You keep having the same argument with your partner. You’re always going around in a circle, on and on and on. You never get anywhere, never resolve anything. You’re getting sick of it, and maybe a little bit sick of her. What are you doing wrong?
You’re not learning anything.
Remember what school was like? You sat at a desk and listened to the teacher. You squirmed in your seat until recess came. You formed groups and delivered presentations. You wrote papers, figured out equations, started art projects, and sang songs. You groaned about all the homework you had and came up with creative reasons for not completing it. You went up to the board. You raised your hand. Remember all that?
If that’s all you did in school, you didn’t learn a thing.
School also involved taking tests, receiving grades, getting told you were right or wrong by the teacher. You had to have feedback to know whether you were on the right path. Without it, you’d get lost.
If all you’re doing when you have an argument with your partner is telling her how you feel, you are not learning anything. If all you are doing is answering her questions or responding to her accusations, then you are as clueless at the end of those conversations as you were in the beginning.
If you do not have feedback from your partner, you’re not learning a thing.
You should never have a serious conversation without inviting feedback. Never say anything to your partner without having her demonstrate that she understands it. Never assume you know something she’s trying to say without checking with her first.
You’ve seen it in the movies.
The captain, anxious to avoid the iceberg, shouts to the helmsman, Hard right rudder!
The helmsman, before he does a thing, answers back, Hard right rudder, sir.
That’s feedback. Checking that you understand something before you proceed. Let me show you how it works in a marital context.
Your wife comes home from work and says to you, “I work all day while you’re home playing video games. The least you could do is pick up the house and make dinner so I don’t have to do it.”
You might have a lot to say about that. You may have a retort ready. You don’t play video games all day. Your two-year-old just made that mess in the past ten minutes. You were going to take her out for dinner. You might want to attack, call her a bitch, bring up something she does that annoys you. But all those things would start, or prolong, a fight.
Before you do any of those things, check to see if you heard her right.
Say something like this: “You want me to pick up the house and make dinner for when you come home because you think all I do is play video games. Is that right?”
You are not agreeing with her or conceding. You are not accusing her of something or starting a fight. You are simply reflecting back what you think she said.
She may say, “Yes, that’s what I’m saying. It’s about time you listened.”
She might make some minor correction because you didn’t hear it right or she didn’t say it right. Most of the time, giving feedback de-escalates the situation. She’s likely to back down from her original statement.
“No, honey, I realize you do more than play video games all day. I’m just tired, I guess.”
Doesn’t that sound better than a fight?
The Talking Stick
There’s an object in my office that might help. It’s a Talking Stick.
No, the stick doesn’t talk. But when you hold it, you do.
The concept of the Talking Stick comes, I’ve been told, from an old Native American tradition. When the elders gathered in a teepee to talk about important matters, they would pass around a Talking Stick. Whoever had the stick had the right to speak. Everyone else listened.
There are characteristics of sticks that make them perfect for talking. A stick performs the same functions that words can. A stick can be used for support, or for pointing things out. It can be a weapon. When you are handed a Talking Stick, you are being trusted that you will use your words wisely.
My Talking Stick has some feathers on it. When you hold the stick and speak, the feathers will move, blown around by the wind your breath makes. This is to show that your words have effect. People can be stirred, affected, or blown over by your words.
The Talking Stick is best held so that the bottom end is resting on the ground. This symbolizes that the talker is grounded. He or she is connected to reality, that earth upon which we all stand. However, the point only touches a very small piece of the earth. The talker can only claim a small bit of reality, just the point he or she is trying to make at the moment.
I frequently use the Talking Stick in marriage counseling whenever the partners have something they need to learn from one another. You may remember earlier I said that if you are not getting feedback, you are not learning anything. When you use the Talking Stick properly, you get feedback; you can learn.
Whoever starts off with the stick gets to speak first, but, just as you can only point a stick one place at a time, you can only make one point at a time. You can’t go on and on and on and expect your partner to absorb it all, much less show comprehension and respond to everything at once. Keep it short and concise.
