Hey. What's up everybody. Welcome back or welcome to the podcast. I hope everyone's month is going good and if not, then I hope that next month is better.
So.
I would like to think that I am a rather observant person, my husband would most likely disagree, but we observe different things. He notices the details, all of them. The cars, the people, other aspects of our surroundings, those types of things. I notice conversations. I enjoy when I pick up a line from someone's conversation as I am walking by, cause a good majority of the time, what I hear makes me chuckle. But one of the consistent things that I have noticed after a while, was that people don't know how to talk to one another. At least not about things that really matter, like how we are feeling, when something is wrong or when something needs to be corrected. Those are conversations that almost never go the way we wanted them to go.
Everyone learns how to talk at a pretty young age. It is a skill that is used basically everyday, in some aspect. But not everyone knows how to have a conversation.
But Aprille, how is that possible? You just said that everyone knows how to talk. Well just because you can talk to someone, does not mean that you know how to have a conversation.
A conversation, in its simplest form, involves at least two people and an exchange of information. Not two people talking at the same time, not one person talking and not allowing the other person to add any input and not someone refusing to listen. Those are not conversations that will benefit you in anyway and they will tend to lead you in circles.
Being able to communicate has been our most effective tool, for ages. It was how we exchanged information before it was put down onto stone for someone to find. It is, in my opinion, the best gift that we were ever given. But there are some people that will never do it correctly.
I love to watch people talk. I like to dissect the flow of the conversation and I nerd out when someone can communicate well. But more often than not, I see how people fail at conversing. How they struggle. Where they went wrong. How they could have said something differently. How to better express their point. When someone isn’t listening.
Usually, when communication gets brought up for discussion, a lot of the focus goes towards the actual talking part. And it’s important, don’t get me wrong, but it is also only half of the equation. You need to have someone listening to what you have to say for the communication to work. Otherwise you’re just a few steps away from being the neighborhood wacko and I don’t think anybody wants that.
Listening is the silent skill, if you will, out of being a good communicator. And it’s not just being able to hear what someone has said to you. It’s taking their point and processing what they have laid out for you. Then adding onto it to further the conversation. It’s how a conversation can easily become a never ending cycle, because you can talk about anything.
Which can be freeing and enjoyable, but there are usually some topics that people tend to avoid, myself included. There are some conversations that you feel don't need to be had, for your own reasons. But there are also some conversations that need to be had and you decide to put them off using any number of reasons. I like to call those hard conversations, cause they are never easy, but most of the time necessary for the betterment of the relationship.
And these conversations can be with anyone, but they normally come up more often with the people in your life. Partners, family, friends, co-workers, anyone that you have an interpersonal relationship with, because we’re not perfect. We all make mistakes. We all do things that we shouldn’t have done. We all say things that we shouldn’t have said. We all have situations that we look back on and go “damn, I didn’t make one right decision that night,” then we have to answer for those decisions. Or we need to have someone in our lives answer for their own decisions. Both are equally terrifying.
No one wants to hear how their actions, words, or choices affected someone that they care about, at least no good person anyway. Just the same as no one wants to be the one to start that conversation, but it doesn't change the fact that the conversation is needed.
Conflict is everywhere. But conflict does not have to result in drama. How you handle conflict and if you are able to handle conflict are important. I understand that there are people that don’t like conflict, so they normally try every possible avenue to avoid it. I am not one of those people, but my husband is. Conflict is going to happen, but it doesn’t have to always be a bad thing. It doesn’t always have to mean fighting with someone.
Which is what I think a lot of people struggle with when it comes to addressing trouble spots or pressure points within a relationship. People will usually take one of two avenues. They will either just swallow the emotion and decide to not address it because, “what’s the point,” or they will choose to do the silent treatment because that at least tells the other person that they are upset, just not about what.
Both of those options will have the same result, a fight, which is normally what everyone is trying to avoid, right? Swallowing the emotion will lead to a fight because the issue will never be addressed, so the same thing will keep happening until you finally snap and then, the flood gates open. Which is why things from 3 years ago will continue to get brought up any time a fight breaks out. The silent treatment will lead to a fight because one person has to continuously play the guessing game to figure out what went wrong. Eventually it will lead to someone snapping due to, one person constantly doing the thing that is resulting in the treatment or the other person gets sick of the guessing game. Sure that method will sometimes get the result of an apology, but it’s a placating “I’m sorry.” Instead of an “I’ll work on it so it won’t happen again,” apology. Neither option with get the results that are actually wanted, being heard and for the issue to be resolved, permanently.
I’m sure if either of those two methods are done enough times, they will eventually produce some sort of success. But how many fights do people need to have in order to resolve one issue? How many times does the same issue from however many years ago need to be brought up before it’s actually addressed? How many nights need to be spent fighting to make the relationship stable again?
