Ghosting & distancing might save you a confrontation now, but you just trade current awkwardness for later awkwardness.

Say something when you want to disengage. It's considerate & it defuses current and future awkwardness.

Even if you don't endorse your feelings, you can still share them & say you're conflicted about them. Better than staying quiet. In fact I expect that sharing gets you 80% of the way to solving whatever interpersonal issues would have come of it.

Golden rule and the platinum rule.

• Golden rule: "treat them how you want to be treated"
  • easy
  • does not protect from "typical-minding": where you forget that they work differently from you
• Platinum rule: "treat them how they want to be treated"
  • hard

Better to model them as they are, not put yourself in their shoes. Trust less in instinctive empathy, more intellectual: "what do I know about how this person prefers to deal with this kind of situation…?"

I figure it's a reason why psychopaths can manipulate people so well – they always operate by the platinum rule, as they never had the option of "put yourself in their shoes" in the first place.

The golden rule only works between people who think very alike, and the more dissimilar you are, the more important to upgrade to the platinum rule.