How to Tell Your Partner Something They Don’t Want to Hear
All I hear from you is the same complaint. It’s getting really annoying.”
“Can you imagine how annoying it is for me to keep experiencing this? I don’t want to keep telling you. And I don’t want it to keep happening.”
They were talking about the skid marks that kept appearing in the toilet.
There are two jobs in a difficult conversation. The first is figuring out how to tell someone something they probably don’t want to hear. The second is figuring out how to listen when you are the one who doesn’t want to hear it.
We spend a lot of time talking about the first job. Use a soft startup. Talk about how you feel. Stay away from generalizations. Don’t turn a complaint about something someone did into a character attack.
All of that matters. But you can deliver something carefully and the other person can still hate hearing it. Sometimes there is no particularly pleasant way to hear, “I was hurt by what you did,” or “I need more from you here.” So both people have work to do.
How do I tell you something you don’t want to hear?
Start by knowing what you are actually trying to tell them.
Separate what happened from the enormous story your nervous system may have built around it. “You didn’t call me when you said you would” gives us something specific to talk about. “I can never depend on you” has already turned the moment into a conclusion about our relationship.
Talk about what happened before talking about who the other person is. “That felt dismissive” is different from “You’re dismissive.” One describes an experience. The other asks someone to accept a judgment about who they are.
And say what you need to say. Sometimes we become so concerned with delivering feedback perfectly that the truth disappears inside the packaging. You are allowed to say, “I didn’t like that.” You can say, “I think that was unfair,” or “This isn’t okay with me.” A soft startup still needs to contain the actual complaint.
It also helps to distinguish impact from intention. You can believe that someone didn’t intend to hurt you and still tell them that they did. Intent gives us important information about what happened. So does impact.
Stay with the specific issue long enough for it to land. When we have been sitting on something for a while, there can be a temptation to bring out the entire file: the six other examples, what happened last Christmas, the thing their mother does, the prediction about what they will do next time. Now the original complaint has disappeared under the evidence.
Give the other person enough room to have their own reality too. You may be missing information. They may remember something differently. Their perspective may change your understanding of what happened. You can take that in while still taking your own experience seriously.
How do I listen to something I don’t want to hear?
This may be the harder job. Someone we love is unhappy with us. They may think we were selfish or inconsiderate, or they may be asking for something we don’t particularly want to give.
Defensiveness can begin before we have even had time to think. Your body tightens. You start constructing the rebuttal. You remember the time they did exactly the same thing. You want to explain what you meant. This is where curiosity becomes useful.
Can I become interested in what you are telling me before I decide what I think about it?
Can I tolerate you being unhappy with me long enough to understand why you are unhappy with me?
That requires some willingness to sit in the discomfort of hearing that we hurt someone, especially when their experience of us doesn’t match our experience of ourselves.
Feeling criticized can make everything sound like an attack. Shame can make us want to escape the conversation as quickly as possible. We start building the case for why their version of events is wrong.
Instead, I can ask myself:
What part of this might be mine?
What happened from their side?
What am I hearing that is making me want to defend myself?
Do I disagree with what they are saying, or do I simply hate hearing it?
What would I understand differently if I assumed there is something here worth understanding?
Listening still leaves room for disagreement. I may hear you carefully and decide that I see the situation differently. I may understand why you are hurt and disagree with what you are asking of me. I may see my part and also see something that belongs to you.
That is part of what makes curiosity possible. I can let your experience affect my understanding without giving up my own.
Each person has a responsibility here. I need to make what I am saying possible to hear, and you need to stay with it long enough to understand what I am telling you.
How do we make difficult truths survivable between us?
Can I tell you something you would rather not know, and can you stay curious long enough to hear what I am trying to tell you?
Because there will always be things we would rather our partners didn’t have to tell us. There will also be things we wish we didn’t have to say.
