If you want to be heard, speak the language of your listener

Chanie said it “right” when she asked her husband, Eli, to consider her feelings. She used the magic formula: describe the problem briefly, state the emotional impact, and ask for what you want. “Eli, when you don’t buy everything that I put on the shopping list, I feel let down. I really need you to check off each item on the list before you leave the store.”

Eli’s partial performance has happened so many times throughout their marriage, and every time Chanie has tried to be understanding. But of late, the errors have intensified in quantity and frequency, and Chanie has run out of patience.

“I need to be able to count on him,” she explains. “I take very good care of him, but he’s not taking good care of me. I feel resentful. I just want him to understand that the issue here is not the ketchup or the milk, it’s the way he makes me feel.”

Message Not Received

Unfortunately, Chanie’s message — despite being delivered in a respectful and healthy way — isn’t received the way she intended.

“Really?” Eli ranted when she finished speaking. “I shlep out to the store for you every week, and all you can do is complain about what I didn’t do right? I don’t know anyone else who puts their kids to bed, does half the carpools, makes the cholent every week, and does the shopping. But all you can do is complain!”

“Yes, he’s helpful. But does that mean I can’t tell him what I feel and what I need? I can’t raise any issues with him no matter how nicely I say it? I’m very careful with how I speak to him. I never put him down. I just let him know how I feel when he does something upsetting. But he gets mad at me nonetheless.”

Chanie’s right — her “good” communication techniques don’t work on Eli. He always has a ready reply intended to shut her down. He typically uses any of the following types of comments, and when he’s really triggered, he’ll use several at once:

“You’re overreacting.”

“You’re too sensitive; you shouldn’t feel that way.”

“I don’t have to listen to this.”

“You do nothing but complain.”

“You’re an ingrate.”

“You don’t know how to be happy.”

It’s as if Eli can’t tolerate his wife’s displeasure at all. For her part, Chanie thinks a hundred times before she makes a complaint or request. “I know it won’t go  over well, so I keep most of my complaints to myself. But if I decide to risk being honest twice a year, I’d hope that he could make more of an effort to be understanding, caring, and responsive. But no, he’s just defensive. I have to be fake with him; I can’t be myself. What kind of relationship is this?”

Alternative Strategies

Chanie doesn’t need to be inauthentic with her husband in order to get what she wants from him. She just needs to recognize that sharing her painful feelings is a strategy she’s using in hopes of modifying his behavior. (“If I tell him that it hurts me, then he’ll care and then he’ll stop what he’s doing.”).

Eli, as it turns out, has a sort of allergy to emotional language. His parents were very busy, practical people. There was no “babying” in that family and certainly no talk of feelings. Eli grew up to be a good, honest, independent young man. He wasn’t taught to be comfortable with his own feelings, or anyone else’s, for that matter.

When Chanie tries to share feelings with Eli, he becomes overwhelmed. He tries desperately to shut her down. She needs to find another way to get him to meet her needs. In our current example, she needs to solve the shopping dilemma without reference to her emotions.

Finally, Chanie comes up with a straight behavioral request, telling Eli after his next shopping excursion, “I’m so sorry, honey, but you’ll need to run back to the store to pick up the fish. You somehow forgot it, and we need it for tonight’s dinner.” After a few uses of this strategy, Chanie observes that Eli’s error rate has sharply decreased. Her grocery problem is solved, and so is her marital problem.

Different strategies are needed for different people!

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 745)