Words in Love Won’t Get You Where You Want to Go

Communication: A process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs, or behavior –Miriam Webster Dictionary

I’ve written before about the irrelevance of communication techniques to the success of intimate relationships, most recently in Love and the Communication Myth. It’s not that the techniques are wrong; they simply miss the unique nature of interactions between emotionally bonded persons.

Exchanges between intimate partners do not merely relate information. Rather, interactions in romantic relationships are either latent bids for connection and cooperation or blame for disconnection and noncooperation. Pop psychology authors mistakenly attribute relationship problems to communication issues. The real culprits are attitudes and behaviors that restrain connection and cooperation.

Psychologist Kurt Lewin’s insight can help illuminate the problem. Behavior emerges from the tension between drives to do something and restraints to doing it. Change often occurs more readily by eliminating or reducing the restraints than by increasing the drives.

Communication Techniques as Restraining Forces

When exchanges between intimate partners merely relate information—even crucial information—or when partners use communication techniques to get each other to do what they want, the techniques are more likely to exacerbate disconnection, if not sound like veiled criticism or threats. For example:

“I feel we can have a better understanding of one another if we talk more often.”

“When you do this, I feel…”

“These are my needs (which you must meet).”

The negative effects of such communications occur because verbal information is automatically processed in the autopilot brain, that is, we leap to judgment without stopping to think about it. The employment of communication techniques is likely to get an autopilot response, particularly when partners believe their relationship has communication issues or when the use of communication techniques seems like manipulation:

“You’re trying to express this in a way that will make me do what you want.”

Identify and Reduce the Restraints of Connection, Cooperation

Restraint: The content of the communication is more important than connection and cooperation. The implication is, I can’t love you or cooperate with you unless you agree with me or do what I want.

Restraint reduction: Resolve to connect and cooperate while disagreeing. Reconciliation of disagreements flows out of connection and cooperation, not the other way around.

Restraint: Temporary feelings are more important than your values.

Restraint reduction: Appreciate that connection and cooperation are core values, even when you don’t feel like it. Connection and cooperation will change your feelings.

Restraint: Resentment, anger, entitlement.

Restraint reduction: Get in touch with the value you feel for yourself and your partner before you speak.

Restraint: Self-obsession—an inability or unwillingness to see each other’s perspective. “You must care how I feel about talking, even if I don’t care how you feel about it."

Restraint reduction: Practice binocular vision—the ability to see your partner’s perspective alongside your own. Like most emotions, compassion tends to be contagious and reciprocal; if you want it, you must give it.

Restraint: Invalidating experience—you have no right to feel this way, there’s something wrong with you for feeling this way.

Relationships Essential Reads

I Love You, But I’m Leaving: When Relationships Cost Too Much

Don't Be Someone's Second Potato

Restraint reduction: Validate your partner’s experience, especially when you disagree on interpretations of facts. Negative feelings in intimate relationships come from a failure of compassion, not facts or poor communication.

Restraint: Viewing apology as submission.

Restraint reduction: View apology as reconciliation. Apologize for any purposeful or inadvertent insensitivity because you care about your partner's well-being, which is tied up with your own.

Restraint: Arguing to win makes you try to prove your partner wrong.

Restraint reduction: Argue to learn. When you learn more about your partner's perspective, you want to reconcile it with your own rather than refute it.

Restraint: Using communication techniques to express how you feel obscures the desire for connection and cooperation.

Restraint reduction: Focus on maintaining connection and cooperation, not conveying information. Information conveys successfully when partners are connected, unsuccessfully when they're disconnected.

Restraint: “Getting your needs met” implies that you must do what I want because I need it. It's almost impossible to talk about your "needs" without sounding entitled.

Restraint reduction: Focus on your desires, on removing the restraints to connection and cooperation. Partners respond better to desires than "emotional needs." Desires sound personal, not entitled.

Restraint: Controlling behavior—telling your partner what to do, with a tacit threat of punishment (withholding affection) for non-compliance.

Restraint reduction: Make behavior requests. Recognize that your partner doesn’t have to do what you want and appreciate cooperation. Tender no punishment for noncompliance. “I’ll love you whether you do what I want or not.”

A fact of human nature is that we like to cooperate but hate to submit. The formula for cooperation:

The valued self cooperates, the devalued self resists.

If you want cooperation, you must show that you value your partner. In touch with value for yourself and your partner, you will not appear to demand compliance with any veiled threats of communication techniques.

Ask, Don’t Tell

Communication techniques get you to describe your perspective, experiences, and "needs" and actively and constructively listen to those of your partner. Some couples therapists use the term "shoot and load," inadvertently implying that communication is a battle. There’s another problem with this, besides the fact that resentment and entitlement are inherently devaluing, and that body language and facial expressions will belie any respectful use of words. While verbal information processes automatically in the autopilot brain, change in behavior must engage the reflective brain.

Compare:

A. “I feel we can have a better understanding of one another if we talk more often.”

B. “I know we’re busy; what do you think might help us maintain connection and cooperation?”

A. “When you do this, I feel…”

B. “How do you feel when I do this?”

A. “I think this is fair.”

B. “Does this sound fair to you?”

Remember, you will not engage the reflective brain if either of you is defensive, resentful, angry, or entitled. If these are chronic conditions, the use of communication techniques will make things worse. Chronic conditions require a boot camp-type reconditioning of the autopilot brain.