"Why do you love to argue?"

# Initial exploration:

Why do people say things like "why do you love to argue?" I vividly recall a couple of interactions with people where that was said to me.

In the first case I replied with, "I argue as a way to seek the truth. How do you seek the truth?" The person didn't reply but also didn't leave the discussion. He seemed to understand my point. He continued "arguing" with me after that. Also he never said the "why do you love to argue?" question to me again.

In the second case, the person said something like "please don't argue with me." It was weird because the person called me for advice. And I was trying to do that partly by asking questions to figure out their goal and plan that could achieve the goal. Later in the discussion I noticed that the person asked me the same question 2 times. The question was "did you send me the phone number?" Each time they asked the factual question, I gave a factual answer: "No I didn't send it." After the 2nd time, I asked, "do you want me to send it now?" The person said, "yes". So I started doing that, and told them that I was doing it. And as I was doing it I said, "It seems to me that each of your questions 'did you send me the phone number?' was actually intended as an order statement like 'send me the phone number now'. If you wanted to give me an order, you should give me an order instead of veiling it as a question." The person seemed annoyed that I was criticizing their approach of giving vague hints about what they want.

Should I have known that they wanted me to send the phone number now, even though they never said it? The best they did was ask me to send them the phone number, which I agreed to. They didn't say to send it during the phone call or right away.

I think I have a trigger about this. I think I was annoyed because of how I interpreted the "please don't argue with me" statement. And I think that my emotional state continued through to the end of the discussion. I think the person's bad reactions towards the end of the discussion (I mentioned one of them above) were partly as a result of my bad reaction from earlier in the discussion (my being annoyed).