But it’s not. Kim is using the red roses to raise how she feels unseen and unheard. Louie walks right past the topic of how Kim feels and talks instead about his own topic: how he feels unappreciated. There’s nothing wrong with that reaction or that topic, but it has zero overlap with Kim’s topic. Now we have two people giving feedback and no one receiving it. The dynamic that Louie and Kim have fallen into is so common that we’ve given it a name: a switchtrack conversation. Their conversation gets smoothly shifted, as if by railroad switch, from one topic to two. Soon they are each heading in
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