While we might absolutely love our partner, sometimes knowing that we have to have a hard conversation makes us feel really negative. Maybe you lie awake working out exactly what you will say to your partner, and about a minute into the actual conversation, it has gone sideways. Maybe it was about the kids, or a furtive glance at a stranger. Maybe it was about money. Maybe it was about whose turn it is to empty the dishwasher, again. Experience has shown me that putting the talk off does not help much either.
The heart of these hard discussions is surprisingly direct. From an evolutionary perspective, conflict between partners is not a sign that love itself has failed. Buss (1989) proposed that conflict arises when one partner’s strategy interferes with the other’s goals, and that anger (among other feelings) is an emotional alarm signalling that interference. While the results of Buss’ study are mixed, it suggests a very simple insight, which is that the issues we find hardest to raise are often the ones where our interests and our partner’s do not really overlap.
In other words, the emotions you feel before a hard conversation provide valuable information and should not be ignored. They tell you that something matters to you. Is it your partner’s opinion? The outcome of the chat?
The challenge is delivering the information without setting off your partner’s alarms in return. The first three minutes are really going to matter. Carrère and Gottman (1999) filmed 124 newlywed couples arguing about something. Six years later, 17 of those couples had divorced, and they were couples who had started their arguments with more negativity and less warmth than those who stuck together did. Those critical three minutes at the start were enough to predict how the marriages turned out. What this means, at least to me, is that the opening for the hard discussion sets the tone. A conversation that begins with criticism or contempt leaves little room for anything positive to happen, whereas one that begins with some warmth, interest, or humor gives both people a chance to be positive. There is room for something other than negativity.
When having a hard discussion, most of us know that we should try to be present and open for our partner. Most of us also know that we have to be wary of the classic demand-withdraw pattern, where one partner pushes for change, often with criticism or blame, while the other avoids the topic, becomes defensive, and pulls away. A meta-analysis of 74 studies with more than 14,000 participants linked the pattern to lower relationship satisfaction, less intimacy, and poorer communication (Schrodt et al., 2014). What might be missed, though, is what this pattern is saying, which is that the partner who wants more change on the topic under discussion is more likely to demand, while the partner who wants less change may be more likely to withdraw (Holley et al., 2010).
We also know that emotions can be modified by food, and prepping for a hard conversation is particularly susceptible to hunger. Bushman and colleagues (2014) tracked blood sugar in married couples over three weeks. In one of my all-time favourite study designs, each evening, participants stuck pins into a voodoo doll representing their spouse, depending on how angry they felt. (Does science get any better?) More pins were correlated with lower evening glucose levels. Lange and Kurzban (2014) have questioned whether this is really about self-control, but in any case, the practical lesson seems low risk, which is do not open a difficult topic when either of you is hungry, or worse, “hangry.”
One final consideration that might be worth a thought is to imagine how an objective observer would view your discussion. Over two years, Finkel and colleagues (2013) followed 120 married couples. In year two, half of the couples spent just seven minutes, three times over the year, writing about their most recent disagreement from the perspective of a neutral third party who wants the best for everyone involved. While average marital quality declined for both groups in the first year, the decline stopped for those who did the writing, but not for the other couples.
Now, for some tips. Let’s start with remembering that, above all else, the first three minutes matter when starting a hard conversation.
- Choose your timing. Raise the topic after a meal rather than when either of you is hungry. Over a dessert and coffee is a perfect time to not rush and have a good chat.
- Open gently and with kindness. Begin with something warm or appreciative before going directly to the issue, given that early positive emotion distinguished the couples who stayed together.
- Think about what matters to you. Treat your anger or other emotions as a signal of what you need, and state that need rather than listing your partner’s faults, after you have started the conversation.
- Try to consider the situation from the angle of an objective observer. Before you begin, or after a talk if it goes badly, take a few minutes to picture the disagreement the way a fair-minded friend who wants the best for you both would. Reflect on that and allow that to help influence future discussion.
While I would personally love to think otherwise, difficult conversations will never be easy, and perhaps they should not be, given that they tend to arise where two people’s interests are not aligned. When they do happen, a warm and positive first few minutes, a full stomach, and a little distance from the fight may help the person you love actually hear you.
