letting go of his black/white viewpoint causes a logical paradox, the end result of which is generally that he ends up alone. He's perfectly capable of being on his own, taking care of himself, etc., but I don't think he wants to remain that way forever, and after spending so much time getting to know me, I can see that he's struggling with the situation. At the moment, I think he hopes he can "fix" me and make me black/white as well, but he's intelligent and understanding enough to realize that's not really going to happen. We've been trying more and more to say things like "we disagree on this point, and that's okay - this disagreement does not prevent us from being close or getting along." But he really struggles, because in his mind, I don't just have a different opinion, I'm WRONG, and I'm missing something in my life because I fail to see the TRUTH. From that perspective, he thinks he's helping me by trying to force me to accept his viewpoint.

And that's where we need to come to a better understanding. I need him to see that forcing his viewpoint on me is not helping me, it's HURTING me. In many situations, there is no possible positive outcome from doing that. If he sees it as a flaw that I don't consider a particular television series to be a "masterpiece," then it's a flaw he's going to have to accept about me. He can't always be trying to "fix" me, or I will not be able to tolerate being close to him anymore and he will lose me.

He's always willing to listen to my side of these things as long as I can present it logically. The good news is that although I'm far from a black/white thinker, I *am* an extremely logical person. So I believe I can make him understand.

NullForceOmega, if it's not too personal a question, can I ask you about your relationship with your wife? Specifically, if she's emotional and not a black/white thinker, how did your relationship develop to the point where you wanted to get married? Did she always have to concede that you are "right" about everything? Did you have to compromise on your end? (If you want to answer but not publicly, feel free to send me a PM.)

[TempAcc]

:v I only actualy met one person that was completely like this in my whole life, and only for around a year or so, so I probably cant contribute much. He was a guy in my first year of lawschool, who was very smart but very black & white in his way of thinking, and he would even sometimes get into arguments with teachers in regards to papers in which he didn't get the grade he expected to get. He wasn't a bad person, but this behavior certainly annoyed or harmed people around him. I remember that, at one point, he convinced himself that his girlfriend (who was also in lawschool, maybe even because he convinced her) was being "overly friendly" to some classmates, and he just refused to speak to her for a whole day. She had to start crying until they finally got to talk and resolve the issue.

I was one of the few people who chatted with him rather often, mostly because I was indirectly able to help him write some papers and answer some questions because I was able to kinda "trick" him into believing that what I was telling him was actualy something he thought/knew all along and just wasn't able to remember. I'm not even joking, that was really the only way he'd listen to me, and it was the way I found to keep him from getting in arguments with some teachers.

I never actualy made an effort to make him realize how black & white his mind was because it would simply be too much work. He got transferred later so I never saw him again after that. In a way it was a relief because it was hard to talk to other classmates when he was around, plus he was kinda annoying, but he was also useful as a sort of discipline review mechanism, since I could just ask him about thinks and he would tell me everything he so dutifuly memorized from the textbooks

Anyway, this is likely very unhelpful since I actualy enabled his mindset at times to benefit from it by turning him into a dutiful memorizing machine I could ask questions to anytime, but I'd say to just let him be. Eventualy he'll end up hurting himself someway due to his behavior and he'll have to realize that he needs to become more flexible. As long as he doesnt hurt himself or others too much, of course.

[NullForceOmega]

It's alright Sappho, I don't really have any secrets anymore, they just clouded things and made it harder to deal with people.  My relationship with my wife started in an extremely non-standard way, specifically, her previous husband, who had a propensity for psychological abuse, threatened her with a knife one night after a gaming session I was running.  She called me and was very afraid and confused, and I decided to take action, I told her to leave that very night, and find a place to stay for around a month, I helped her set up some rules that he would be required to adhere to so that she could get things sorted out and decide what she wanted to do.  She informed me that she didn't have any place to go so I let her stay with myself and my roommates.  Things just kind of flowed from there, and after she decided to divorce him we ended up together, I don't know if everything that happened to us during that period was 'right', but she continues to tell me that she is happier with me than she has ever been.  We have two children now, a five year old and an almost two year old, both boys.  Our relationship is strong because I am utterly committed to communication, I do everything in my power to get a correct handle on the problems we are having, and do my best to understand how her feelings are impacted by my actions and words.  I still mess things up, and sometimes very badly at that, but I am completely committed to doing everything I can to help 'us' work.

