You are not difficult. You have simply worked out that being given something immediately is less interesting than being given it eventually, and you have built a whole approach around that observation.
YMIS is Yield, Mind, Intense, Spontaneous. You want someone else in charge — but you want them to earn it, in the moment, without a script.
The resistance is the point, and this is the part that gets misread, sometimes by partners and often by the Instigator themselves. The pushing back is not reluctance being expressed. It is the game being played. You are not saying no; you are saying make it good enough that I stop saying no.
Which is enormous fun with someone who reads it correctly, and a genuine mess with someone who does not — and that difference is not something to leave to chance or to hope your partner intuits.
The one conversation this type cannot skip
Say out loud, when nothing is happening, that this is a game.
Not because your partner is stupid, and not because the play needs explaining. Say it because the entire structure depends on both of you knowing that a refusal inside the game is not a refusal, which is only safe if a real one is available and unmistakably different.
So: agree a word that is outside the game entirely. Something flat and unlikely, that you would never say while playing. And agree that it is honoured instantly, with no argument and no wounded feelings afterwards. Instigators skip this more than any other type, because the whole appeal is not having a script — and this is the one piece of script that makes the rest possible.
It takes about ninety seconds and it does not have to be solemn. “You know when I argue? Keep going. If I actually want to stop I will say [word], and I will only ever say it if I mean it.” That is the whole thing. Said once properly, it covers months.
To lose properly. Many Instigators run a version where they push, the partner pushes back a bit, and then everyone gets on with the evening. What is missing is the part where the resistance is genuinely overcome — where you run out of ways to delay it and have to stop.
That requires a partner who will not fold at the first sign of push-back, and it requires you to tell them so. Most will not risk it unless invited, because from the outside your resistance looks exactly like resistance.
The other one is aftercare, and Instigators are the type least likely to ask for it because the persona makes it awkward. You spent the evening being difficult on purpose; asking to be held afterwards feels like breaking character retrospectively. It is not. The intensity of the game is exactly why the landing matters, and a partner who has been holding their nerve against you for an hour usually wants the same thing.
What is missing, and where it goes wrong
Two failure modes, and the second is the one that ends relationships.
The first is exhaustion. Provocation is work, and if you are always the one starting the dynamic, the effort stops being fun somewhere around the fourth month.
The second is bleed. The register that is delightful at eleven at night is corrosive at eleven in the morning, and this type is unusually prone to letting the game leak into ordinary life — needling over the washing-up, testing whether the dynamic still holds when neither of you asked for it. Keep it in the room. The contrast is where the charge comes from anyway.
Both failures have the same root, which is that this type carries the load of starting things. If you are always the provocation, you are always the one doing the work of beginning — and you never get the experience of being the one who is simply taken in hand. Some Instigators discover, usually by accident, that they wanted that considerably more than they wanted to win the argument. It is worth engineering once deliberately to find out: tell your partner, in daylight, that on one specific evening you are not going to fight at all.
What to say
In the game, you already know your lines. These are the ones that are harder, because they are said in your own voice:
- “When I push, push back. I am not asking you to stop.”
- “If I say [the word], everything stops. Nothing else means that.”
- “Make me stop arguing.”
- “I want to actually lose. Not eventually be allowed to win.”
And one to have ready for afterwards, in your own voice, because the switch out of the persona is abrupt for this type and partners often cannot tell which version of you they are talking to: “That was the game. This is me. Come here.” Said once, it saves a surprising amount of confusion — the provocation is convincing precisely because it does not look like play from the outside, and the person who just spent an hour holding their nerve against it deserves an unambiguous landing.
Who you play well with
LMIS, The Provocateur is the natural mirror — mind-led, intense and improvising, which means they will meet you at speed. The risk is that two Spontaneous types never quite get round to agreeing the frame, and this is the type that most needs the frame agreed.
LMIR, The Architect is the difficult, interesting one. They will build a plan; you will break it. If they treat that as part of the design it is the best thing available to either of you. If they treat it as a fault, you will both be irritated by eleven.
LBIS, The Tempest matches your energy exactly and will absolutely not fold when you push. Worth knowing that neither of you is naturally the one who slows things down, so that job has to be assigned rather than assumed.
The pairing to be careful with is another YMIS. Two Instigators is very funny for about a fortnight and then nobody is steering, because the whole dynamic depends on someone eventually being immovable. If both of you are provoking, the game has no other side.
LBIR, The Disciplinarian is the unexpectedly good one. They are immovable by temperament and they run to an agreed structure, which means your push-back meets something solid rather than something that negotiates. Expect to be slightly annoyed by how little effect you have, and expect to enjoy that.
LMTR, The Keeper is the gentle version. They will not fight you, they will simply not move, and for some Instigators that turns out to be the thing they were looking for the whole time.
Where to go next
The vocabulary first. The beginner’s guide is where the words for the frame live — the ones that let you say “this is a game” in a way that lands, which is the single conversation this type cannot skip.
Then the two registers you most often play in. What to actually say covers the exchanges where someone has to hold their nerve against push-back, and the scenarios include the capture and interrogation frames that are built for exactly your dynamic — with the negotiation those frames require stated plainly rather than assumed.
If the game has started leaking into ordinary Tuesdays, the piece on raising this stuff out loud is the reset. The contrast is where your charge comes from; it does not survive being on all the time.