Did a relationship talk today. Walked away realizing that I really ought to have spent the entire 50 minutes having them practice the basic sentence we all need to know in order to solve conflict in relationships:
“When you say/do X, I feel Y.”
Not blame, not anger, just a statement of reality. It just happens to be true that “When you X, I feel Y.”
That sentence is the single one that you need to communicate with your partner when they’re doing something that hurts you.
If their response is anything other than, “Oh I see, what you’re saying is that when I X, you feel Y” (i.e., anything other than reflection that they understood and have empathy), then what you do is: repeat yourself.
“No, listen. I need you to understand this. I need you to understand that when you X, I feel Y.”
“But I –”
“I need to know that you heard this, and I can’t talk about anything else until I know that. When you X, I feel Y. Can you just say that back to me, so I know you heard it?”
“Of course I heard it. What I want to say is –”
“No. Listen. Please. I really need to hear you say it back, so that I know for sure you get what I’m saying.”
“You don’t think I understood?”
“I just need to hear you say it back to me. When you X, I feel Y.”
“When I X, you feel Y.”
“That’s right. When you X, I feel Y.”
“Well but that’s not my fault! You’re the one who…[whatever].”
“But the fact remains that when you X, I feel Y.”
“…Well… Well, what do you want me to do about it?”
And then you can figure that part out together. But it starts with knowing that your partner actually understands what the problem is.
The other key skill, of course, is being able to say, “When I X, you feel Y” too.
I really don’t understand why this concept is so hard for some people to grasp. Maybe its because we are taught not to fight with our partners or we are doomed? Maybe its because we are trained by old relationships that talking about our feelings is never actually going to help? What do you think causes that to be so hard to grasp emily?
I think it’s partly that people are hardly ever taught the skills of conflict resolution and partly that people get wrapped up in communicating WHAT THEY WANT at the expense of communicating HOW THEY FEEL.
In some sense, I think telling someone how you feel is acknowledging a weakness or exposing a vulnerability, while saying what you want is experienced as strength, and as such it’s “safer.”
I liked the straightforward way you wrote this up.
I wonder if the reason why “we” have so much trouble with this is because our culture does not place much emphasis on personal responsibility.
Or it’s a different kind of responsibility that gets in the way. My family dynamic is often: “I do x for my many totally valid (to me) reasons, and the fact that you feel y is your responsibility, not mine. I did not intend for you to feel y when I did x, and therefore, your feelings are inappropriate and your own problem to solve.” This leads to sooo much emotional dishonesty.
maybe we need to be better at practicing this on the positive stuff, not just the hard stuff. as in “i feel really supported when you ask me how my day went and really listen…thank you.”
I sort of agree with Liz, in the sense that people may and frequently do feel they’re being blamed in such cases. From my experience, most of the times when you say “When you X, I feel Y”, people hear “It´s your fault I feel Y”. That can be quite a problem, especially if the person isn´t doing something that they really shouldn´t do (say, flirting with someone else in front of their SO when they know they’ll feel jealous and disrespected), but rather something that just clashes with the other person’s needs (something like not keeping in touch as much as they’d like). Lately, I’ve been trying to add a little disclaimer when that´s the case, and clearly say “I’m not saying it’s your fault I feel Y, or that you’re doing X to make me feel Y, but I do, and I need your help here because feeling Y sucks”.
That’s a good addendum!
Thank you, Emily. As usual, great advice. I just want to add some more info from another angle –
I was in a relationship about a year ago, and I did exactly what you describe here. When my ex did something that hurt my feelings, I would say to him: “when you do X, I feel Y.” My ex reacted very poorly to this. I tried and tried – it made sense to me, but he would get upset and tell me that he “wasn’t responsible for [my] feelings,” that I was “blaming” and “manipulating” him, that he “couldn’t win” because I was using emotions, and he was using logic. I was distraught. I wasn’t trying to attack or hurt him, and I told him as much, but it didn’t matter.
So what the heck was going on?? Well, I finally started to figure it out a few months into the relationship. He was an abuser – he was wonderful in the beginning, but then he slowly started verbally and emotionally abusing me, he lied to and manipulated me, and he threatened me on more than one occasion. The worst of it came later on, and that’s when I finally caught on.
My point is, Emily’s advice is spot on, and if you’re in a relationship with a guy who twists this around on you, take a HUGE step back and reassess. Abusers think they’re always right and never wrong – they can’t handle someone telling them they’ve done something wrong, no matter how nicely you tell them. They might be able to play-act for a while, but they’ll eventually show their true nature.
Sorry if this seems off-topic. Since leaving my ex, I’ve met women who spent decades with their abusers, and many of them have children with their abusers. This one simple piece of advice from Emily has the potential to act as a litmus test for someone early on in an abusive relationship, so I wanted to share that perspective.
