Good Long Talks: An Oxymoron
Over the past fifteen years, I’ve seen couples from all walks of life make the same mistake: they keep talking about their problems.
Contrary to popular belief, when you’re having trouble with your partner, endlessly picking over what’s wrong rarely provides anyone with a sense of relief. First, by the time you’ve arrived at the conclusion that the same problems keep plaguing your relationship, you’re probably not in the best state of mind to discuss them. Second—and perhaps more importantly—talking about what’s wrong isn’t the only (or even the best) way to improve your relationship. How often can you recall moving past an impasse or negotiating a solution with your partner by talking about the same problem again and again? Is a three hour conversation really what made you happier?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m a couple’s therapist (and one that’s still married, too). I know the importance of good communication skills in a relationship. Use “I” statements, by all means. Assert your needs and make clear requests. I, myself, do all of those things just about every day with my daughters, and most of the time, it works. They now understand, for example, that daddy feels anxious when they swan-dive off the living room couch. Trouble is, however clearly I assert my need for them to stay alive, asking them to comply with what I see as good, old-fashioned life-preserving strategies never seems to be enough to do the trick.
I was reminded of this, one particularly hectic Sunday, when one daughter threw my own, tired psycho-babble back in my face by standing on tip-toe at the top of the stairs, swaying back and forth, and mercilessly taunting me. “Look daddy”, she said, singing. “It’s safety issue…it’s a safety issue, oh yeah, oh yeah!”
True, as a psychologist, I should have known better than to use cliché language like “issue” with a four year old. (I try very hard never to use the word at all. It’s one of my issues). Nevertheless, there we were, in a stand-off.
To my mind, this was completely unfair. I’d done my part. I made my request— clearly, I might add— and still, the dance continued. So I did the only sensible thing a parent could do: I asserted myself by putting her in timeout.
Am I suggesting that you use timeouts when you’re having fights with your partner?
Why, yes. Yes I am.
How to End an Argument That’s Going Nowhere
There are any number of reasons you should call a timeout when things get heated—first and foremost among them, when you’re in an intense, angry or upset state, all your reasoning powers pretty much go off-line.
Evolution, it seems, has it in for us couples. Human biology is ruthlessly efficient. Turns out, you really don’t need to think about a whole lot when a bear is chasing you, apart from, “Run!” Neural activity takes energy, and when your life is on the line, the shortest path to survival is the only one that makes sense. No time to sit around planning. Biology takes care of us by sending panic signals straight to our animal brain (the amygdala, in this case)—and off we go.
All this efficiency makes perfect sense when a bear is actually chasing you. It’s mostly a hindrance when you’re having a heated discussion with your partner. Unfortunately, your fight/flight (sympathetic) nervous system isn’t very good at distinguishing one emergency from another.
As your adrenaline rises (and your blood pressure with it), nature, in all its efficiency, takes control and robs you of the very powers of creativity, complexity of thought, and empathy you might need to find an exit to your argument (sadly, since empathizing with a bear rarely saves your life, that useful capacity won’t stick around either).
The end result of all this is that the angrier and more upset you get, the less likely you are to have a useful conversation at all. At that point, your best strategy is to stop talking.
Easier said than done. The same mechanisms that set you off in the first place might keep you saying and doing all kinds of useless thing just to win the fight. Since you’ll need some tools to stay on track with the whole not-talking thing, here’s a simple three-step plan:
1) Know your danger signals: What happens when you’re about to reach the boiling point? Do you clench your jaw? Do you feel your blood pressure rising? Do you make fists, or start to raise your voice? Pay close attention. This is your cue. Move to step two.
2) Call a timeout. That doesn’t mean storming out. It means saying something like, “I can tell I’m starting to get ticked and not thinking clearly. I need to take some time to calm down or I won’t be able to talk about this usefully. Let’s try again later.” Cue step three.
3) Time yourself out.
If you’re like most adults, you probably don’t use a timeout properly, even with your kids. A timeout isn’t a punishment. It’s a chance to calm down (sometimes called self-soothing). The strategy here is to shut down your fight/flight response so you can start thinking again. To do that you have to know a little about how your nervous system works.
Fight-Busting Tip: More Thanksgiving, Less Bear
For the purpose of stress management, we can roughly divide our nervous system into two halves: 1) the sympathetic nervous system 2) the parasympathetic nervous system.
Remember the bear? Your sympathetic nervous system (SNS) is what kicks in when that bear is after you. That’s your fight/flight response. Your parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) is what kicks in when you’re feeling calm and sleepy, the same way you do after a big Thanksgiving dinner. Each system reciprocally influences the other: when the PNS (calm, sleepy mode) goes up, the SNS (panicked, beary mode) goes down—and vice versa. This leads to a famous axiom in stress management: You can’t be relaxed and anxious at the same time.
It also leads to my standard recommendation for timeout: More Thanksgiving, less bear.
Your job in timeout is to use tools like slow breathing, listening to relaxing music, picturing yourself on the beach away from toddlers dancing on the edge of stairs— whatever it takes to fire up your PNS (Thanksgiving state) and power down your SNS (bear state).
Do all that—then try talking again. I guarantee it’ll go a lot more smoothly.
You’ll notice this particular post is about when to take a break from conversation. While timeouts are certainly an important tool in the art of wordless relationship-improvement, they’re not the only one.
Be sure to check back soon. In the posts to come, I’ll be sharing more ways to improve your relationship that don’t require any conversation at all.
If you like my posts, let me know! Let's connect on facebook and twitter. I frequently respond to comments and questions there. And feel free to check out www.drcraigmalkin.com for more tips and advice, as well as information on my book in progress.