If you need more details please feel free to ask.

[nenjin]

He has also shown a desire to not be too harsh on other people. He's made it clear that one of his parents was far too hard on him as a child, far too strict and unyielding, and he doesn't want to be that way himself. Whenever he realizes that he may have been too hard and may have hurt someone with his words or actions, it actually keeps him up at night, and at the soonest opportunity, he makes contact to apologize and check that the other person is okay. So in this way, emotional appeals can be effective - if I point out that he is being too hard and it is causing other people pain.

I can relate. My dad was very "go big or go home" too. A lot of his attitude may stem from how his parents brought him up. My dad often shamed me into doing things, despite being a caring, sensitive, self-aware person. His desire to imprint the right attitudes and behaviors on me as a kid came across way too strong sometimes, to the point it overrode his otherwise good nature. Some of the things your bo is saying reflect how I came to see the world in light of how I was brought up.

Often people that speak of things in extremes are uncomfortable with ambiguity. Whether that's cognitive dissonance or just being unclear. I sort of get the sense that his attitudes are a defense against failure and doubt. To avoid doubt, you commit 100%. To avoid failure, you are relentless until you're successful. These kind of absolutist attitudes sometimes stem from people who have failed or felt like failures, and so they overcompensate by going the other direction, by being rigid and inflexible when it comes to issues like: self-motivation, success, commitment, etc...

I don't have any real advice for you, other than this: despite what he says and how well you know him, there's probably something in his past that drives these feelings and attitudes. You probably can't change him, but understanding what drives these attitudes might help you loosen his grip on the ideas and open him up to considering different perspectives.

Or at least, you know, loosening up in general. Not every intellectual debate needs to be the equivalent of a mental knife fight.

[Sappho]

Hi everyone, and thanks again for all the feedback.

NFO, thanks for sharing your story. I'm glad you and your wife have a happy relationship despite your differences. Do you find you often have conflicts because of this? Are you able to accommodate her emotional needs? Or does she always accommodate yours?

Nenjin, there are definitely reasons from his past why he is this way. I know about several already, and I can see how he uses this as a defense mechanism. Life is simpler if you see it in terms of black and white, and somewhere along the line he decided that he needed that simplicity - and it was reinforced very strongly by his father, as well as other things.

In any case, I have some  happy news to report. I had a long conversation with him earlier today (over skype - more than 90 minutes!) and it went very well. He was in a very good mood. He was joking a lot about "black and white", as I had used that term in our last conversation and he really latched on to it. He kept joking about Michael Jackson, things like that. I could see that he was concerned with this perception that I have of him and he was interested in exploring it. He kept trying to talk about it, and I kept trying to avoid it, but in the end, I decided it was a safe time to discuss some things.

So we talked about the thing that had triggered this whole issue: a TV series that he loves and thinks is perfect, a masterpiece, and he thinks I should change my perspective so that I can agree with him. We spent some time talking about it. I went into detail about specifically what I didn't like about it, compared to what I do like about another series. He thought the two series were essentially the same and he couldn't understand why I would like one but not the other - turns out he was judging them both on a single criterion, whereas I was judging them on many. I explained clearly the exact criteria I used and how I judged each of the series, and why that meant I enjoyed one but not the other. When I was done, he immediately said okay, that's a good explanation, that makes sense, I understand. And that was it! I couldn't believe how easy it was, actually.

Going from there, I took a chance and touched on a few other things that are sometimes problematic, and he was very open to listening to all I had to say, as long as I presented it logically (and I did). He was quite positive and in a good mood for the whole conversation, joking a lot and even teasing me a bit, but without being hurtful. At the end of the conversation, I felt like we had made some real progress, and that it had all been much easier than I expected.

