It’s time for Uncommon Sense with Mel Schwartz 009, in which host Mel Schwartz explains why “talking it out” usually makes things worse and what you can do to get on the same page. You’ll learn how to break the cycle of repeating arguments, the exact words to use the next time a conversation starts to spiral, and a new way to listen so your partner finally feels understood — and so do you.

Do you ever feel like the more you try to explain yourself, the less your partner understands? Listen to this episode.

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What if I told you that talking to each other could ultimately become the worst thing in your relationship?

I know that sounds crazy, but I know. You’ve been told your whole life to talk things out. That communication is essential, particularly in romantic relationships. And of course, that’s true.

But here’s what happens in most relationships. We think that what we’re intending to convey is received by the other person in the way we intended with the same subtleties and nuances. And very often, our words are not landing in the way we intended.

But what’s the greater problem? We don’t know it.

After 30,000 hours of couples counseling, I see this problem time and time again.

I’m Mel Schwartz, and this is Uncommon Sense. In this episode, I’m going to show you how you can communicate with great effectiveness, how your words can land and be taken in just the way you intended, so we can create a coherent communication between you and your partner.

This is invaluable, so let’s get started.

I was walking down the street recently with two friends of mine who were engaged in the conversation, and I was just quietly listening in. And after a few minutes, I realized that although they thought they were talking about the same thing, they weren’t. I was listening intently to their words and expressions and what they meant to each other, and I saw, I saw the departure from having a shared meaning and understanding what they were saying.

They had no idea, and I see this and witness this all the time.

Going to share with you a personal story which really illuminated this for me quite a few years ago. I used to live down near the beach in the town I lived in, and I’d get up in the morning and walk to a local coffee shop to pick up my morning coffee. Great way of getting up in the morning and feeling wonderful.

I’d pass a restaurant along the way, and there was a parking attendant who would park cars there. His name was Jacques. And I’d walk by one particular morning and say, “Good morning, Jacques, how are you?” And he smiled at me and he said, “I can’t complain.”

I continued on for my coffee, but I thought about his words. “I can’t complain.”

And I thought, that could mean two different things. It could mean I have nothing to complain about or it could mean, literally, I won’t allow myself to complain.

Well, being who I am, I was thinking, I want to know. I’m curious, what did this man mean?

So on my way back, I stopped and I explained that to him. I said, “Jacques, which did it mean? You have nothing to complain about, everything’s great, or you can’t complain.”

And he said to me that in the culture he grew up in, he was from Africa, that it was bad. It was bad form to complain. So he meant, literally, I won’t let myself complain.

So I said to him, “Jacques, is it okay with you that when I ask you, how are you? It’s not a rhetorical question. I’d like you to really share with me how you’re doing. And I’ll do the same with you.”

So we had a new understanding.

That is what I mean by effective communication. We’re not just passing each other by, throwing words at each other, to fly by, that’s incoherent. And when we operate that way, there’s no verbal or emotional intimacy. We’re not opening ourselves up. We’re stuck in this transactional ping-pong match of words.

The word “respect,” taken from the Latin, I think it’s respicera, means to look again. A respectful communication slows down. It’s curious, it isn’t punctuated.

You know, when I hear people say, “love you,” is “love you” the same as “I love you?”

Another way that we punctuate things is almost like we’re operating from text. Pass somebody by on the street and they say, “how are you?” You smile and say, “good, you?” “Great.”

Is anyone telling each other the truth? When I’m in a restaurant and the wait person says to me, “how are you, I can be a bit of a wise guy and say, ‘pull up a chair and I’ll tell you.'”

So we need to use words in a way that have meaning. Where we want answers to these questions, we have to use the words and choose the most correct words. Otherwise, we’re defaulting to what I think they meant or they think I meant.

Do you ever feel like you’re stuck in the same old patterns? You’ve got the same old thoughts and beliefs. It feels like you’re just stuck inside and you can’t break out, no matter how much you want things to change.

Maybe your relationships feel predictable and boring; your relationship with yourself and with others and you’ve tried to break free from low self-esteem or maybe anxiety.

Maybe the wounds of your past have limited you but it feels like something just keeps pulling you back and makes you feel inert.

Here’s what I’ve discovered. We’ve been taught to believe that we’re stuck and that change is hard and our past defines our future but it’s not correct. Quantum physics tells us an entirely different story.

You see, reality is not fixed and inert but it’s in this perpetual state of flowing possibilities full of potential.

I’ve developed a method for you to experience your life through that experience of possibility. That’s why I wrote The Possibility Principle, How Quantum Physics can Improve the Way You Think, Live and Love.

In this book, I’ll show you how to apply the core insights of quantum physics, not the science, but just practical everyday messages for life. You’ll learn how to break free from your old thoughts and beliefs and hurts and wounds of the past that constrain you.

You can live the life you long for.

So if you’re ready to stop being imprisoned by your past and start actively creating the life you wish for, grab a copy of The Possibility Principle on Amazon. The link is in the description.

Okay, back to the show.

