The Dance of Connection: How to Talk to Someone When You're Mad, Hurt, Scared, Frustrated, Insulted, Betrayed, or Desperate

by Harriet Lerner

“It’s simple,” the other replies. “They choose happiness over righteousness.”

Through words we come to know the other person—and to be known. This knowing is at the heart of our deepest longings for intimacy and connection with others. How relationships unfold with the most important people in our lives depends on courage and clarity in finding voice.

In a sad paradox, the more important and enduring a relationship (say, with a partner or relative), the more we tend to participate in narrow, habitual conversations where our experience of our self and the other person becomes fixed and small.

We all long to have a relationship so relaxed and intimate that we can share anything and everything without first thinking about it. Who wants to hide out in a relationship in which we can’t allow ourselves to be known?

The notion that “men are from Mars”—the opposite rather than the neighboring sex—can lead a woman to lose her voice, make excuses for her partner, and tolerate behavior that is too costly to her own self. It also encourages the man to avoid the challenge of finding his own authentic voice and taking full responsibility for his choices.

My father loved company and conversation, yet he had no intimate relationships at all,

Remarkably, he claimed never to have experienced the whole range of unpleasant emotions, including anxiety, fear, sadness, depression, or simple old worry. Not surprisingly, he was at a total loss to recognize or respond to the emotional life of others. My

More to the point, my father didn’t express his wants and beliefs or say anything that would bring the differences between himself and another person into bold relief and potentially disrupt the harmony.

He assumed a de-selfed position in all his key relationships, meaning that his wants, beliefs, priorities, and values became negotiable under relationship pressures. My father chose to have relationships at the expense of having a self,

Differences weren’t tolerated, so if you fought with a family member, that person might never forgive you, speak to you, or even recognize your existence. Considering

When a woman loses her resolve to speak up and stand firmly behind her position, she may be vulnerable to depression, anxiety, headaches, chronic anger, and bitterness. Sometimes these symptoms reflect an unconscious search for truth, forcing a more honest self-appraisal, including the degree to which she is voicing her authentic values and desires and living in accord with them.

man who feels powerless to use his voice violates our very definition of what it means to be a man. Consequently, he may then seek to prove his manhood in the most problematic ways: by being tough and aggressive, by acting up and acting out, or by removing himself emotionally from his relationships.

We may be affected by unprocessed grief that no one talks about, including grief from our ancestors’ immigrations or other traumatic dislocations.

Finally, we may be hard-pressed to unlearn the lessons about silence and speaking out that we gleaned from our family of origin—the source of our first blueprint for navigating relationships.

Children know at a deep, automatic level what they are not supposed to say or tell or even remember.

As adults they may remain locked in silence, or attempt to belong by constructing a pseudo-self.

The ideal family encourages the unfolding of each family member’s true, authentic voice, promoting a sense of unity and belonging (the “we”), while respecting the separateness and differences of individual members (the “I”). Parents calmly enforce rules that guide a child’s behavior, but they don’t attempt to regulate the child’s emotions or ideas. In this way, they create a safe space where kids can feel free to speak and be themselves.

Family members are comfortable sharing honest thoughts and feelings on even the most emotionally laden subjects without getting nervous about differences. Information flows freely, different points of view are respected, and difficult issues are discussed frankly. The emotional climate of family life is warm, spontaneous, and relaxed, so that children feel free to ask direct questions over time about whatever concerns them. Kids trust their parents to tell them the truth about important matters or, when appropriate, to say that some things are private and will not be shared.

The parents are richly connected to each other and to their own families of origin, and together they model a vibrant, equal partnership in which conflict can be creatively addressed and resolved. Both parents can speak their minds and resolve their differences. Every now and then there’s a good blowup (only dysfunctional parents never fight), but afterward the adults get their reactivity in check and offer a heartfelt apology when that’s appropriate.

No family member has to deny or silence an important aspect of the self in order to belong and be heard.

if something bad does happen, family members pull together, calmly evaluate the facts, and then draw on their abundant resources from both within and outside the family to manage the crisis and turn it into a positive growth experience.

Kevin may indeed have difficulty behaving responsibly, but labeling him (“the irresponsible one”) and focusing intensely on his problem may lock Kevin into becoming the narrow story that is told about him, edging out other stories and possibilities.

As an adult, Bea faced the challenge of sharing her feelings of sadness and depression with people who cared about her, rather than silencing and suppressing these important aspects of her experience.

When we collectively challenge the shaming and stigmatizing myths of the dominant culture, we make room for more honest conversation in the deepest interior of family life.

As the eldest child of alcoholic parents, she had no experience of voicing her emotional needs and having them met. As an adult, she gains deep satisfaction from her capacity to give generously and to take care of others, but she is profoundly guarded against letting anyone return the favor.

took energy to conceal and deny her real emotions and to pretend to her friends and family that she could always put aside her fear. It shut down the lines of communication and the possibility of a deeper intimacy with her partner.

In this safe space, they learned to talk openly together rather than to continue “protecting” each other from painful facts and feelings. For Pamela, the hardest emotional piece was the shame she felt at being ill and dependent, and even for simply having less energy and ability than she did before. Over time, she was able to give voice to her shame, expose it to the light of day, confront it, and cut it down to size. She could not exorcise it entirely from her day-to-day experience, but she learned to greet shame—like fear—as an uninvited visitor who could be counted on to come and go. And she didn’t let shame stop her from giving voice to her needs and accepting comfort and help. Sam also learned to give voice to his vulnerability. He learned to say, “There are limits to what I can do.” He needed to pay attention to when he was absorbing more stress than he could handle, so that he could take better care of himself. This was a huge challenge for Sam, who tended to keep functioning until he was physically exhausted and totally depleted. So Sam, too, became more expert at sharing vulnerability, at letting Pamela as well as their friends and family know when he needed help and support for himself.