All this reinforced my belief that he really does desire to be open-minded. He doesn't want to be hurtful or overly harsh. He is willing to accept new ideas and information, as long as it is rational. He didn't get defensive or angry at all. So I have a lot of hope for things to go very well between us in the future.

[NullForceOmega]

Congratulations on your initial success, I hope it marks the beginning of a new chapter for the two of you.

As to your questions:
1)  Yes, we clash about it semi-frequently, it doesn't really hurt us, and we typically have a better understanding of where each of us is afterwards.
2)  Honestly, my own emotional makeup is so badly trashed that I cannot meet all of her emotional needs.  I still do everything I can to be supportive, but I have problems, and they aren't going away.
3) No, I am adamant that she try to avoid shouldering my emotional problems (she still tries, and it just stresses the hell out of her), My problems are complex and extremely deep-rooted, nearly being killed numerous times will do that to you, likewise having a large number of people who are important to you killed because of your actions will generally wreck you.

If you are going to pursue a long-term involved relationship with your friend, then be ready for the sideshow.  You WILL argue over stupid things.  You WILL have problems.  But you can get past it through communication, without it you are lost.

[DJ]

IMO you shouldn't enter a relationship based on who someone could become, but rather who they already are. Ask yourself if you could be happy with him the way he is. Healthy personal growth comes from within, and the direction he wants to grow could be different from the direction you'd want him to. They might look the same, but it's impossible to know because there's bound to be lots of wishful thinking in a situation like this.

[i2amroy]

Good to hear about your progress! What you did there sorta ties into my advice, which involves breaking things down. The truth of the matter is that the vast majority of the world isn't actually grey; it's just a very, very good impression. Take a show for example, we might say that there is a sliding scale of grey in how much you like a show, but really what's going on is that you are liking or disliking a variety of smaller points about the show. In a lot of cases what appears to be grey is in fact just a bunch of white/black points next to each other. You might like this particular scene more than that one, but usually that's because this scene does X well, or that scene doesn't do Y well.

The big thing with most black and white people is that they just aren't as good at seeing the many different points that compose other people's shades of grey. Where you might see 100 different criteria, with each black and white point melding into some smooth shade, they are only seeing a very tiny number of criteria points, which determines their overall opinion. As such my big piece of advice is to not be afraid to break things down to their tiny black and white points. I find that black/white people are usually willing to understand your grey opinion if you are willing to break it down to a series of black and white criteria rather than just leaving it grey.

Just my two cents.

[Ghills]

IMO you shouldn't enter a relationship based on who someone could become, but rather who they already are. Ask yourself if you could be happy with him the way he is. Healthy personal growth comes from within, and the direction he wants to grow could be different from the direction you'd want him to. They might look the same, but it's impossible to know because there's bound to be lots of wishful thinking in a situation like this.

Also, you shouldn't post without reading the posts you're responding to.

Wanting a partner to improve is not the same as throwing oneself into a relationship because of potential. Every serious relationship reaches a point where people try to improve their understanding of the other - growing together and understanding each other better is what relationships are about. Sappho is going about it in a very thoughtful way.  Admittedly, I wouldn't be happy to find my relationships posted on an open forum, but it seems to be working so far.

[4maskwolf]

Okay, so, here's my two cents.

Try talking to him when he's in a good mood.  People tend to be more receptive to change when they aren't already stressed out by something.

If it's even possible, it's going to be a long process.

Best of luck to you!

[Sappho]

Admittedly, I wouldn't be happy to find my relationships posted on an open forum, but it seems to be working so far.

I thought carefully about whether to post about this here. I decided that since this account is completely unconnected to my real life in every way, and I was writing it all anonymously, it would be fine. No one on here knows him - or even me, outside of B12 and possibly Steam. Zero chance that anyone he knows will ever see this, including him, since he's not a gamer (especially not games like DF) and does not even get online very much. Anyway, I thought this thread was dead, and was going to let it drift into obscurity. If I ever think that the situation might change, I'd come back, wipe my posts, and lock the thread to protect his privacy.

