A client once told me he was afraid of his partner.

Not physically afraid. He was afraid of the potential for conflict.

His partner might ask a perfectly ordinary question, and before answering it he’d already be considering what might go wrong.

One day she asked:

“How does this scarf look?”

Simple enough.

Except it wasn’t.

If he said it looked terrible, he might hurt her feelings. If he said it looked good, she might ask why. If his answer wasn’t convincing enough, she might think he wasn’t paying attention. And if he didn’t answer at all, that could create another problem.

So he went with damage control.

“Fine.”

“Does it?”

“Yes, it does.”

“It really does?”

By now, what had begun as a question about a scarf was becoming something else.

Trying to sound more convincing, he added:

“And that sweater is great.”

“I wore it last week. Not that you’d notice.”

Perfect.

The Conversation Before the Conversation

When we talked about it later, he told me he’d been trying to figure out what answer she wanted.

He wasn’t really thinking about the scarf anymore.

He was thinking about her anticipated reaction to his answer about the scarf.

He was having both sides of the conversation before she’d had a chance to have hers.

Then he told me something else.

He wasn’t even sure whether he’d noticed the sweater the week before because he hadn’t been wearing his contacts.

“Why didn’t you just tell her that?”

He looked at me.

“She gets mad when I don’t wear them.”

“Do you really think she would have gotten mad because you didn’t happen to have your contacts in?”

“I’m not sure. Probably. I’m always feeling like I’m doing something wrong.”

And there it was.

The scarf wasn’t really the problem.

He had become so accustomed to anticipating disapproval that he was organizing his side of the conversation around preventing it.

Unfortunately, his attempts to prevent conflict made him sound evasive, uncertain and not particularly trustworthy.

Which made his partner question him.

Which confirmed his expectation that answering questions honestly was dangerous.

Not a bad little system, if your goal is to keep having the same argument.

We Respond to Stories as Though They’ve Already Happened

We all develop stories about the people we’re close to.

She’s going to think I don’t care.

He’s going to get defensive.

They’re going to take this personally.

If I say what I really think, this is going to become a whole thing.

These predictions usually aren’t invented out of nowhere. They may come from previous interactions with the person we’re with, earlier relationships, family experiences, or some combination of all three.

And sometimes they’re accurate.

But there’s a problem with acting on a prediction before checking it out.

The other person winds up responding to what we’re doing because of what we think they’re going to do.

Now everybody’s confused.

Try Thinking Out Loud

I suggested that instead of trying to find the safest answer, he let his partner hear some of what was actually happening inside him.

That’s what I mean by thinking out loud.

Instead of:

“Fine.”

Something like:

“I think the scarf looks good, but I’m noticing I’m worried that if you don’t agree, you’ll think I’m just saying that.”

Or:

“The truth is I don’t have my contacts in. And I’m weirdly reluctant to tell you because I’m afraid you’re going to get annoyed with me.”

That might sound awkward.

It probably will be awkward at first.

But it has one major advantage over damage control:

It’s true.

Instead of making his partner respond to a carefully edited answer designed around what he imagined she was thinking, he’s letting her into the actual conversation.

She can now tell him whether his prediction is accurate.

Check the Story Against Reality

Thinking out loud doesn’t mean every fear is imaginary.

Suppose you say:

“I’m reluctant to tell you what I think because I’m expecting you to get angry.”

Your partner might say:

“I’m not angry. I just want to know what you think.”

Useful information.

Or your partner might immediately become angry.

Also useful information.

The point isn’t to prove that your assumptions are wrong.

It’s to find out.

There’s a considerable difference between:

I know how you’re going to react.

and:

I’m noticing I’m expecting you to react this way. Is that what’s happening?

The first closes the conversation.

The second opens one.

Let Your Partner Correct Your Version of Them

One of the strange things about close relationships is that we can become so familiar with another person that we stop checking whether our understanding of them is still accurate.

We know their tone.

We know that look.

We know what happens next.

Except sometimes we don’t.

And the more certain we become, the easier it is to respond to our accumulated version of the person rather than the person who’s actually standing there.

Thinking out loud gives your partner an opportunity to say:

“No, that’s not what I meant.”

Or:

“Yes, actually, I am irritated, but not for the reason you think.”

Or even:

“You keep assuming I’m going to attack you, and after a while that makes me feel like you’re not really talking to me.”

Now there’s something real to work with.

This Isn’t a Trick for Avoiding Conflict

Thinking out loud won’t necessarily make a difficult conversation easy.

Sometimes the story you’re carrying is based on a pattern that’s very much alive in the relationship.

Sometimes your partner really does personalize things, become defensive, withdraw, criticize, or get angry.

And sometimes your attempt to communicate differently will itself be greeted with suspicion:

“Why are you talking like that?”

Fair enough.

Established patterns don’t disappear because one person learned a new sentence.

The goal isn’t to eliminate conflict.

It’s to stop having so much of the conflict before the other person has even spoken.

If you notice yourself carefully constructing an answer around what you expect your partner to think, feel or do, you might try letting them in on that process.

Tell them what you’re thinking.

Tell them what you’re afraid will happen.

And then give them a chance to surprise you.

You may discover that the argument you were preparing for wasn’t the argument they were having.

Or that there wasn’t an argument at all.