Practicing Dialogue
– and a favorite dialogue exercise
by Dr. Bill and Robin
Jack and Elaine do well together, but like many other couples, their occasional fights are so intensely volatile they threaten to undermine an otherwise good relationship.
Jack spoke first in their weekly counseling session: “We’re doing okay except for the fights. They come out of the blue and they are terrible. Each time we take days to get back on track. This past week we didn’t speak to each other for three days.”
“Yeah,” said Elaine. “That’s how it is. We eventually get to talking and decide to move on, but then it will happen again. It seems our fight only got recycled, or we launch into conflict over a totally different topic”
Therapist: “I know you two love each other. That’s not the issue. The real issue really is the two of you aren’t very successful in dealing with conflict. Before you know it, you’re arguing, and it often gets ugly.”
“Why do you fight anyway, and why do you keep finding yourselves in raw debate?”
Jack and Elaine looked at each other and Jack spoke first: “I don’t know. Those really are the questions. Our fights are awful, but we keep having them.” Elaine joined in: “When they happen, they tear us apart. Nobody wins. Our relationship is being damaged, but the fights keep happening anyway. Before we know it, we’re in another one.”
Jack and Elaine have fights that occur when one or both gets triggered, responding automatically. Usually there is no space between the trigger and reacting habitually with a defensive or protective response. The fights follow a predictable pattern and neither seems able to break free, despite paying a high cost in painful emotions and destructive behaviors. Neither feels listened to or understood. Both are frustrated and both have unmet needs.
Therapist: “Let’s talk about dialogue.”
Even for couples who are less contentious than Jack and Elaine, dialogue is the goal. If you have a harmonious relationship, dialogue can take your relationship to a whole new level
It’s not easy. In fact, dialogue is unnatural and perhaps the most difficult skill for couples to master. It goes against your evolutionary programming and years of habit formation.
It’s natural to protect yourself against pain and discomfort and defend against what they perceived as an attack. Defensiveness comes easily and most of us confuse well-intentioned constructive feedback with a harsh attack upon our personhood, our ego. Defensiveness is often an autopilot, knee-jerk reaction, representing years of habit formation.
For many couples, disagreement rapidly escalates into winning or avoiding. Your sympathetic nervous system gets engaged and you find yourself in fight, flight, or freeze mode. Couples try to win or escape, arguing their point of view, interrupting, talking over each other, or listening reactively, not attentively.
We often ask couples who are arguing if they feel understood. Usually each partner quickly replies with an emphatic “no!”
Developing a dialogue habit is extremely difficult, and it’s easily the toughest thing we strive to accomplish in couple’s therapy. It’s not a one-shot decision, and it doesn’t happen by simply reading what we write about healthy relationships. Instead, dialogue comes about from being conscious and intentional, and practicing — lots of practicing!
It’s something you can spend a lifetime improving. We’ve been together for four decades — and we’re getting better!
Why bother? There is a framed sign in our bathroom that says: “Only floss the teeth you want to keep.” The same holds true for dialogue — only get good at dialogue for the relationship you want to keep. Dialogue is a basic couple’s skill. Without it, you may still be together, but your relationship will be unfulfilling, and probably not happy.
There are four levels of communication.
Level I: Debate
For many couples, important issues are tough to deal with. If the issue is important to either or both of you, and either or both have powerful feelings and very different viewpoints, the interaction may quickly escalate to intense debate, often raw, unfiltered debate. We describe it as: “he said/she said,” talking at each other rather than with each other. It’s easy to blame, defend, or avoid, in other words fight, flight, or freeze mode. Jack and Elaine often get stuck in raw debate, and it becomes so intense it may take days to recover.
Level II: Polite Conversation
In polite conversation, each partner is careful not to hurt or offend the other. Negative emotions aren’t expressed and the couple limit discussion to talking about mundane, low conflict topics such as what should be on the grocery list or what’s expected from Amazon. Partners, “make nice,” and often are genuinely enjoying being a peaceful couple.
Level III: Skillful Discussion
This level is analytical, logical, and based on fact on available information. A couple might engage in a discussion of what TV to buy, or where to stay on their vacation. The couple are skillfully using learned techniques for couple communication. These techniques work well as long as strong differences and negative emotions aren’t involved.
Level IV: Dialogue
Dialogue goes above and beyond normal conversation. Dialogue is calm, respectful, and involves attentive, not reactive listening. It’s assertive, not aggressive, and there is a clear commitment to understand one another.
Dialogue involves thinking together. Ideas are free flowing in each partner describes his or her emotions, which is quite different from attacking with feelings.
Dialogue is neither the unbridled expression of emotion, as in “venting,” or insisting that communication be limited to what is logical or factual. Dialogue is a blending of head and heart. Emotional expression is vital, but so is being objective. It’s honest, but not attacking. It’s compassionate, with a genuine commitment to hear fully and understand each other. It’s paying far more attention to the process of communication, the “how” of communication, rather than a focus on the content, or the “what” of communication (The Content to Process Shift will be discussed fully in another blog article).
Dialogue is a most important relationship skill, and essential if you want a deeply satisfying couple relationship.
A Favorite Dialogue Exercise
There is an abundance of material on our couple’s website, www.beingtherightpartner.com. The blog section has brief articles that we see as the essence of what we want to communicate to couples about preserving and strengthening their relationship. We are constantly adding to the blog section and hope to have at least 100 blog articles within a few months.
We ask couples to take three steps in practicing dialogue.
Step One: Learn How Relationships Work
Pick an article to read and read the article individually. This article is good to start with and we also recommend “Hurt People Hurt People.” Our short articles are about crucial aspects of having a great couple relationship and “being the right partner. The articles provide information to help your relationship.
Step Two: The Test
Here’s a test of your dialogue skills as a couple. See if you can discuss the article fully without blaming or defending. That’s the test! Can you do it?
Step Three: The Practice
If you passed the test, wonderful! Now you can start applying the process you used to the rest of your communication. You’re ready to move ahead in mastering dialogue.
It’s all about practice. You will always slip, but the important thing is to get back to dialogue, again and again. Each time you come back to dialogue, you are strengthening your dialogue habit.
If you flunked the test, it doesn’t mean your relationship can’t work. We will talk about what went wrong, why it went wrong, and how to fix it. Arguments can be a substantial source of information about what needs to change in your relationship. Conflict can be an opportunity to learn how to be calm and 1 and more conscious and intentional, as long as each of you is open to working on self-awareness and self-management.