It’s very on topic. And it’s true that some people feel that the “when you do x, I feel y,” is the same as making that person RESPONSIBLE for your feelings. It’s not (though it can be used that way), but some people want or need to believe that they should be able to do and say anything they want and if it hurts you, then that’s your own fault. Some people will always reply with, “You feel Y?! Well what about MY feelings? Why are your feelings so much more important than mine?!” They’re not more important of course, but nor are they LESS important.
So yeah. Duder was a bully. That’s what was going on.
I’d also like to address the people who use the proclamation of their feelings as a passive-aggressive way of manipulation. If a wife tells her husband, for instance, “when you hang out with your friends it makes me feel unimportant in your life.” While a valid feeling to communicate, the implication is that the only way to avoid hurting her feelings is to stop hanging out with your friends. It places a passive burden on the person being communicated to, without inviting a commiserate response towards the person it is being communicated from.
So what would a valid response be?
“I feel controlled and nagged when you tell me that you feel unimportant in my life.”
or
“I’m sorry to hear that. But I’m not going to stop hanging out with my friends. Perhaps you should consider changing your perspective to encompass all of the things I do for you that I feel should convey your importance in my life, stop focusing on something that is clearly important to me, and put your feelings in a more realistic perspective? But I am truly sorry you feel that way.”
This is a common complaint of men in counseling sessions, when they feel they are facing an issue that demands logic and reason and instead they are confronted with an overwhelming wall of feeling that may or may not be relevant to the issue at hand. Regardless of any reasoned response they might make they are held accountable by their wives (and in many cases their counselors) for inspiring these feelings regardless of what they actually said or did.
In many cases it isn’t a lack of awareness of their partner’s feelings that motivates them, it is an acceptance of an unfortunate but necessary situation. I’ve also noticed that when men are asked to verbalize their feelings to women in such a situation, and they risk doing so, they are often castigated, demeaned, or emasculated if they actually do so.
Try telling your wife “I understand how me not painting the house makes you feel as if I’m neglecting our relationship, as if I don’t have any consideration for what our neighbor’s think, and I have no respect for how it looks to your mother, and how that makes you feel bad personally and poorly disposed towards me. But the fact remains that it’s been raining for the last three weekends, we can’t afford the paint you want, and you can’t stand the paint fumes in the house for a week afterwards. So when you tell me that my lack of painting at your direction and on your schedule feels like purposeful neglect of our relationship, that makes me feel as if your complaining with no appreciation for the facts of the situation is an expression of emotion with no further intent than to make me feel bad. Therefore I cannot help but dismiss the disproportionate emotional content you are projecting in this complaint as hyperbolic emotional posturing designed specifically to destabilize our relationship in an attempt to assert your control over me, and over the relationship itself. This in turn fosters a self-perpetuating circle of recriminations and a spiral of blame as you dismiss my feelings on the matter as punishment for downplaying the potency of your emotions, I become further resentful of your increased level of posturing, and you seek to further punish me for victimizing you when in fact I am taking issue with the shaky logic behind their development, your apparent lack of respect for me, my feelings, and our relationship in implying I am less than involved and attentive to such matters, and a growing sense of frustration as you fixate on the legitimacy of your feelings when the very real issue of an unpainted house looms large on the horizon. Indeed, by repeatedly drawing the focus of the conversation back towards your emotions instead of on the practical matters of the relationship you obfuscate and confuse the very real problems we face. Thankfully you seem to be able to spare yourself the angst over such an unproductive and futile use of energy, either because you have no spare capacity from being hurt by my unwillingness to pain the house in the first place or because you have rationalized your feelings as being the dominant and most important element in our relationship without fear of contradiction. Either way I feel as if you are being disingenuous with your motivations and purposefully hurtful by how you choose to express them, and I find I am harboring an active resentment over what certainly feels like emotional extortion. Further, this reflects a pattern of behavior that has stretched from the beginning of our relationship and seems to be exacerbated by proximity to your female relatives and your position on your hormonal cycle, so investing myself emotionally in what seems to be a cyclical and transitory issue would seem foolhardy” and see what happens.
That’s a paraphrase of an actual response I heard a guy make once to his wife in a group session when his wife demanded he share his feelings with the group. She freaked out immediately afterwards and screamed at him in front of everyone — so much for a “safe, judgment-free zone” — and tried to humiliate and emasculate him. After that, the rest of us fellas were a little more hesitant about sharing our feelings.
Feelings and emotions are felt by all, of course, but women seem to have a greater facility for both expressing and communicating their feelings. Good for y’all. But masculinity encourages men to shield our feelings from the world for a reason. And when we get punished for expressing our negative feelings it doesn’t do much for moving a problematic relationship forward. Especially when a wave of emotion is tied up to more than one issue, or disparate issues are conflated, or previous unrelated issues are resurrected in an argument for the purpose of chastisement, men often view “feelings” as blunt objects with which to be beaten by the women in their lives than purposeful communications. I often wonder at the utility of sharing feelings compared to rational and reasonable debate about pragmatic issues.
