People who can never admit they were wrong (narcissistic, mentally, issues)

[luvmyhoss]

Those are my relatives
I just disengage and move to a more congenial person

[twinkletwinkle22]

I would not trust anyone who can not admit they were wrong, especially if their actions affected me directly.
But I know some peoples families made their lives miserable if they admitted failure so they just didn't.

It takes a confident person to admit failure, confident that they learned what not to do and confident they learned something. You don't become confident if you are belittled for mistakes and admitting them.

Political figures and CEO's rarely admit they made a mistake, not out loud at least, maybe behind closed doors.
Do I trust them? No.
I need people close to me to be as honest or how can they be trusted?

[Sonic_Spork]

Boy does this concept reach out and touch an awful lot of things.

I would agree with some who have mentioned the trauma response, because it was one of my first thoughts. To ask the question of what your need is, what you expect, when someone has been wrong? Do you have a need to see them punished and suffering for it? Or is it enough that they do seem to understand, and have sincerely expressed remorse for any harm caused, tried to make amends if possible?

I, too, have people in my history who have been way too punishment oriented. In some instances, the things they considered to be "wrong" I actually didn't even agree were in fact "wrong." I felt a lot growing up that I was punished simply for my parents noticing that I existed in some imperfect way when they happened to be in a bad mood mostly for things that had nothing to do with me. Things like reward and punishment from them had little to do with real consequences of my actual actions and much more to do with whatever they felt like in the moment. I could do many things they didn't want me to do, with no consequences at all, as long as I did not get caught. And good behavior would not be noticed or recognized. So "right and wrong" felt very arbitrary. Punishment was really just about riding out whatever suffering they wanted to try and inflict on me, until they got tired of inflicting it and left me alone, then doing what I was always going to do anyways.

To this day I have little use for authority. My moral compass disregards tradition and authority and "because I said so" and "that's the way it is" and aligns much more with fairness and harm reduction.

But then there was my ex. He was absolutely one to weaponize anything in any way he could. Since we split, he's wanted so badly for me to confess things to him, so he could feel justified in his thinking that I am the villain and he the victim. Well, there are wrongs he thinks I did that I did not do, and I won't confess falsely. And there are things I did that he never knew about and never will. I have no need to confess those either. He will believe what he wants anyways. I don't have to admit a damn thing to him. There are truths he just is not entitled to...he has no right to punish me for anything, he is no moral authority over me, and he will continue to believe the false things he believes no matter what, and he'd believe them even more if I confessed the true things. Why bother with any of it? I won't. I have no need to confess anything to anybody, in fact. I know in my own mind when I was right and when I was wrong. It is enough.

And like my parents, the core of the matter is that he just enjoys punishing people, and wants any excuse anyways. When you are dealing with someone like that, there is no productive purpose in being honest. And a lot of self preservation to be had from lying. I did tell him many times towards the end, that if you want the truth from people, you can't punish them for giving it to you. If other people don't feel safe being honest with you, they probably won't be.

But since the original subject was pretty vague, again it can be a matter of "what are we even talking about?"

If I am in a discussion, and I say something that is then disproven, I don't have a problem admitting that I was wrong. I am not perfect. My memory is imperfect, I'm not omniscient. Sometimes I'm wrong. Just like everyone. And like a lot of people, I have participated in speech and actions that seemed relatively normal and harmless at the time, that in hindsight were perhaps harmful or unkind or reinforced some form of bigotry common to the group I was in at the time. But I believe in learning and growing and doing better. It's also my main peeve about the whole cancel culture thing...if someone did something that is now considered to be wrong, back when it was socially rewarded and no one considered it to be harmful really, I think it's enough if the person has not done the thing in many decades and does now understand why it isn't OK. I don't feel a need to destroy anybody or demand a big accounting over something like that unless restitution can be made to any specifically harmed parties. But I do think that present day accountability for present day behavior is entirely sensible. We gotta try not to throw out the baby with the bathwater, I think.

