Thanks for the tips. I’ve been working on making things more explicit, but it seems that I still am not being explicit enough! It feels like being stuck between a rock and a hard place - on the one hand some interactions tell me that I have to spell things out incredibly simply and explicitly, as though I’m talking to a child, but on the other when I do that it annoys people and I get told that I’m being patronising or condescending.

I can also understand what you mean about people forming a model of one’s behaviour very quickly. In a couple of the conflicts I’ve had, that much is very obvious and I can understand why they’ve automatically leapt to thinking I’m being dishonest/disingenious. Yesterday’s conflict should not have taken that path, though, as these were established acquaintances and there should have been enough previous interaction to know that I don’t intentionally mislead or present bad-faith arguments. Turns out that the reason I got accused of constructing a strawman is because what I thought was a blindingly obvious parallel to the issue we were discussing was viewed as completely irrelevant to the other person. I have no idea how they could not have seen the connection (the whole reason I used the parallel example was because I knew it was something they understood) and it brings me back to the issue of explaining things explicitly/simply enough without the other person then viewing me as being patronising/condescending.