One could as easily argue that many women view rational arguments as damp objects with which to discourage any discussion at all. We needn’t pick between emotion and reason, they can support one another as easily as they can divide.
Ian, your reply contains several false and sexist generalizations about women and men. For example:
1. “women seem to have a greater facility for both expressing and communicating their feelings”
2. “men often view feelings as blunt objects with which to be beaten by the women in their lives”
3. “when men are asked to verbalize their feelings to women in such a situation, and they risk doing so, they are often castigated, demeaned, or emasculated”
I’ve seen many men who are very attentive recognizing other’s emotions and skilled at expressing their own. And many women are aren’t emotionally skilled. I’ve seen many women who are very rational and logical and many men who aren’t. The point is that emotional intelligence and rationality have nothing to do with gender.
Such sexist generalizations get in the way of people accepting that men and women have a lot in common and deserve to be recognized for their individual merits rather than judged on the basis of outdated notions of gender.
I agree with those who say “When you do X, I feel Y” often comes across as trying to make the other person responsible for the emotion – and as stated in that form, it can easily be used to emotionally manipulate somebody. That’s why I prefer to say in the “action-need-feeling” form instead – or the “action-feeling-need” form.
“When you do X, it affects my need Z, so I feel Y.”
For example, “When you don’t call to tell me if you are late, it affects my ability to plan for our date, so I feel frustrated.”
Another example: “When you hug and kiss me when you first enter the door after coming home from work, I feel contented because I like knowing you cherish me.”
Phrasing it that way does sound rather formal, and you can phrase it in a more relaxed manner, but regardless of how you phrase it, by stating how the emotion is caused directly by a need not getting met, and caused only indirectly by another person’s actions.
Emily, you stated that our society does not encourage people to express feelings, and that’s only a small part of how society does not teach effective communication skills. Our culture encourages people to strategize and manipulate to get what they want, but does not teach people to identify internal needs. Nor does it show them how their feelings are more connected to their own needs than other people’s actions.
I would never say “When you do X, I feel Y.” because I prefer clarity in communication and that form is too ambiguous about how implied messages about feelings and responsibilities.
For more about needs and feelings, you can visit these web pages.
http://www.cnvc.org/Training/feelings-inventory
http://www.cnvc.org/Training/needs-inventory
Dear Emily,
I was at the relationship talk that you gave. It was terrific, and I went straight home and told my significant other everything that I learned.
There was one question that I wanted to ask, but couldn’t remember at the end of the talk. I wonder if you have any comments/thoughts/insights into why there seem to be so few emotional coaches in the media. It’s something that has bothered me for a long time.
Thanks for writing such a great blog!
I dunno. I think once you know that the impact of an action will be a specific reaction from a close friend or romantic partner you are at least responsible for knowingly aggravating that effect by performing said action. What is being close to someone if it’s not making their reactions part of your reason for action?
I wouldn’t argue that someone should always change their actions for the benefit of those close to them, but the consideration just seems so obvious and natural to me I don’t rightly know why people get so wound up in defending themselves. Who do we want to help?
William, I partially agree, but sometimes the other person truly isn´t doing something wrong, and most of the time have no idea that it bothers someone else. Or they may have an idea that it bothers them, but not how much – they may consider it a pet peeve or it may just be something so different from their own needs that they have trouble understanding what the fuss is all about.
For example, if someone is feeling upset and neglected because their partner is always working late. That´s understandable, they don’t get to spend much time together, and partner is always too tired to do relationship stuff. On the other hand, I can TOTALLY understand them becoming angry and defensive (and secretely guilty) when told this. “I’ve been killing myself to meet deadlines and I’m exhausted and would LOVE a day off and I miss you too and it all sucks, and YOU TELL ME YOU FEEL NEGLECTED?”
And there you go, you have a fight.
Alex, I would not argue that anyone is doing anything wrong, that’s really not pertinent to the way I look at these things. I was trying to express that I don’t think that responsibility is something that can be easily avoided once someone has been made aware of the impact of their actions. I would not go so far as to say that it is a simple situation and certainly don’t think that someone is wholly responsible for another reacts to them, but we at least need acknowledge that we don’t behave in a vacuum.
I would that no one avoids approaching me about a problem they are having for fear that I will react by doubling down, drawing away, or defensively attacking them. It is a simple thing to acknowledge the reality of someone’s experience and to talk to them about it, sometimes that is enough, sometimes a simple change of pace or attitude can correct, and sometimes things are more serious, but it seems to me it will always be easier to determine the least harmful course of action by listening and owning one’s own role in an exchange.
William, I would that it was possible for me to buy you a cup of coffee and a cookie. I’d love that attitude in a friend or partner of mine : )
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