But like...I was sexually assaulted...something like date rape, I guess, by an intoxicated man when I was 15. I don't think that he knew my age or that what he was doing was actually rape, I'm pretty sure he didn't see it that way. I'd flirted with him and invited him to my home, English was not his first language...but no is still no in the one he spoke. I suspect he thought I was playing games with him. It wasn't deeply traumatic, just really disgusting to me at the time. Was what he did wrong? Yeah. By the standards of today definitely, by the standards of the mid 90s, probably still I guess. I didn't think of it as rape then, though. What I'd been taught on the subject was "a stranger jumps out from an alley and..." So I didn't think of it as that but I didn't feel great about it, though I did not feel damaged, I didn't cry or dwell on it. Do I feel any need whatsoever for him to account for this, to admit he did me wrong? HELL NO. Absolutely not. I never want to see or speak to him ever again. I didn't even know his real name and in all honesty it is a relief to me that he vanishes into the mob of humanity where I will never confront him. It wouldn't do anything for me, to have him punished for this. And I don't think he goes around "victimizing" others....I think it was just a situation that happened.

So I guess, besides the whole "what are we talking about here?" question, I also would ask what a person gets out of someone admitting that they were wrong... Because I don't really feel much of a craving for that mostly.

I recently visited some family I hadn't seen in a long time. They wronged me when I was a child in a few ways. I did fantasize about conversations I could have had, in the months leading up to the trip. But I did not speak any of those things to my father or to my stepmother. Here's the thing...what happens if my Dad for instance admits he was wrong? Do I then have to absolve him of guilt and declare him forgiven? I honestly don't want to. Do I want the task of punishing him somehow? No. What is to be gained by it? Nothing. And the fact is, he didn't mean to have the effect he did with the actions he took those many years ago, and I know that because now I have raised kids and at times I wronged them too. In different ways, sure, and definitely not meaning to have the effects that I did. I know that mostly you just do the best you know how and you have no way to know how your parenting will really shape your kids until they are grown and blaming you for things in therapy.

[LeisureSLarry]

I am in the camp of it is largely a defense mechanism (due to an underlying confidence issue). I think people who have been judged harshly and/or had their weaknesses exploited by others at various times in their lives and carry that with them go to great lengths to avoid those circumstances again. One way of coping is not admitting fault, becoming defensive when challenged, refusing to concede when the evidence is bare, etc. If not they feel weak and vulnerable to being judged and exploited all over again.

[tnff]

Originally Posted by tamajane

Then it seems like you have to just give up on these people.

I would at least spell it all out first just for clarity. If they keep justifying denying and deflecting then at least I tried.

Some people are in a kind of stubborn denial. Narcissists do this but I'm not talking about dealing with narcissists, but people who actually think they are doing the right things but are really causing problems for others that everyone but them can see.

Isn't it at all possible someone can be made to understand this and change the behavior?

Thank you. Ignoring the narcissists, I think there are a couple of different ways that someone would be unable to understand that they were wrong. Here's an example of one of them. We were in a painting project at the church. Volunteers of course. There's this one guy in his 20s. Obvious he's never done much hands on type work before. I show him how to paint; how to hold the brush, dip, tap it off, and how to apply the paint. Then have him show me. He seemed to get it and was doing fine, so I went to help someone else. Come back a few minutes later and he's got paint all the way up the handle of the brush and is jabbing it onto the wall like a sword and just brushing all over the place. I stopped him, got it clean up, and showed him again. Once again he acted like he understood and demonstrated that he could do it right. Turned my back for a couple of minutes and he was right back at stabbing paint all over the place. Wash, rinse repeat a couple more times. He never could admit he was doing it wrong and change.

[tamajane]

Originally Posted by LeisureSLarry

I am in the camp of it is largely a defense mechanism (due to an underlying confidence issue). I think people who have been judged harshly and/or had their weaknesses exploited by others at various times in their lives and carry that with them go to great lengths to avoid those circumstances again. One way of coping is not admitting fault, becoming defensive when challenged, refusing to concede when the evidence is bare, etc. If not they feel weak and vulnerable to being judged and exploited all over again.

I think they end up hurting themselves more by doing this. Even sabotaging their own lives. They can lose families and careers. Remember the behavior that caused the problem is damaging others. They are doing something that is hurting people and denying or deflecting, and the affected people will see it as gaslighting. We all know how people feel about gaslighting.

