A Person Can Occur as Difficult Without Being Reducible to Difficult
Calling someone difficult can sound like a complete description. The label may gather what they did, what we expected, what happened before, our tolerance, and the setting into one conclusion.
None of this means their behavior is imaginary. Someone can be abusive, unreliable, intrusive, or exhausting in ways that call for clear boundaries. The point is that difficult describes an encounter, not the whole of a human being.
A person who is difficult for us may be different in another relationship. Our own history may also heighten the effect of particular behavior. Neither possibility cancels what is happening here.
We can make the judgment more exact. What are they doing? What impact does it have? What boundary or response is needed? What part of the label comes from how the situation appears to me? Precision helps us act without reducing a person to a single word.