What causes it is that it works because most normal people would rather acquiesce and avoid the awkwardness than continue to say no? The flip side, though, is that people might just start avoiding the "won't accept no" person, unbeknownst to them.

It's a useful trait for entrepreneurs. Very annoying in almost any other context.

My husband won’t take no for an answer. It’s annoying and I don’t understand why he doesn’t understand no. I wish I could tell you what the thought process was. I think that he thinks that the other person is being polite and really wants to say yes. Or he tries to convince them because he can’t fathom why they would say no. We are very different this way.

Spinoff of the thread about people being sneaky about asking for favors. Reading it, it really comes down to trying to keep people from being able to say no, either by backing them into a corner or by turning it into an obligation they'll feel guilty about. It's interesting to see some posters saying "well you can just say no" and others pointing out that the whole strategy is designed to get around the no.

But to me it's part of a bigger problem, which is that so many people just do not accept no as a feel sentence and final answer. I started becoming aware of this about 10 years ago, how often I would say no to people and they would keep pushing, asking for a justification, arguing, or simply overriding it. What causes this behavior? It's so frustrating! I don't have a hard time saying no but it is really hard to fight people on this sometimes.

An example: I have had several people offer to give me second hand clothes. In some cases they were things they'd been given and didn't want, sometimes it was something that didn't fit them anymore, and in one case it was clothes from a clothing swap they'd attended and collected specifically to "for" me (though I didn't ask for this).

In each case I declined the offered clothes multiple times, explaining I was actually trying to reduce the amount of stuff in my closet and I needed to get rid of things, not acquire more. I also explained, regarding specific items, that they were not my style or didn't suit my lifestyle (i.e. dressy professional clothes even though I don't work in a field requiring those, formalwear when I have more than what I need for the rare times I need it, etc.). In each case, the other person kept pushing. In ever single case, at one point these "friends" just showed up to my house or to an event we were both attending with the clothes and tried to physically push them into my hands. One left a bag of clothes at my workplace when I wasn't there. Again, I'd rejected these offers multiple times at that point, I was very clear about it "no thank you, I really don't want them." The fact that multiple people just kept pushing past that and then gave the clothes to me anyway... it's like a personality disorder, I'm sorry. Why would you do this?

I'm trying to think of a situation in which someone has said no to me more than once and I've still tried to push. I just can't. I don't understand what possesses people to do this. BTW, most of those clothes went straight to Goodwill, but in two cases I literally just dumped them in trash cans because I was so annoyed with having them foisted upon me like that.