I was punished and yelled at by my mother for mistakes. No self esteem talks back then. I would never do what these people do as far as denying responsibility for my errors. As a matter of fact in order to pound it into myself I will do something uncomfortable that reminds me not to make such a mistake again, some sort of self punishment. I recently made a bad mistake, only hurt myself there were very unusual circumstances and I was vulnerable, and I guess my punishment is I'm on the verge of tears constantly and can't enjoy anything. I really messed up in a way I normally would not and feel like crap. Don't know if I'll ever put it behind me. If I can feel like this why can't the other party who brought this about have any accountability? Why do they get off free in their denial? Feels like scapegoating and gaslighting together.

[Sonic_Spork]

Originally Posted by tamajane

I think they end up hurting themselves more by doing this. Even sabotaging their own lives. They can lose families and careers. Remember the behavior that caused the problem is damaging others. They are doing something that is hurting people and denying or deflecting, and the affected people will see it as gaslighting. We all know how people feel about gaslighting.

I was punished and yelled at by my mother for mistakes. No self esteem talks back then. I would never do what these people do as far as denying responsibility for my errors. As a matter of fact in order to pound it into myself I will do something uncomfortable that reminds me not to make such a mistake again, some sort of self punishment. I recently made a bad mistake, only hurt myself there were very unusual circumstances and I was vulnerable, and I guess my punishment is I'm on the verge of tears constantly and can't enjoy anything. I really messed up in a way I normally would not and feel like crap. Don't know if I'll ever put it behind me. If I can feel like this why can't the other party who brought this about have any accountability? Why do they get off free in their denial? Feels like scapegoating and gaslighting together.

So there, that's something that might be a "you problem" for you to work on.

Because you can't control other people.

You are suffering these intensely unhappy feelings over something that you did, and you are saying that you think that because someone else bore some fault, they should also be suffering. But you can't tell another person how they are supposed to feel about a thing.

And in truth, sometimes (not saying this is necessarily one of them) some people might feel more than you think, but just don't feel obligated to share their inner stuff with you. So they might feel guilt or suffering but they are not going to display it for you to make you feel better, if indeed it would anyways.

These things are not in your control. You can only manage you, your own processes and reactions and feelings. I mean, we can call things out, and we can make choices to protect ourselves and our best interests, like severing a connection with someone who is harmful to us...but unless there is criminal culpability in some situation, we really don't get to go around as adult people punishing each other and inflicting suffering and bad feelings as some attempt at justice.

I think that a lot of people have a fallacy at work in their thinking that when it comes to suffering, or conversely, happiness and prosperity, everybody gets what they deserve and deserves what they get. And it's just not true. Sadly, the world is not so fair.

But I have serious doubts that whatever you may have done, it justifies a lifetime of self inflicted emotional penance. I'm not sure what good that does for anyone, really.

[bpollen]

When a narcissist's position has been exposed as false, arbitrary, or untenable, he will suddenly become evasive, articulate half-truths, lie, flat-out contradict themselves and freely rewrite history (making things up as they go along). This is why at such times they don't seem like adults so much as 6-year-olds.

Psychology Today

I can verify that my ex, a narcissist, is like this. Never admit being wrong.

[moguldreamer]

At the Fortune 500 companies for which I've worked, we have a name for people who never admit they were wrong: Vice-Presidents. We joke it is a fundamental job requirement.

[pathrunner]

My mother was the type to never admit being wrong. There is a post upthread, I think it is OP's (tamajane) that gave me insight into my mother. She was abusive to me, and had an abusive mother who died before I was born. I think the reason she never admitted being wrong is because of that relationship. I never really thought about it like that before.

In addition to people who never admit being wrong, there is another type that is repugnant. That is people who cannot simply say "I see your point." You don't have to agree with it.

Refusing to address a point or see a point is willful passive aggressiveness, and an insecure need to control and look better than the other person. We see this online quiet a bit because these people are conveniently able to hide behind a screen name. It's not a good look.

You aren't "giving in" when you refuse to just say "I don't agree with you but I see your point." Like I said, it isn't a good look. And the fact that they don't care is also not a good look.