I appreciate all the advice you guys gave. We've had several nice conversations since I first posted and things are going very well. We understand each other MUCH better now and he doesn't have any negative feelings at all about our discussions. So no worries. I think it's going to turn out just fine. I'm glad I posted here before talking to him, actually, because I would have made some big mistakes and possibly upset/offended him. You guys were really helpful. Thanks!

[Capaverde]

I've been getting really close to a gentleman friend of mine. He's a wonderful person with a really big heart. He's very kind and caring. He's very handsome and charming. But he's an extreme black and white thinker, and it's becoming a problem.

He sees everything in terms of extremes. Everything is "all or nothing." If he has an opinion, it's not an opinion, it's just a fact. Anyone who disagrees with him is wrong. He really believes that he always knows all the answers, always knows what's best not only for himself, but for everyone else. He doesn't see opinions, he sees "facts."

He thinks you can't succeed to any degree, at anything, unless you throw yourself into it 100%. He overworks himself constantly, unwilling to accept anything less than perfection - and he doesn't accept anything less than perfection in other people, either.

When I disagree with him about something, he tells me that there is something wrong with me, that it's something psychological that I need to work on and fix in myself. If I tell him it's not that simple, he immediately accuses me of "playing the victim" - and he has zero tolerance for people who think of themselves as "victims" - which to him just means people who claim not to be in 100% control of every detail of their lives.

I know that from this, it must sound strange that I say he's a great guy. But it's true. Everyone loves him. He is incredibly devoted, caring, generous, honest, and loyal. It's only recently that I've started to see just how black/white his thinking is. Here are some things I often hear him say:

"You need to..."
"It's all or nothing."
"You can't be weak. You have to be tough. You have to go all in or you'll never accomplish anything."
"The problem with people/him/her/you is..."
"You're missing out on some very important things by not recognizing the genius of (film/music/tv series/etc.)."
"It's a shame you don't see the truth (ie why he's right). Maybe someday you can overcome this."
"It doesn't work that way."
"That's just the way I am. I'm not going to / I can't change it."
"There are two kinds of people."
"There are good people and bad people."
"There are people who get it, and people who don't get it."
"There are people who go all in, and people who fail."

You get the idea.

On the other hand, there have been several times in the past where we have disagreed on something, and I have managed to get him to really listen to me. And when he decides to listen, he really listens. He is truly very compassionate, and when he makes the decision to empathize with someone and consider possibilities he didn't know about before, he goes all in, just like with everything else. He *is* willing to admit when he was wrong about something, as long as you can explain to him logically the reasons why.

For this reason, I'm not giving up hope. I think it may still be possible to get him to listen to the reasons why black/white thinking is bad/unhealthy/harmful. And if I can do that, he will surely work hard at changing this. But it will have to be done very carefully.

Does anyone have any experience with this? Can anyone offer any advice on doing this without just setting him off or getting him to label me a "bad" person?

One more thing that might be relevant, I'm autistic, and after some discussion, he and I have agreed that he is slightly autistic as well, though without sensory issues (we agreed on the expression "he has a streak of autism"). That combined with certain aspects of his childhood and younger life is probably the reason he developed this extreme type of thinking as a defense mechanism. I'm quite sure he is *not* borderline or narcissistic. He is not a "toxic" person by any stretch.

If anyone has no idea what the hell I'm talking about, check out these two links for some basic info:
http://www.theemotionmachine.com/the-problem-with-black-and-white-thinking
http://www.slowdownfast.com/get-rid-of-black-and-white-thinking-once-and-for-all/

There's no use trying to change it if it's already in his nature, if it's already ingrained in him. He's a confrontational kind, but only when confronted, when things he deems important are brought up. Ever asked why he thinks 'going all in', 'being tough', and his nature in general are so important to him? Questioning his motives instead of just bringing up the consequences might be a good different way to approach this.

[Sappho]

Actually, guys, I think I'm going to go ahead and lock this thread. The problem I was worried about in the beginning seems to be pretty much solved and things are going very well now, but people keep responding only to the first post and bumping the thread unnecessarily. Once again, thanks so much to everyone for your help and advice!