answer:You are the one who seems to be—I don’t want to say “overly”, but let’s say “overtly”—demonstrative in your feelings, or at least that’s how I read this tiny snippet into your life. Bear with me. Michael has his opinions of people – we all do. But he seems to have to couch his opinions about others in careful language around you, because you have (clearly) expressed your own opinions about those people to him. And your opinions are different from his. (For thoughtful people, it’s hard to have congruent opinions about anything with anyone else, because no one thinks quite like anyone else; if you give up thinking, it’s very simple to figuratively click “share opinion” with any number of people. Obviously, you haven’t done that.) But because Michael knows that your opinions are different from his own, he seems to feel a need to justify and defend his thoughts against the weight (in his mind) of your own. He could simply not care, I suppose; but that’s his problem. You can’t solve his problems. You can’t “handle” him on this. You can give up expressing your opinions (which is sometimes a very wise thing to do with our friends and relations, after all), or you can express them more diplomatically, or… maybe… you could learn to detach a bit more and simply “not have” so many opinions. That’s actually a good place to be, if you can get there. Or you could continue to have your opinions, whether expressed or not, and simply accept his opinions (or argue with him, as you seem to be doing in a friendly way, since he is still your friend, after all) and not try to change his mind, but just accept him as he is. That’s a good place to be, too.