Once you’ve made your point, your partner has to earn the right to speak by demonstrating that he has understood what you have just said.
Your partner should paraphrase, not parrot, the point you just made. It’s possible to mindlessly repeat what someone has said without understanding it. Paraphrasing is harder. Paraphrasing requires that he put into his own words the gist of what you were trying to say. He should paraphrase everything you just said when you had the stick.
If you asked him a direct question, he should paraphrase the question before answering it. That’s so he can prove to you and to himself that he understands the question he’s answering. Otherwise, he could be answering a question you didn’t even have. What good is that?
When you are satisfied that your partner comprehends the point you made, then you give him the stick. Even if he doesn’t agree, you can be satisfied that he gets it. He knows where you are coming from.
If you’re not satisfied that he understands, you have to make your point again, in a different way. Maybe he wasn’t listening. Maybe he distorted what you were trying to say. Maybe you weren’t explaining things well. Maybe you two have a variance over the meanings of words. In any case, aren’t you glad you asked him to paraphrase? If you hadn’t, then you might have gone on in confusion.
When he gets the stick, be prepared; you will have to paraphrase his message to you.
My Talking Stick has accrued a great deal of spiritual-medicinal power from hundreds of people talking with it over a third of a century. You’ll have to make an appointment if you want to use it. If that’s not feasible, though, it’s easy enough to make your own. Just know this: you’ll have to provide the spiritual medicine yourself.
Acknowledge Feelings
Every communication has two parts: the words and the music. There’s the content of what you say, and there’s how you say it. There’s the thought expressed, and there’s the feeling.
Throughout this article, I’ve been writing about how giving and receiving feedback is an essential part of working through conflict. It’s necessary to demonstrate that you understand what your partner is trying to say instead of assuming you interpreted the message correctly. You need your partner to demonstrate understanding before you know that she gets it. And though you might think that paraphrasing equals truly grasping your partner’s intention, that’s often not the case. Many times what she’s most interested in conveying is the emotion.
So, your wife comes home from work and says to you, “I’m sick of it! I work all day while you’re home playing video games! The least you could do is pick up your shit so I don’t have to do it! And where’s dinner?”
If you were to paraphrase just the words, you might say something like this, “You want me to pick up the house and make dinner for when you come home because you think all I do is play video games.”
That paraphrase is likely to be technically correct, but misses the main point. It fails to grasp the sense of urgency she’s trying to express. If you were to paraphrase the emotions as well as the words, you might say, “You’re angry and disgusted with me because you think all I do is play video games. You’d like me to pick up the house and make dinner instead.”
See, you reflected back what you thought you saw in her emotions, that she was angry and disgusted. You didn’t agree with her. You didn’t say, Yeah, I know, I’m a lazy and disgusting pig. You simply acknowledged her emotions. This is important for a number of reasons.
First, you are reacting to her emotions in addition to her words. You would react differently to her words based on whether she screamed them or said them sweetly, right? Therefore, you would want to check out your perception of her emotion to see whether it is correct.
Secondly, she’s trying to say something with her emotions as well as with her words. When you acknowledge the emotions, when the message is accurately received, she may have no reason to continue expressing them. Most of the time when emotions are acknowledged, people can let go of them. When you clearly understand that she is angry, she can stop trying to convince you that she is.
Finally, people’s thoughts and emotions are often out of sync. When you acknowledge her emotions, it’s like you’re putting a mirror up to her and showing her just how she looks to you. She may not realize she’s coming across so strong. This might help her tone it down a bit if she doesn’t mean to come across as a raving maniac.
On the other hand, if she did want to come across as a raving maniac, you’ve let her know that you got the message.
So acknowledge the emotions as well as the thoughts, even if — especially if — you don’t agree with them.
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Keith R Wilson is a mental health counselor in private practice and the author of Constructive Conflict: Building Something Good Out of All Those Arguments, from which this article is adapted.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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