Relationships should never have to feel like a chore. That is not to say that they require no work, because they do, if you want to retain the relationship and if you value the person on the other end of it. But it shouldn’t feel like you are constantly having to put on battle armor.
As I already mentioned, I am not a person that has an issue with conflict. I don’t intentionally seek it out, but I won’t shy away from it, if it were to come up. While my husband is someone who tends to try to avoid conflicts all the times. I don’t see conflicts has a bad thing, because it means that there is something that can be worked on, either within myself or within the relationship, to make it all work better. For the longest time, my husband didn’t see it like that. He saw it, as most people do, as something that would lead to a fight.
At the beginning of our relationship, we had different mindsets when it came to conflict/fighting. He had a “me v you” mindset, while i had an “us v the problem” mindset.
When I think of the concept of fighting, I would put it under the “me v you” category because if I’m fighting someone, I’m there to win whether it’s verbally or otherwise. And that is not something that I would want to do with someone in my life that I care about and value. I would rather figure out what the problem is and see how we, together, can find a solution that will fix the problem. I want to resolve the conflict.
I enlightened my husband on how conflict within a relationship can be resolved without it leading to a fight. There are still many factors that go into figuring out how to resolve the issue, but having both parties on the same page for how to view the conflict is definitely a start.
The other factors that take the most practice, the most trial and error, the most foot in your mouth statements, and the most time spent on what works for you, are the actual "telling the other person what’s wrong" part and the actual "listening to what the other person is saying" part. These are where the change begins to happen or has the ability to happen within a relationship.
Change after conflict isn’t a bad thing because it means that whatever was causing tension on the relationship is getting removed. That the relationship is evolving and getting stronger.
In the famous words of Bréne Brown, “these are the moments where you need to lean in and be vulnerable,” with that other person. If you have not had the opportunity to listen to her TedTalk about the power of vulnerability, I highly recommend it. She paints a beautiful picture on how "vulnerability" is both the death and birthplace of being a "whole-hearted" person.
Being vulnerable with anyone is not an easy thing to do. Hell, I would even say that, being vulnerable is one of the most uncomfortable parts of the human experience.
Most people will avoid being vulnerable by any means necessary because they normally correlate vulnerability to things like heartbreak, rejection, trauma or any number of negative emotions. But they forget that you also get love, connection, growth and healing through vulnerability as well. How can someone fix something that bothers you when you won't tell them? Unless they have mastered the ability to read minds, but I don't think those chances are very high .
What I think happens is, when people are in a committed, healthy relationship, one person at some point expects the other to just know them so well to the point where they don’t need to verbally express how they are feeling or when something is bothering them. And their argument is, "well you should just be able to tell when I am not okay.” That approach will only go so far. I can tell when my husband breathes differently. I can clock that as if I were a trained Seal, but I wouldn’t be able to explain the "why" behind the shift if my life depended on it. I am dead in the water until he tells me if there is something bothering him.
I catch myself falling into that "you should know" thought pattern from time to time, mainly because it seems like we share a brain a solid majority of the time. But no matter how often we think of the same things or are on the same page, we will never be able to predict how the other is feeling or when something will bother them. Not being able to anticipate the other person's feelings doesn’t mean that they don’t love you or that they don’t pay attention, it just means that they need a little help to get onto the same page.
But starting these conversations can be extremely intimating because you don't know how the other person will react to the conversation. And I think a lot of that has to do with the approach. When a conversation starts with "you did this," it is going to take a lot longer to reach any type of resolution because the other person is immediately going to go on the defense. The conversation is no longer about what the person did to make you feel a specific way, it is about them defending and explaining why they did what they did. It becomes very easy for this conversation to become a "me v you" fight.
There is an easier way to approach these conversations without making the other person feel defensive. Instead of starting with an accusatory statement such as “you did this,” change it to “I felt like this when you did that.” I’m sure to a lot of people this phrasing doesn’t seem like a big deal, but by phrasing it this way, it takes the accusation out of the statement. The focus is no longer on what they did, but about the way that it made you feel.
It is also important to explain why you felt those emotions regarding what the other person did. The “because” behind the emotion will help to establish a need for a change either within a person or within the relationship.
Being able to initiate these conversations is a key step in this process but it is equally as important to know how to handle these conversations when they are brought to you. As I mentioned earlier, knowing how to listen carries as much weight as knowing how to start the conversation. They go hand and hand. The conversation won’t work unless both parties are doing their part.
I have seen too many people who are fighting/arguing not listen to each other and it prolongs the entire thing. All they are doing is waiting for the other person to stop talking so they can continue with what they want to say, which is not listening. That approach doesn’t lead to a constructive conversation or getting an issue resolved.
