When to have difficult conversations
When is the right time to bring up a potentially sensitive topic with your partner? When should you bring up that thing they do or have done that really gets under your skin? Is there any particularly good time to have a conversation that might so easily blow up in your face?
Before we get into the preferable time to have conversations like this, let’s start with the wrong time, which just happens coincide with the most common practice - in the heat of the moment. We tend to bring up difficult topics when they are most relevant, the moment they happen (or right afterwards). After all, we’re thinking about it right now, and there’s no time like the present, right? Plus, it’s fresh, so no one’s going to forget what just happened.
While there is some logic to that kind of thinking, what it’s failing to acknowledge is our particular state of mind in that particular moment - annoyed, fired up, perhaps even angry. If we’re picking the very moment our partner does something that bothers us, we’re likely coming in hot. We’re probably not choosing our words particularly carefully. John Gottman, a longtime marriage researcher, refers to this way of coming in hot as a “harsh start-up,” and says that when a conversation starts this way, it’s 96% likely to end poorly. So in other words, bringing up difficult topics while we’re fired up all but guarantees that the conversation will go off the rails, leaving both people worse for the wear.
There are great resources out there to help you bring up tricky topics more productively, but this article is focusing on the timing itself. For more information about harsh start-ups and the alternative - soft start-ups - see this Gottman Institute blog post.
So when IS the best time to bring up your grievances with your partner? The short answer is simply during calm, or even “good” moments. But why don’t we want to bring up difficult topics during good moments? Because we don’t want to ruin the good moment, of course. This particular topic doesn’t tend to go well, and we don’t want to bring that contentious vibe into this current moment and derail what could be a fun evening. And without enough proper communication tools between the two of you, there is some validity to this fear. However, what we’re failing to take into account is the fact that when we brought up this topic previously, it was most likely under “harsh start-up” circumstances, which condemned the conversation to fighting. If we can start this talk calmly and choose our words more carefully, it’s not guaranteed to go well, but it has a MUCH better chance. When we’re given a calm request, we’re much less likely to go on the defensive, and we’re more likely to hear our partner’s needs.
Beyond choosing calm moments, also consider the current mental state of both people, as well as what they have going on. Asking your partner to have a potentially difficult conversation in the middle of an activity they’re thoroughly enjoying is not likely to go particularly well. Likewise, broaching a big topic as you’re getting into bed might seem like an opportune moment because you’ve got a captive audience and you didn’t get a chance earlier in the day, but we’re not at our best when we’re tired and trying to wind down. It just means you might need to create a time earlier in the day by scheduling it if you’re not just naturally finding such a time.
Timing is a crucial ingredient in having better, more productive conversations with your partner. It helps to have many other tools as well, perspective-based strategies, as well as the ability to avoid defensiveness. Schedule a consultation with Chris to see if he’d be a good fit to teach you and your partner these tools to improve your communication habits.
