5 Ways To Not Be Awful At Communication

Communication is the most common reason that couples break up–which, when you consider what communication is, makes human beings seem like complete dipshits.That’s why your relationship ended?  You just didn’t…talk enough? How does this happen so often? That’s like if the most common cause of death were people just…deciding to not eat.

“Yeah, I thought eating would make things weird between me and my body, so I decided to just not bother with food.  Anyway, for some reason, I’m about to die, lol.”

But of course, it’s not quite that simple.

After all, relationship-based communication is unique.  When someone is your life partner, they have exclusive access to your weaknesses.  This means they have the superpower to shatter your existence in like, 5-10 innocuous words.

“You know what your real problem is?”

“Do you have a plan B to your singing career?”

“Hmm.  Your body looks different.”

Boom.  Life ruined.  Sense of self crumbled.

And this is part of the territory.  To some degree, love means giving another person the power to completely destroy your sense of self-worth.  So when we say we suck at communication, we really mean that we’re struggling to work around this terrifying superpower that we give our partner to ruin us.

The tragedy of it all is that bad communication doesn’t necessarily indicate that something is broken with the relationship, or that the couple is wrong for each other.  Bad communication is mostly just a popular way to fuck up a good thing.

So fixing this seems important.  Let’s look into how we can try.

Often we’ll feel angry, or disappointed, but our brains don’t want to tell us why, because our brains are fucking liars.  They don’t want to remind us of our real problems: our fledgling career, our lack of respect from our parents/peers/boyfriend, or our underwhelming genitals (THESE ARE HYPOTHETICAL).

So instead we redirect our anger, and get furious at the dumbest, most random bullshit possible.  This is why we honk at someone taking a half-second to respond to a green light, why we hold a weird grudge against Anne Hathaway, and why we yell “Fuck you and your family!” at a piece of half-built IKEA furniture.  We always, always redirect.

Our significant others are often victims of our redirection, mostly because “Hey, you’re standing next to me.”
This is why couples get into screaming matches about what kind of lotion to get at Target.  The lotion is a stand-in for the shit their brains are trying to protect them from.

Here’s the bad news: There’s not much you can do about redirecting…at least, initially.  It’s just a shitty reflex we have–like snacking, or singing along to a Katy Perry song. What we can do is notice when we’re redirecting our anger, and then adjust.

How do we do this?  After every initial burst of rage, during a moment of relative calm, we have to habitually evaluate ourselves.  We must watch ourselves raise our voice because our fiancee took our bowl of soup to the sink while we were still planning to lick the sides clean (okay that one’s less hypothetical), and we must evaluate what we’re doing, and–really–why.

So whenever the source of your anger seems stupid, assume you’re redirecting, step back, and ask yourself what’s really going on.  Ask yourself why you’re actually upset, and then let the shitty truth in.

Then, talk to your partner about it.  Sit down, say, “I’m upset about my eating choices/how I spent my 20’s/substandard dong,” and hash it out.

Have you ever had a stranger start talking to you about their struggles in life?  Like you’re in an elevator, and you start talking about the weather, and a stranger somehow links that to their child no longer speaking to them, and you’re tempted to hit the emergency button to get someone to save you from this nightmare?

We don’t generally want to hear peoples’ problems, and so we often assume nobody wants to hear ours–which is mostly accurate.  Stop with the vague Facebook statuses, people.

The mistake we make is in carrying this notion over to our relationships, where we worry that our problem will just burden our partner, or make things weird, or kill the relationship’s fun.

So as partners, it’s not enough to listen when your SO talks.  You have to drastically overcompensate to make them feel listened to—like you’re really fucking there for them.  Make eye contact, physical contact, pick up a bunch of items in the room just so that you can demonstrably “drop everything” to listen to them.

Make it abundantly clear that their problems are your first priority.  And on that note…

So you need to not only be unafraid to express your truth, but you need to take aggressive steps to make your partner unafraid to express their truth–no matter what.

This means you have to make it clear that your partner can be totally honest with you without worrying about an oncoming storm of shit and tears.  In other words, they have to feel like they can comfortably hurt your feelings.

How do you foster this comfort?  First, you need to encourage them over and over to say what they’re really thinking–like to annoying extents.  Like they should tell you to shut the fuck up at least once because you’re saying “tell me how you’re really feeling,” so much.

Then when they do speak their truth, even if their words break your soul a little bit, you need to have the mildest reaction you can muster.  You have to hear, “I just wish the sex was like it was with David, you know?” and nod, maybe fake smile, and say, “Okay,” even if on the inside, you’re fantasizing about stepping in front of a train.

That will completely open the doors of communication like never before, and that’s worth dying inside a little for.

Honesty is of course crucial to this process, but always remember this: no intelligent conversation has ever been had above 60 decibels, or through dry heaving ugly tears.

Productive talks require real thought and consideration.  Trying to have one while cry-yelling is like trying to operate heavy machinery by flailing your arms around and calling the machine a bitch.

So express your emotions, sure, but do so by calmly saying what they are.

If your partner doesn’t totally suck, then a calm, “I am very upset because of x, y, and z,”  should be extremely effective in getting them to listen to you.

Sometimes you can’t help but get emotional, and that’s fine.  You just can’t continue trying to have a real conversation when you do.  So take a timeout, and get your emotions out first.

I don’t care how you want to do it.  Scream into a pillow, write in your diary, post an all caps Tweet about whatever social group you prefer to scapegoat for your problems.  Do whatever you need to do to get out all of your emotions first, and then go back to giving real communication another try.

We sometimes don’t communicate because we’re afraid of the results of it.  Sometimes we have something we need to get off our chest or address, but we think, “If I drop this truth bomb on her head, she will be devastated/break up with me/tell my friends about the foghorn sound I make when I climax.”

But festering qualms are relationship pre-cancer.   You’re almost never risking the relationship by saying something controversial nearly as much as you are by not saying something.

If you don’t believe me, let’s look at your options if you have a thought festering inside of you that you’re afraid to express:

1. Get it out (following the rest of these rules).  Accept the ugliness that will result, trust that your relationship can withstand it, and work through it.
2. Let it fester and boil, and grow until one day it explodes out of you, and all over your lives and you have this gross ass relationship puss all over you (this usually either kills or toxifies the relationship).
3. Hold the thought in forever, and look forward to a lifelong relationship full of bitter resentment, and lashing out.

Personally, I think option 1 doesn’t seem too bad.

Over all, if you have a good relationship, believe in it enough to believe that you can keep it real all the time.  Vomit your feelings onto the floor and have your partner help clean them up. It’s gross, but that’s what love is for–cleaning up each others’ feeling vomit.

Fair warning though: you may follow all of these steps, and it may reveal that your partner totally sucks and that you should leave them.

Let’s be honest: that’s part of the reason you’re not following all of these rules right now, isn’t it?  You’re afraid they’ll reveal your boyfriend is kind of sociopathic douche, aren’t ya?  You’re afraid he’s going to ignore all of your problems, or blame you for them, or suggest that his dick will solve them, aren’t you?

There’s a decent chance that will happen.  Be okay with that too, and be okay with it ending the relationship if you find out your partner blows.  You’ll survive the end of a bad relationship, and if you’re not a lazy coward, you’ll eventually find a good one.

Be willing to risk what you have with someone for your own good.  Put your relationship through the ringer of brutal truth.  If it’s a worthy one, you’ll come out stronger.

Or at the very least, you won’t be one of these dipshits who dies because they just decided to not eat.