Finally, reflect on your relationship and see if you can identify anything you’ve said or done that may have influenced the other to retreat and refuse your requests, which seems inevitable given your estrangement. The easier story to tell ourselves in such situations is that the other person has given up on communication, that we are the noble and willing party, while the other is ignoble and unwilling. But there are more generous—and probably more accurate—interpretations of what’s going on inside the other person.

Ryan Trimble