Rescue Relationships by Choosing the Right Words

Everything is connected

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Do you remember the children’s rhyme “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me?” It is one of the worst pieces of advice given to children and the cause of countless adult breakups. Words—not sticks and stones—are the greased rails upon which most relationships move forward or slide backward.

The study of how words affect our behavior and thinking is called psycholinguistics. Our words can act as sabers, often shaping relationships in ways we neither like nor understand.

While some psycholinguistic strategies for improving relationships can be difficult to apply, I have found four during my 30 years of clinical practice and research that are easy to use, apply to all ages, are gender-neutral, and are immediately effective. Try using them in relationships ranging from someone you meet on the street for the first time, to the person with who you share your bed. From your three-year-old child to your great-grandmother. The strategies can be used with or without the help of counselors.

There are many reasons why relationships fail. The unskillful selection of words does not need to be one of them.

1. Converse Rather Than Question

When I trained parents on how to interact with their children, I found an amazing correlation: When parents had conversations with their children, rather than bombarding them with questions, their children had significantly better language development.

I had similar positive results with adults: The more a conversational mode was used between adult partners, the better the relationship. One theory explaining the more positive interactions was that in-depth conversations gave the impression of more interest in the speaker than just question-and-answer interactions.

Takeaway: By having “conversations” rather than just asking questions, the speaker will believe you are interested in what she is saying.

2. Eliminate or Minimize Negative Words

The brain is like a giant sponge constantly searching for things it can connect. One pattern is "negativity." When you use negative words, the brain starts making connections with negative memories. What it retrieves may not have any connection other than that they are all negative. The use of negative words has a multitude of unintended consequences, including casting what you, as the speaker, thought was neutral or positive into a negative experience for the listener.

Takeaway: When you eliminate or reduce the number of negative words you use, you deprive your brain and possibly your listener’s brain of words that can conjure negative memories. As an experiment, try eliminating the word “no” from your vocabulary for one day.

3. Apologize Rather Than Defend

How often have you been in a situation where you knew you were wrong but for a variety of reasons, decided to defend yourself with justifications you had to twist, scrunch, or push into an “I’m right” form that was a defense mechanism rather than a true accounting of facts? What would have happened if instead of defending an indefensible position, you apologized for what you did or said—regardless of whether you believed it?

When I did a horrible job of parking my car in a lot, upon returning, I was met by an individual who was complaining to anybody who listened about “the inconsiderate idiot who parked his car so I can’t get into mine.” Instead of explaining that I only did that because I was experiencing vision problems from an accident, I apologized profusely. The angry motorist stopped berating me in mid-sentence and then apologized for being rude.

Takeaway: Often, when we react emotionally, it is based not only on what happened but also on anticipation of what we think will happen. The motorist expected me to argue with him, so he emotionally prepared for a verbal fight. When you react differently than what is expected, the person you are interacting with is often at a loss for what to do next, and the reaction tends not to include defensiveness.

4. Stop Being Judgmental

How often have you said something like, “If I were you, I would..." or “If it were me, I would...” These types of statements imply that your values are superior to those of the person whose behavior you are judging. The problem is that we rarely acknowledge that we aren’t the other person, nor ever will be. Yet the phrase implies that your judgment—because it is yours—is better than the other person’s. Few things are more detrimental to a relationship than questioning a person’s ethics or morality.

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Takeaway: Avoid using the phrase “If I were you…” or similar ones when judging the righteousness of someone’s behaviors. A better approach is acknowledging differences in values as reflecting different life experiences rather than creating a hierarchy of whose values are better.