The Lost Art of Arguing with Someone you like

For about a decade, Pardon the Interruption has been my favorite sports show, which is probably a little surprising because there are entire categories of sports that I don’t particularly care about. I like sports, and I’ll watch just about anything because sports matter to people I love. If someone I care about is invested in a game, then I’m interested in understanding why they’re yelling at the television. I know enough about most sports to follow along, and I’m perfectly happy to watch a game even when I have no personal stake in who wins. I’m just not the person whose emotional well-being depends on the final score.

So why have I watched PTI for ten years?

The answer has very little to do with sports.

I love watching Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon argue.

Not the manufactured kind of television argument where two people are assigned opposing positions and spend five minutes pretending to be outraged because that’s what makes good television. I mean the kind of argument that feels like two people who have known each other long enough to be completely comfortable telling each other when they think the other one is full of it.

They interrupt each other. They talk over each other. They get annoyed. They tease each other. They occasionally seem genuinely exasperated by whatever the other person has just said. And then they keep going. There is no great reckoning at the end of the segment, no requirement that they arrive at some mutually acceptable conclusion, and apparently no concern that disagreeing with each other means something terrible about their relationship.

They just disagree.

And they clearly like each other.

That combination has become strangely compelling to me because I think we have gotten very bad at separating the argument from the person having it.

Somewhere along the way, disagreeing with someone stopped being an ordinary part of knowing them and became evidence about who they are. If you disagree with me about something important, then apparently I am supposed to figure out what that disagreement tells me about your character. Maybe you’re ignorant. Maybe you’re stupid. Maybe you’re selfish. Maybe you’re a terrible person. Once I’ve decided which category you belong in, there isn’t much reason left to listen to your argument because I’ve already decided what kind of person would make it.

That’s not an argument. That’s a verdict.

What I find so refreshing about PTI is that the disagreement doesn’t seem to carry all of that baggage. Tony can think Wilbon’s take is ridiculous without apparently concluding that Wilbon himself is ridiculous. Wilbon can push back just as hard without needing to establish that Tony is an idiot before he makes his point. They can get heated without the relationship becoming collateral damage.

And I suspect that is part of why I have kept watching for so long.

I don’t need everyone around me to agree with me. In fact, I would find that incredibly boring. I want people who will tell me when I’m wrong, particularly people who know me well enough to understand why I believe what I believe and are still willing to challenge it. I want someone who can make me stop and reconsider something rather than simply nodding along because disagreement feels uncomfortable.

That doesn’t mean I’m going to change my mind every time somebody challenges me. Sometimes I will think they’re wrong. Sometimes they will think I’m wrong. Occasionally one of us will actually be wrong, which is generally the most interesting outcome because now somebody gets to learn something.

And sometimes neither person changes their mind at all.

That’s okay.

We don’t have to resolve every disagreement. We don’t even have to reach a compromise. There are some things where two intelligent people can look at the same set of facts, weigh them differently and come away with different conclusions. There is nothing inherently broken about that.

What matters is whether we can still sit across the table from each other afterward.

That, more than anything, is what I think I’ve come to appreciate about watching PTI all these years. The argument isn’t treated as a threat to the relationship. It’s part of the relationship. The fact that these two people can disagree so freely is possible because there is an underlying assumption that the disagreement isn’t going to make either one of them disappear from the other’s life.

And I think we could use more of that.

Not more politeness, necessarily. Politeness can be useful, but it can also become a way of avoiding anything real. I’m talking about something a little harder: being comfortable enough with another person to disagree honestly and trusting the relationship enough to know that you can do it without destroying it.

There is something liberating about being able to say, “I think you’re wrong,” and have the other person hear exactly that rather than hearing, “I don’t respect you,” or, worse, “I don’t like you.”

Those are not the same thing.

I can disagree with you and still be interested in what you have to say. I can think your argument is terrible and still enjoy talking to you. I can be completely convinced that I’m right and remain curious about why you see it differently. And if you happen to change my mind, I don’t have to pretend I was right all along just to save face.

Maybe that’s what I’ve been watching for ten years.

Not sports analysis, although there is plenty of that.

I’m watching two people who have managed to preserve something that seems increasingly difficult to find: the ability to argue passionately with someone they like without turning the argument into a referendum on whether that person deserves to be liked.

I think that’s a pretty useful thing to remember.

Especially now.