How many times have you avoided a subject that feels awkward, glossed over a point of tension, redirected a conversation safely away from conflict? While these techniques may be useful to preserve relationships with casual acquaintances, when used with those we are close to they instead create and perpetuate distance. The question then becomes: how do I address an uncomfortable subject with my partner or child or close friend? How do I begin a hard conversation with someone I love?
Often the thought of raising a difficult subject with someone we care about makes us anxious. We worry we will create further tension – either by causing unnecessary hurt feelings in our loved one, or by getting hurt and more shut down ourselves. We may worry that we’ll cause more harm than good – either by making our loved one angry toward us, or by overreacting angrily ourselves. Whatever worrisome scenario we imagine, it often seems safer to “leave well enough alone,” to “not rock the boat,” in other words, to settle for a relationship that is necessarily less trusting and less genuine. This solution is not a safe one at all. Avoiding communicating about issues that matter to you not only takes a lot of energy but ultimately reduces a once close relationship to one in which you must be careful and cannot be open or honest.
Here are 3 practical ways to approach a thorny subject that can disarm both you and your loved one, and leave you vulnerable to each other, resulting in an exchange that may leave you feeling closer than you were before.
- Here’s how I feel about you and why it’s important to me to clear the air.
First, it is necessary to create a safe atmosphere where both people can talk freely about themselves and their feelings. This requires being in touch with your caring and loving feelings toward the other person; it doesn’t work if you are heated or judgmental. Anger begets anger.
To this end, it is important to express your underlying love for the other person, thereby assuring them that you care about them, even though you might not like something they have done or the way they are behaving. You might start by saying something like, “I love and care about you and that isn’t going to change. You matter to me and that’s why I need to tell you what’s bothering me, so that we can remain close.” Your acknowledgement not only reassures your partner, but keeps you connected to your loving feelings. Maintaining this balanced perspective about your relationship allows you to not get lost in the angry emotions, which then helps to create an atmosphere of openness rather than defensiveness.
- Here’s what I know about what’s bothering me and what I think about myself in it.
Take time to turn your attention to yourself. What is your goal in the conversation? Do you want to prove you’re right or to extract an apology? If so, the conversation is bound to leave you feeling just as emotionally estranged as before. If your goal is to end up closer, to remove this barrier between you, the conversation can become a cooperative endeavor in which you both work together toward achieving this goal.
It is helpful to be aware of the parts of you that might be over-sensitive and over-reactive. You can take inventory and be honest with yourself about your own emotional sensitivities and triggers. For instance, if you are approaching your partner about sharing household chores more equally, but you tend to be overly picky about how they are done, that is important to keep in mind. If you’re talking to your teen about their “irresponsible” friends but know that much of your alarm may come from your own wild teenage years, that’s a good thing to note. If you’re confronting a close friend about an annoying tone you thought they had, but you know that you are especially reactive to tones, that is good information to consider.
In Secure Relating: Holding Your Own in an Insecure World, Partners and co-authors Sue Marriott and Ann Kelley offer science-based, practical information on how to regain our ability to engage genuinely and with joy in our most personal relationships and in the broader world. Here is an excerpt from their article, “Advice from Married Psychotherapists on Overcoming Insecurity” in the magazine Next Big Idea Club:
“…However, we can’t dial up optimism and care whenever we want. We must learn how to create that in ourselves and others. This is difficult because you can’t change what you don’t see. Discovering how to tell if you are operating from this reactive, defensive place or a more secure state is not easy.
Imagine yourself in an argument with your partner or your teenager, and suddenly, they catch themselves, and they say, Ah, I can hear how I’m coming across. I must be more upset than I think. That kind of moment of self-awareness would be heaven. It works too, because it takes the wind out of the sails of escalating tension. Just one move towards secure relating is enough to calm a situation down.”
The more you reveal about yourself, the more the other person trusts you and relaxes. They can feel for you and will be more open about themselves in return.
- What do you think about it?
And finally, keeping an attitude of genuine interest and curiosity is key – not assuming you know the other person’s motives or feelings, but instead really asking and then listening to what they reveal to you about how they viewed the situation, how they felt in it, and what they intended.
In their book, How to Feel Loved, Drs. Sonja Lyubomirsky and Harry Reis bring together their combined decades of research on, respectively, happiness and close relationships, and offer 5 mindsets that, when adopted, lead to more intimate and fulfilling relationships.
In an article entitled “Five Ways to Feel More Loved,” in the online magazine Greater Good: Science-Based Insights for a Meaningful Life, Dr Reis explains the Listening-to-Learn mindset:
“When we listen to another person, we’re often preparing our response. That distances you from the other person. It doesn’t allow you to connect with them. The listening-to-learn mindset is the idea that you really need to pay attention so that you can actually learn something about the other person. You need to be curious about what they’re saying. And then—and this is the important part—you need to encourage them to go deeper. One of the most powerful things you can say is a simple three-word phrase: ‘Tell me more.’”
Including these three elements in your approach allows the other person to feel cared about instead of attacked. It invites curiosity instead of defensiveness. When your tone conveys a desire for closeness and connection, the conversation can leave both of you more vulnerable and open to one another.
Pick an optimal time and place to broach the subject, allowing space for the fullness of the conversation, which may end up ranging over many subjects that come to mind for each of you, such as related concerns or insights, or just time to enjoy each other’s company once the tension has lifted.
Communicating with loved ones about subjects that make you uncomfortable can feel scary, like something to avoid. But learning to navigate the hard things that inevitably arise in a relationship is a necessary part of coming to know your partner and yourself on a deeper level, allowing your day-to-day interactions to be easier, warmer and more personal overall.