Thanks for the time you put into this message. Overall, the takeaway for me was that you don't have to do a debate-style conversation with a woman. The dynamics are too asymmetrical bw men and women for there to be any "fair" debate. Instead, use a less head-on approach. One thing that seems to be a byproduct of this modified approach is that it seems that arguments/conflicts with her will not necessarily end in clear resolutions. This could be a problem in some ways especially if you like instant gratification and want a clear conclusion to each friction point. You basically have to be okay with leaving things open-ended and you need to somehow train her to be the same way. This is what it seems to be leading to.
100% and you really read between the lines - I didn’t specifically state that you will often not get conclusions to disagreements but that’s exactly true. That was hard for me to learn. I thought that every disagreement with a woman needed to end in resolution but more often than not, my experience is that it simply won’t, and that’s ok! If you feel one way and she feels another, and you’ve both explained your feelings/position clearly and listened to the other person genuinely and openly, then that’s all you can do. You don’t need to try to get her to agree with you because you have no control over that. And you don’t need to change your views and beliefs just because she’s upset or disagrees. It’s that whole “we will have to just agree to disagree” thing.
When one says “leaving things unresolved,” it sounds like a negative thing, but if you have truly heard eachother, respected her feelings, but still disagree, I would offer that it isn’t unresolved at all. Instead, it is resolved that you both understand each other, and you both have differing views.
There is nothing wrong with that, and if she is being emotional about it and acts like it is wrong that you don’t agree with her then that’s her issue.
As far as outcome goes, you have to be convinced enough with your principles, boundaries and beliefs to be willing to walk away from her, and willing to let her walk away from you. But what I have discovered is that 99/100 times, despite her being incredibly pissed off and frustrated at you, if you don’t allow her to change your opinion and you also respectfully hear her out without trying to change her mind, after a brief (minutes, hours or days) cooling off period, she will come “back” to you and be drawn to your masculine leadership, frame, stability, and maturity.
Remember "commitment-consistency bias"? That bias is a b*ch and can make you and others locked into some stupid thought/action paths. Also, it's mentally/emotionally exhausting for people to hear something you say only to realize that you changed your mind.
Wow, you mean you are willing to change your mind when you are presented with information and evidence that runs contrary to your current beliefs? That seems increasingly rare these days. Everyone has their own desired view of how things are and they ignore all information to the contrary and they seek out even the flimsiest and most disproven information that supports their desires beliefs. But to answer your question, no I don’t think that not communicating your opinions or processes in order to avoid people later pointing to your past beliefs to invalidate your current beliefs is healthy. Maybe you are focused too much on “winning” arguments still? It’s ok to say, “yes I used to think that but I changed my mind because.......” One doesn’t have to form their entire beliefs at a moment in time and never change. The people who do that are the crazies who think the earth is flat or that covid is fake. Where changing beliefs can become an issue is when you are rapidly changing beliefs in-the-moment in order to win an argument. If you could give an example of you communicating your inner processes to friends, and which beliefs you changed, how long of a period of time the change occurred over, what the topic was and what their call-out to you on your change of opinion was, it might help me to more clearly see what’s happening and possibly offer more advice.