Don’t JADE: When Explaining Yourself Becomes a Trap

Knowing when to explain yourself, when to take responsibility, and when someone else’s feelings are no longer yours to carry.

JADE stands for Justify, Argue, Defend, Explain.

Don’t JADE doesn’t mean never justify, argue, defend or explain. Sometimes you should.

It’s about recognising when you’ve crossed the line from sharing your position to feeling you have to prove you’re entitled to have that position in the first place.

It’s something you can do without even realising it.

Someone asks why you don’t want to do something. You give a reason. They challenge the reason, so you give another one. They challenge that too. Before long, you’re presenting a case for why you should be allowed to say no.

“I’m tired.”

“But you can rest tomorrow.”

“I have an early morning.”

“So do I.”

“I just don’t feel like going.”

“But you said you would.”

At some point, it’s no longer a conversation about whether you’re going. It has become a discussion about whether your reasons for not going are acceptable.

And that’s where recognising JADE becomes useful.

Why we JADE

A lot of JADEing comes from wanting to avoid the discomfort of someone being unhappy with you.

Somewhere underneath all the explaining is often the hope that:

If you can just get them to understand why you’re doing this, maybe they won’t be angry, disappointed or hurt.

So you keep explaining.

The problem is that every explanation gives the other person something else to argue with. And if they don’t want to accept the answer, there may never be an explanation that is good enough.

This is also where an argument can become circular. You’re no longer giving the other person new information. You’re repeating yourself in different ways, hoping eventually they’ll accept your decision.

And perhaps that’s the point to notice.

Are you still trying to help them understand? Or are you now trying to get their permission?

When you feel responsible for how they feel

This is probably the hardest part.

Someone becomes angry, sad, disappointed or hurt by something you’ve said or done, and suddenly the conversation shifts.

“You made me angry.”

“You hurt me.”

“If you cared about me, you wouldn’t do this.”

It’s very easy at that point to feel responsible for fixing how they feel.

But there’s an important distinction that can easily get lost.

Something you do can affect how someone feels. You’re responsible for what you did, but that doesn’t automatically make you responsible for managing what they feel afterwards.

That doesn’t give you permission to behave badly and then dismiss the consequences.

If you break a promise, betray someone’s trust, behave selfishly, say something cruel or simply get something wrong, then you need to own that. “Don’t JADE” shouldn’t become an excuse for refusing to listen or avoiding responsibility.

Sometimes the other person is upset because you genuinely hurt them.

But sometimes they are upset because you made a decision they don’t like.

Those are not necessarily the same thing.

And it’s important to be able to tell the difference.

What are you actually responsible for?

This is the distinction worth holding onto:

You’re responsible for what you do.

You’re responsible for how you communicate it.

You’re responsible for acknowledging and repairing harm you genuinely cause.

But you’re not automatically responsible for making another person’s difficult feelings go away.

That last part can be hard.

Because when someone you care about is angry or hurt, the instinct can be to make it better. And sometimes making it better means apologising or changing your behaviour.

But sometimes “making it better” actually means giving them what they wanted from you in the first place.

That’s where guilt can get confused with responsibility.

Instead of asking:

Did you actually do something wrong?

you start asking:

What do you need to do so they’re no longer upset with you?

Those are very different questions.

Someone being unhappy with your decision doesn’t automatically mean the decision was wrong.

So what does Don’t JADE actually protect?

It’s mainly about clarity and boundaries.

But it also protects you from confusing someone else’s emotional reaction with evidence that you’ve done something wrong.

It helps stop that exhausting loop where one person challenges, the other explains, the explanation gets challenged, they defend themselves, another accusation appears, and off you go again.

Sometimes the best thing you can do is stop adding more material to the argument.

“I understand why you’re upset. But my decision hasn’t changed.”

Or:

“I understand that you see it differently.”

Or simply:

“I’ve explained why I feel this way. I don’t think repeating it in different ways is going to help us.”

That doesn’t mean shutting someone down. You still have to listen.

They may tell you something you hadn’t considered.

They may point out that you’ve behaved badly.

They may be right, and you may be wrong.

Don’t JADE shouldn’t become another clever way of avoiding uncomfortable conversations.

The question is whether the conversation is still helping you understand each other, or whether you’re now defending yourself repeatedly because the other person will only accept one outcome.

Knowing when to explain

The lesson isn’t “stop explaining yourself.”

The question is:

Are you explaining this because the information will genuinely help, or because you need this person to approve of your decision?

If explaining creates understanding, helps solve a problem, clears up a misunderstanding, or helps repair something, then explain.

But if you’ve already explained yourself clearly and you’re now giving your fourth, fifth, or sixth version of the same explanation, something else is probably happening.

At that point, more explanation may not create more understanding. It may simply fuel the argument further.

And maybe this is the hardest part

You have to become comfortable with the possibility that someone may still be unhappy with you.

They may disagree with your decision, think your reasons aren’t good enough, feel hurt or become angry.

And sometimes there is nothing more you need to do about that.

Not because their feelings don’t matter, but because caring about how someone feels and taking responsibility for how someone feels are two different things.

You should change your mind when you realise you were wrong.

You shouldn’t have to change your mind simply to make someone else’s discomfort disappear.

Perhaps that’s what is most useful about Don’t JADE.

It isn’t really about learning how to argue better.

It’s about knowing when you no longer need to argue at all.

And, maybe more importantly, knowing the difference between feeling guilty because someone is upset with you and actually being responsible for what happened.

Umalas, Bali

7 September 2026