One of the biggest problems couples face is finding resolution to conflicts. Some people (i.e. women) think that talking more will lead to resolution – nope. Other people (i.e. men) want to think that avoiding the issue and/or person will let the issue blow over – nope. This is why the most hated words a man can hear from his wife are: “We need to talk.” When these are said, every guy is at least thinking “Oh, crap!” (or something a little stronger) because a woman “talking” typically just leaves the guy feeling criticized and either taking the hit or using a retaliation attack: “Oh, yeah. But you know why you suck?” And that’s why talking doesn’t help. A major reason talking doesn’t work is because the desire to “talk” is fueled by anger. Why is that? The answer seems so logical when I pose the question: “When you’re angry at someone (and anger makes us dumb), should you talk to that person or to someone else to get it off your chest and figure out what to do next?” A few people will want to fight me on this, but if you’re angry at someone, the last person you should be talking to is the person who will take what you say (a rant that will include exaggerations and a biased perspective) personally. For instance, if my wife wants to rant about someone else, have at it. I’ll gladly listen and affirm her (i.e. like a good listener). I know I don’t have to solve anything or give her any advice. I just need to help her feel cared about and understood because that’s what she needs in that moment to calm down. The best thing about letting a person rant is they have a chance to process what’s going on in their own head, which is why you don’t need to give advice. It can also lead to a sense of connection between the sharer and listener, which is why we’re tempted to want to speak to the person we’re angry at when we’re angry. That means the positive of loved one yelling at you is they want to connect with you in some way… yea?
Helping the other person feel understood is the best thing we can do as a listener, and that’s almost impossible when the other person is ranting about us to us. When someone is telling us they’re upset because we did something wrong, it’s instinctive to want to deflect, retaliate, give an excuse, run away, or get counter angry. Anger is an emotion that makes us want to protect ourselves, which means if someone is angry at us they are a threat and we’ll want to protect ourselves. This is why “talking” is so dangerous. Talking is usually a nicer word for fighting. I think a lot of guys would actually respond better to “We need to fight.” (guy) “Okay, let’s do this. Talking would just mean you belittling me and me getting in more trouble for not saying anything or saying something because whatever I do in these situations will only fuel your anger. At least fighting means we’re going toe to toe.”
Finding resolution is so important because it’s the only way to find healing. Without healing we end up with a seed of resentment that can grow over time. Women tend to have more specific moments they hold onto for justifying their resentment and hurt whereas guys typically know they’ve been hurt, but have a harder time giving specific reasons until they read something or hear someone mention it (i.e. a memory cue).
You might be thinking, “This makes sense; we should want resolution for healing, but if talking and not talking don’t lead to resolution, what do you do?” Great question. The goal for finding resolution is through understanding, so here’s a question: Do you think the other person will understand us better if we can summarize our point into a sentence or if we rant at them for an hour with lots of examples and proof that they suck in some way? One sentence is the winner, which is why I regularly teach that to resolve conflict we want to summarize our point in one sentence and then use that to make a request (i.e. “Can you do (thing) instead of (other thing)?” or using the sentence to ask it as a question with two options (i.e. “When you did (thing) did you have a good intention that didn’t land right or were you trying to hurt me for some reason?” As someone who has regularly been accused of trying to be hurtful when he wasn’t, I know how hurtful it is to be assumed to be so mean that I would want to hurt someone. I never want to be hurtful, but I can sometimes not read my audience very well (aka have a bad social skills moment). People assuming the worst of you never leads to positive things.
Using a request and two option questions are fantastic for pushing toward resolution, especially since they are all about understanding since a request is setting a clear expectation and a two option question is making sure you’re on the same page. Unfortunately, even these tools can lead to… complications.
