The Conversation You Keep Avoiding

Trust is pretty much always the most important ingredient for relationships to work.

Trust erosion, slowly over time, tends to be the reason most doomed relationships end. There are seemingly countless ways people erode trust in their relationships, and many are super obvious, like lying, cheating, violence, etc.

I don’t spend much time on the super obvious. Everyone already gets it.

I spend almost all of my time on the nonobvious. It’s what you’re NOT paying attention to that tends to hurt you in your blind spots. Most people harm their relationships by accident.

One of the common ways we harm relationships accidentally is by being avoidant. (*raises hand* I have a rich history of avoiding difficult conversation or uncomfortable situations as a defense mechanism that rarely results in positive outcomes for me.)

In the parlance of our time, it is called “avoidant attachment.” It is our “style.” It’s one of the common ways people screw up in relationships. It’s a real pain in the ass for most partners.

It tends to result in people withholding truth. I’m not sure how often people think about this idea, but most of us agree that lying is not good for trust in relationships. The first cousin of lying is withholding truth.

If I don’t tell you how I actually think and feel about something, then you’re operating entirely on how YOU think and feel about things. When that conflicts with my preferences, I disapprove, and maybe I say so. Maybe I lash out like a child. Maybe I passive-aggressively treat you differently afterward than I might normally until I ‘get over it.’

All of this is common, but shitty, unhealthy, relationship behavior.

Our Monday men’s group discussed avoidant behavior today, and how it gets in the way of connecting in a useful, emotionally honest way with our partners.

One of my guys has spent nearly all of his 40-some years avoiding difficult conversations, just as I did. You’ll spend your entire relationship avoiding necessary conversation if you’re only honest with one another when it feels convenient.

So how do you become “good” at uncomfortable conversation?

You eliminate whatever you’re afraid of happening from the equation, and that can only happen with trust, and a partner willing to cooperate to help achieve that outcome.

The aim is not to have fewer difficult conversations, though I believe that will likely be the outcome. The aim is to make hard conversations feel survivable and productive.

Mnemonic acronyms bother me because they’re a bit cheesy and lame, but sometimes cheesy and lame helps us remember stuff, so we’re going to give it a shot. Eyerolls are welcomed and even encouraged. It just means we’re not so different.

Before we get into it, here’s what we’re trying to achieve with our partners:

1. We don’t want to surprise our spouses/partners with hard conversations (this is one of the hallmark conditions of waiting a long time to talk about difficult things with someone, and letting it build and fester).

2. We’re going to focus on ONE issue at a time. No “yeah, buts” and whataboutism. We’ll save that for the toxic comment sections of political content on the internet.

3. We will prioritize seeking to understand over ourselves being understood. OF COURSE you’re going to disagree with and misunderstand one another if you’re unable to accurately express the position of the other person. Until you can explain what they think and feel, and have them agree with you, you don’t understand them.

4. We will work hard to avoid attacking, shaming, diagnosing, or mind-reading.

5. When we get flooded and dysregulated, we will take breaks from the conversation, but ALWAYS keep our promise to return to the conversation for repair/resolution once we’re ourselves again.

How do we do this?

By being SAFE.

S = Schedule it.

A = Agree on rules.

F = Feelings before fixing.

E = End with repair and next steps.

Avoidant people often feel anxious about difficult conversation because it feels sudden, like it might take forever, or emotionally unsafe.

Instead of the classic “We need to talk,” consider saying: “There’s something important I want to discuss with you. When might be the best time for you to chat with me?”

Agree on a time.

Agree on a place.

Agree on a time limit (30-60 minutes).

Agree on the topic.

This is how we reduce or eliminate the fear of a three-hour emotional ambush.

Terry Real, founder of Relational Life Therapy, author of many great books, and all-around relationship badass, teaches how relationships become safer when people evolve from reactive, childlike panic into more deliberate, boundaried adult behavior.

I’m the most biased person in the world about this, but I believe our group is the best value in personal development, by far. For $49 monthly, we have a men’s meeting on Mondays at noon ET, and we have a men’s and women’s meeting on Fridays at noon ET. We meet on Zoom.

The people and conversations are great, and we’d love to have you.

If you’re someone like me who benefits from community and finding people who are also working on their relational lives, I hope you’ll consider joining us. - MF

Learn More about Group with MF

This is where we make promises to one another and we do NOT effing break them. Just don’t. If you can’t play by rules you explicitly agree to, then you simply aren’t someone a person can trust to behave in a mutually agreed-upon way. Which is the very reason most relationships end.

Some suggested rules:

• No yelling.

• No name-calling.

• No threats.

• No bringing up other topics. Schedule a new conversation for new topics. One at a time. Seek to understand.

• No interrupting. ← Pretty big one.

• No running away without a promise (that you’ll keep) to return to the conversation.

More Terry Real: Healthy couples don’t try to win at the expense of their partner. Healthy partners agree they’re on the same team, and that the goal is to understand and achieve repair, if necessary. Healthy partners want to help the other succeed.

Most avoidant people — often men — rush to defend themselves. They seek to explain, justify, minimize, or solve a problem.

All of this yields what people — often women — experience as invalidation.

It is, in my estimation, the most common way we destroy our relationships, because it disguises itself as a simple disagreement.

OF COURSE we didn’t INTEND to harm. Otherwise we’re psychos and probably not reading this deep into the newsletter. So let’s not defend our intentions.

What should matter is whether our partner experienced harm, independent of our intentions. That happens all the time between any two people who don’t mindfully prioritize consideration for one another every day.

Successful conversations are built on acknowledging the experience of the other person, regardless of whether you think and feel the same way as they do.

That’s what it means to validate another person, and it’s the only way to maintain trust with someone you’ve inadvertently harmed.

Before defending yourself, prove that you understand WHY it hurts.

You must be able to articulate the thoughts and feelings of your spouse/partner if they’re going to be able to trust you to support them and care for them for the rest of your lives.

Don’t end your talk with an “Okay, fine.”

Maybe one or both of you isn’t in pure bliss at this point, but you should feel like you can trust one another more after demonstrating you can play by one another’s agreed-upon rules even when it feels inconvenient to do so.

Few things build trust like putting your partner’s needs and wants ahead of your own. When both people do that for one another simultaneously, good things tend to ensue.

End with:

• Something you understand better about why your spouse/partner thinks and feels as they do.

• An apology, if appropriate.

• A specific next step. Now that you’ve demonstrated you can keep promises to one another, make another one. “I understand why what I did resulted in you feeling that way. I’m sorry that happened. Now that I get it, I’m going to do a much better job watching out for that moving forward.”

Trust isn’t built by never hurting one another. That’s a fairytale.

Trust is built when we become reliable at repair. Leading with understanding, returning to historically uncomfortable conversations, accountability and ownership, and choosing to love and care for the expressed needs of our partner with the same urgency we tend to prioritize our own.

Matthew Fray is the author of “This is How Your Marriage Ends: A Hopeful Approach to Saving Relationships”, a relationship coach, and formerly the blogger at Must Be This Tall To Ride.

P.S. - I know these things can present really small to some of you in your busy lives and marriages/partnerships. But that’s exactly why developing mindfulness and communication habits around these domestic scenarios is so critical to maintaining peaceful, loving relationships. If you have trust erosion, and/or pain points and frustrations around things like this at home, consider working with me as your relationship coach to develop these skills and habits. This stuff matters. Book your next appointment here. - MF