When your lover treats you to the same benign neglect as an old rusty car in the local junkyard, you know that positive talks on the two-way communicator highway have come to a screeching halt. Moreover, when a partner glibly says, “BUT I didn’t know things were this bad!”…you are bound to feel enormous dread, anxiety, loss of control and building frustration. No one, after all, likes to feel like a discarded heap of scrap slated for recycling in the relationship world.
TALKING ABOUT TALKING ISN’T TALKING
Are you or your partner talking insensitively in ways that shut down, cut off, block the flow or otherwise detour effective talking and problem solving? An “insensitive partner” or Instigator-type communicator may pontificate and argue about what the problem is…like these talk examples parlay:
- “I didn’t know things were this bad!”
- “I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about!”
- “Why won’t you give me another chance to make it right between us?”
- “Do I really have to DO that? I’m not comfortable with the counseling thing!”
- “Gosh, I don’t know what else I can say or do to try and make you happy!”
- “That was a low blow…I don’t deserve to be treated this way!”
- “Talking about mushy feelings-feelings is just a crock of bull!”
- “I told you that I’m working on being nicer to you!”
- “I wish you’d stop listening to other people who make you come home all peeved off at me!”
- “People are putting ideas in your head that weren’t there in the first place!”
- “It wasn’t my fault…I didn’t do anything!”
- “It’s just been a week/month/year…give me a chance…I can’t fix everything all at once!”
- “I’m trying REALLY hard NOT to be mean…to pay more attention to you…to spend more time at home!”
- “You’re just being moody and irrational…I told you there’s nothing wrong. Everything is fine!”
- “I don’t do IT all the time…the last time I did IT I apologized!”
- “Shoot, I was just joking about it and I’m sure it hit you the wrong way!”
- “Come on, it’s not a big deal…it’s time to get over IT!”
- “You act like I intended to do IT. IT was nothing against you…I didn’t mean to do IT!”
- “There you go again…you’re exaggerating how bad IT was!”
- “I won’t lie to you…I don’t know what else to do!”
BLOWING SMOKE UP YOUR REAR END?
A partner may change his/her ways for a brief time to placate the grumbling partner. It doesn’t work. The placated partner sees right through this, “I’ll tell her/him what she/he wants to hear to get her/him off my back…then I’ll go back to my preferred way of doing things.”
The only way I know of that works to break a stalemate or “distracting talks cycle” is to use the powerful talk tools I lay out in my book TALK TO ME. Shutting down and not saying anything leads to the “stuffing” of anger and feeling down, drained, helpless and depressed. “Marching off the map” to go to new talk places rejuvenates a limp relationship destined for the junkyard.
Dr. Dennis O’Grady runs workshops on “Conflict Resolution and Anger Management,” “Change Management,” “Leadership Talks,” and “Talk to Me.” He has earned a doctorate of psychology in 1983 and is the founding President of New Insights Communication in Dayton, Ohio, USA. Dennis is the author of TALK TO ME that explains how the two communicator types are worlds apart…but don’t have to remain that way. And the title used for this article was inspired by legendary songwriter Jim Croce’s song, “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown…he was meaner than a junkyard dog.”