This week I had a situation my wife and I handled well, but it still left us pushing ourselves to be healthy. My wife has gotten really good at making requests and doing them in the way I teach by starting with: “Can I make a request?” The downside is she uses it so often my natural response has become, “What now?” Fortunately, she ignores me and continues with her request. One day this week, in my couple minutes between clients, she caught me and made her request: “Can you make sure you don’t leave the baby car seat unbuckled? I was late getting the girls at school and the [HVAC guy] had to move his van for me, so he was waiting. When I got to the van with [one and half year old], I found the car seat wasn’t in place, and I had to get it sorted out with her there. You made me the last mom to show up at the school.” You’ll notice this wasn’t the proper one sentence request technique because it went for a paragraph. Why? Because my wife was still angry and included a condensed rant with blame in it. It was still impressive she could condense her anger to only a few sentences, but she did four things wrong. First, her timing was terrible for her. She still needed a chance to calm her anger down. She should’ve talked to someone else, wrote in her journal, or screamed in a pillow to get rid of the anger that led to her condensed rant. Second, her timing for me was terrible. My work day is hectic. I have long days with two to five minutes between clients to get myself collected and off to the next session. I’m not in the right frame of mind to be given a request. Sure, she asked “Can I make a request?” but I’m a person who can’t handle the mystery: “As much as I don’t want to hear what you have to say I have to know what it is or my mind will be racing.” Third, the request is meant to eliminate blame, but this came across as critical and talking down. Fourth, when a request is glaringly obvious it feels insulting: “Put the car seat back in place? I never would’ve thought of that. Thank you for pointing out something that I’m clearly too dumb to figure out.” Fortunately, what I said was, “Okay.” I was too angry for an “I’m sorry.”
Even if my wife made a proper request, she actually had three better options for this situation. First, she could’ve asked a two option question like “Did you forget to put the car seat back or were you planning on doing it later?” My response would’ve been, “Oh, yeah. I’ll have to get to that,” and then she could’ve pointed out she already did it, and I would’ve apologized. I’m a workaholic. I’m clearly not doing something like this out of laziness. Second, she could’ve just made a guess, which is a variation of the two option question where you pick one option that’s safe: “I’m guessing you got distracted and forgot to put the car seat back in place.” I would’ve said, “Yes, sorry.” Her third option was to make a joke about having the car seat not done up when she was late. If this situation was reversed and I was the one who had the car seat not in place, I probably wouldn’t have even given it a second thought: “Oh, shoot. I better put the seatbelt on the car seat.” As we looked at blame a few weeks ago, however, this is clearly a situation of blame the other person. She blamed me for being late when she was already late whereas I would’ve been more upset with myself for being late and now having it worse – the difference of blaming the other person versus ourselves.
After my wife made this request and condensed rant, I quickly went back downstairs to my office… angry. I quickly vented and tried to physically shake it off as I processed it as fast as possible: This is another time where she’s angry at me because she’s blaming me for it and not showing any understanding. You’ll notice I tried to summarize why I was upset and what the situation was about. At my next 2-5 minute break, I asked my wife a two option question: “Do you think I didn’t put the car seat back because I was distracted bringing in boxes or was I just being careless?” She had assumed I was careless and had forgotten I had been out dropping off and picking things up from my mom’s. We’ve recently agreed that my wife is triggered by anyone getting in her way of doing something (her hyper focused, ADD brain doesn’t like the interruption) or her feeling like she’s being given her extra work (her more stereotypical mom brain). After my question helped her see I wasn’t careless but distracted she felt better about the situation. This helped me feel better knowing her understanding my intention will help prevent future resentment toward me. Through this understanding and the two agreed upon facts, I found resolution, which means I had the recipe for healing.
This situation definitely could’ve been a lot worse and would’ve been if my wife and I hadn’t tried using the tools I teach. We both kept our moments to less than five minutes and we were able to move on. Based on our personalities, I’m positive similar issues will arise, but at least I know we have the means to handle them as well as possible.
This week may you consider how you can find resolution
Rev. Chad David, ChadDavid.ca, learning to love dumb (like me)
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