I was working with a couple some years ago. I’ll call them Dave and Karen. And in a very upset moment, Karen said to her husband, Dave, “I can’t do this anymore.”

Dave’s face went white. His body got rigid.

I said, “What are you feeling, Dave?”

He said, “It sounds like Karen’s breaking up with me. She wants a divorce.”

I turned to Karen and said, “When you said ‘I can’t do this anymore,’ what did you mean, Karen?”

She said, “I can’t have these stupid silly arguments that go nowhere.”

I understood what Karen was saying. And her husband of 15 years didn’t. How enlightening, how illuminating, how tragic is that?

So a conversation becomes really two separate monologues being knocked back and forth to each other. Not a dialogue. A dialogue is an open-ended, present communication where we’re sharing. There’s a correspondence.

Let’s talk about the word correspondence. What I mean by correspondence is kind of like if you strike a tuning fork, the tuning fork vibrates. It resonates. Both parts are resonating. They’re in sync with each other. A communication has correspondence as like the tuning fork. When I’m intending, when I’m in thinking I want you to know, you’re picking up just the way I intended.

Now to do that, we have to be curious. We can’t punctuate. We can’t be short-sighted. We can’t abbreviate. This leads to emotional landslides and feeling misunderstood. Only nobody understands why.

One of my great revelations about this is around the notion of shared meaning. Shared meaning about what does the word mean to you? What does it mean to me?

So Jerry and Diane were in the therapy session with me and Diane said to Jerry, “You have no idea of how to be intimate.”

Jerry was just appalled. He got rigid and angry. “I have no idea of intimacy. Are you kidding? It’s you that doesn’t.”

I said, “Pause. Can you each share with each other what you mean by this word intimate?”

What I suspected is exactly what was happening. Jerry, by the word intimate, was referring to sexual intimacy. This guy wanted to have sex all the time. He knew what he meant by intimate. Diane was talking about emotional and verbal intimacy, sharing feelings and understanding them. They’d go on and argue without a shared meaning about what they were even talking about.

Here’s another way to look at it.

So imagine you’re speaking with somebody and their native language is not English. They’ve just recently learned to speak English. If you used an idiomatic expression that they weren’t familiar with, hopefully you’d have awareness that it may not be making sense to them. You’d have to explain what that expression meant. So you’re both on the same page, having a coherent communication.

The same thing happens when we all speak the same language. The words have different meanings to each of us. We may have heard the same word in our childhood, but one was heard from a loving and kind parent. The other one was heard from a very critical parent. Words have meaning that go beyond the objective meaning of the world. They’re very deeply subjective as well.

Here’s what you have to do. Share your meaning around the word, the phrase and your intention, and slow down and confirm that the other person is hearing it and receiving it as you intended. But you cannot abbreviate this. You can’t punctuate it and make it short.

This is so much of a problem in our communication today. Everything has to be so fast and abbreviated. It’s making this tendency far more worse. It’s exacerbated. Words only represent our thoughts and our feelings. We have to do more than just express them in punctuated words.

Again, “I love you” is far different than ending a phone conversation with, “love you.” “Love you” became a substitute for “goodbye.” Does it mean I love you? And if it does, say “I love you.”

That lands very differently in therapy. What the therapist is doing is just what I’m presenting. Slowing down, having curiosity, inquiring, “What did you mean by that? Tell me how that felt for you.” We need to slow down and check in and make sure that our words are landing the way we intended. Tune in the way a therapist would. You don’t need to be trained in therapy to do this. You just need to slow down and care like your relationship depended on it because your relationship does depend upon it.

A solution, a pathway to achieving this, is curiosity. Let’s not assume that I know how they feel, how my words are impacting them. Do they understand my words the way I intended? Without curiosity and slowing down, we’re in a ping-pong match of words flying back and forth. And they don’t mean anything, to anyone.

Curiosity is respectful and engaged. We need to do a deeper dive into this true engagement for coherent communication, coherent communicating is alive, engaged and stimulating. It is not transactional, it’s not stagnant. We’re here, we’re present. We need shared meaning. Shared meaning is emotionally alive and engaged. It’s respectful, tuning in. “This is what I heard. This is what I’m thinking. Does that make sense to you?”

That is the core basis of emotional and verbal intimacy and that is the bedrock of thriving relationships.

So here is your uncommon sense. Saying something or hearing something is not communicating, making sure you heard what was intended and that your words are taken in as you intended is a giant step forward toward a healthy, resilient relationship. Just as we work out physically and go to the gym for health and vanity, we need to put our focused energy into emotional and verbal intimacy.

Try this: The next time you’re in a conversation with your partner, especially in a hard conversation, pause before you respond and instead of reacting to what you think they said, ask them, “What did you mean by what you just said? This is what I think I heard. Is this correct?”

You might be surprised by the answer, and that answer, that’s the beginning of a real conversation. That’s a shared inquiry.

Go for it. It’ll change your life.

The post Why “Talking Things Out” Doesn’t Work (and What to Do Instead) first appeared on Mel Schwartz, LCSW.