Learning to not give advice, and to ask questions instead (“What’s your greatest fear about how your illness will affect us?”) was no small achievement for Sam, because it went against his automatic way of operating. When I first met Sam, he thought it was his sacred calling to fix others, and he didn’t pay attention to whether his advice was actually appreciated at a particular moment. When Pamela was feeling emotionally flattened, he was quick to editorialize about her situation and to tell her what she should do to improve her attitude and health. Or he might give her a pep talk or a spiritual boost. He felt that he had to have some kind of answer, even when there was no answer to be had.

When he was uncertain about what Pamela would find most supportive, he learned to ask her. Did she want him to simply listen and ask questions? Did she want to hear more about his own feelings about her situation? Did she want advice or help making a plan? Would she feel reassured if Sam expressed confidence in her ability to manage her illness over time—or would she feel he was offering false reassurance and minimizing her struggle? Would she like him to go rent a video to distract her from feeling down? Sam also learned to cry with her, a remarkable achievement, especially since he had the false notion that he was “protecting” her by hiding his own grief and “being strong” for her when she was feeling weak. They learned that grieving together did not cause them to lose their capacity for strength. Instead, it brought them closer together.

Instead, we can usually be more supportive to distressed persons we love simply by caring about them—by being emotionally present without pulling back from their pain and without trying to take it away.

Learning to be an attentive, caring listener and a skilled questioner can empower others to search for their own solutions. It also helps us to get in touch with our own vulnerability, which paves the way for a richer intimacy between two people.

Other individuals are staunch underfunctioners. They become less competent under stress, inviting others to take over. They tend to become the focus of family gossip, worry, or concern, and they frequently earn labels such as “the fragile one,” “the selfish one,” “the problem child,” “the irresponsible one.” They may have difficulty showing their strong, competent side to intimate others, and they just can’t seem to get organized.

primary task of an intimate relationship is to deepen the experience of knowing the other person and being known.

Interrupting this cycle enables each partner to begin sorting out the complex internal experience of both wanting and fearing intimacy.

You need to muster a huge amount of maturity and discipline to say less when you feel compelled to say more, to not pursue when you feel desperate to do so, and to keep communication focused entirely on yourself. This is especially true when what you really want to do is convince the other person to think, feel, or behave differently.

Some of us need to practice sharing more vulnerability, not less—especially if we’re entrenched overfunctioners. Overfunctioning is not simply an overzealous wish to be helpful but a patterned way of managing anxiety that grows out of our experience in our first family.

If we overfunction as adults, we tend to know what’s best not only for ourselves but also for others. We have difficulty staying out of other people’s problems and allowing others to struggle toward their own solutions.

She was pretty tired of doing so much for other people and often felt that she didn’t get much in return, although she didn’t see her own difficulty letting others in.

Belle, when I try to talk to you about my problems, I get the feeling that you’re not really there for me. I know you’re still in a great deal of pain about the divorce and your kids, and I do want to be available to you. But you’re my sister, and I need you to be here for me too.

We are not doing any favors to a helpless-appearing family member or friend by failing to share our own problems and complaints. When we only listen and try to help—and we don’t share our own limitations, vulnerabilities, and worries (we all have them)—we act as if that other family member has nothing to offer us and isn’t capable of showing some caring.

“If you treat man as he appears to be, you make him worse than he is. But if you treat man as if he already were what he potentially could be, you make him what he should be.”

No one benefits from a polarized relationship where we listen, help, and offer advice, then say, “I’m fine,” in response to the question, “How are you?” We diminish people when we don’t allow them to help us, or when we act like we don’t need anything from them and they have nothing to offer us.

It’s an act of maturity to not take things personally and to understand that the other person’s response may have more to do with them than with us.

If we’re needing (as opposed to hoping for) a particular response from the other person, that’s a good indication we’re not yet ready to broach a difficult conversation.

Is there a sense of safety, ease, and comfort in the relationship that makes authenticity and self-disclosure possible? Does the person we love enlarge (rather than diminish) our sense of our self and our capacity to speak our own truths? Is the connection based on mutuality, including mutual respect, mutual empathy, mutual nurturance and caretaking? Are we able to voice our differences to bring conflict out in the open and resolve it?

When you’re overly eager for a relationship to work, you will resist getting differences out in the open, looking them straight in the eye, and having a good fight when necessary. Instead, you may ride the relationship like a two-person bicycle that will topple over if there’s not perfect agreement and togetherness. The urge to merge is very strong, and if you’re in the grip of it, you’ll submerge the clarity of your voice

Intimacy usually develops among people who share deeply held beliefs and core values.

A relationship built on silence, on the shedding, or suppression of differences, doesn’t have a strong foundation.

But I would end it if I felt that the other person didn’t consider my feelings, refused to change behavior that was obviously painful to me, and pleaded helplessness (“I can’t change”) in response to reasonable and fair expectations. I’d also take a good hard look at how my own communication (like nagging or being critical) might be contributing to the problem.

It’s data if you stop voicing your wants, expectations, and questions because you’re afraid to put him to the test.