An important thing to remember when someone is initiating these types of conversations with you, is that they don’t want to bring these things up to hurt you. These types of conversations are not meant to cause harm or disruption in a healthy relationship, they are used to make sure both parties are doing everything they can to ensure that the relationship stays strong. Having this reminder will allow you the mental space to listen to what the other person is trying to tell you.
When I say “listen” I mean that you are not only hearing what the person is saying to you, but you are also trying to understand their perspective & how whatever you did could cause them to feel that way. It’s noticing your error or how you could have said something differently or done something different. It’s about seeing what you can do differently next time so the person that you care about doesn’t keep having their feelings hurt or disregarded. Being able to take accountability shows that you care and them bringing up what was bothering them shows that they care.
There are a couple other aspects of having hard conversations that you might also want to take into consideration before making the decision to have this conversation, such as do you fully understand not only what is bothering you, but why it’s bothering you? Are you in a good enough headspace for this conversation? Are there any other outside aspects that could have an effect on the conversation like, are you hungry, stressed, tired? There is always a time and place for these conversations, they don’t need to happen the second you recognize that something is bothering you.
A few months ago, when I was working on getting my first episode completed, I had asked my husband for help with the editing process because he has more experience with the program than I do. He was under the assumption that I only needed him to take out the mistakes for this one part. So after he was working on the episode for about an hour, it came to light that I was wanting more done to the episode than what my husband was already doing. The conversation ended up taking a different turn and he ended up saying something that hurt my feelings. We ended the conversation and went on with our night. The next day after we got home from work, I took a shower to decompress from the day and we ate dinner, then once we were done eating I asked him if we were able to talk about something.
My husband knew the conversation was coming cause he knew something was bothering me all day. He, too, can tell when I breathe differently, but I didn’t end up admitting that something was bothering me until after we were already home.
Well Aprille, if he knew something was bothering you, then why didn’t you tell him earlier in the day? There are a few reasons why I waited. One, I wasn’t going to have that conversation at work, it wasn’t the place for it. I didn’t want there to be a time limit on the conversation then spend the remainder of the day in a weird limbo because we weren’t able to get it resolved in one sitting. Two, I didn’t know exactly what my husband had said that caused my feelings to be hurt. I needed to sit with the emotion and figure out the “why” behind it. It wouldn’t have been fair to my husband to bring something up that I didn’t fully understand myself. It wouldn’t have lead to a productive conversation.
But since I took the time to gather my thoughts and emotions, knew the time and place of where the conversation should be had, and made sure that I was relaxed and fed, the conversation took less than 10 minutes to reach a resolution. There was no yelling, no name calling, no other topics brought up, no storming off and no other hurtful things said. We both listened to what the other had to say, we both apologized for our parts (him for saying the hurtful thing, me for not communicating the full idea for the editing process) and we both recognized where we can be better next time.
Talking to the people in your life about your feelings and how something they did affected you, doesn’t have to be a death sentence to the relationship, romantic or otherwise. Keeping those emotions & thoughts to yourself will only open the door for resentment to make its way into the relationship. Harboring resentment towards people that you care about and value is going to change your relationship with them more than having that hard conversation will. Resentment will cause you to pull away from those people more and more the longer the resentment builds.
I know these conversations aren’t easy and they aren’t fun, but they will save you and the relationships you have with the people in your life. The lead up to the conversation is the worst part because the human mind has the ability to make us think of the worst possible outcomes which makes the whole process infinitely more stressful. But if you start taking steps in the right direction, it does get easier the more you do it. It’s a learning curve and it’s something that both people will need to work at to make the conversation work, but it can be done and it does work. You just need to have faith in yourself that you can start that conversation or be able to listen to the person who starts that conversation with you.
Before we end our time together, I want to preface something about having hard conversations with people. These conversations only work when both people are doing their part and are both willing to make any necessary changes needed to keep the relationship going. If you are wanting to have these types of conversations with a person that is toxic, it is not going to work no matter how gentle you approach the subject. Toxic people cannot handle any level of criticism and they normally aren’t interested in changing any aspect of themselves, because to them, they are never the problem. Trying to force these conversations to be had with people that have no interest in what you have to say or how you feel, is only going to cause you more pain. But not everyone around is a toxic person and that shouldn't deter you from practicing having these kinds of conversations with the people that deserve them. The relationships that are worth being stable again. It takes time and some conversations are going to bring some hurt before they can start to heal. You get to make that decision. I don't think we will ever stop learning better ways to say things, but that's the beauty of conversations...they can go on forever if we want them too.
As always, to all the negative voices in your head, B!tch Bet.