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

by Harriet Lerner

We can openly share competence as well as problems and vulnerability. We can warm things up and calm them down. We can listen and ask questions that allow us to truly know the other person and to gather information about anything that may affect us. We can say what we think and feel, state differences, and allow the other person to do the same. We can define our values, convictions, principles, and priorities, and do our best to act in accordance with them.

We can define what we feel entitled to in a relationship, and we can clarify the limits of what we will tolerate or accept in another’s behavior. We can leave (meaning that we can financially and emotionally support ourselves), if necessary.

The challenge in conversation is not just to be our self but to choose the self we want to be. What we call “the self” is never static, but instead is a work in progress. That’s why we don’t discover who we are by sitting alone on a mountaintop and meditating, or by being introspective and “going deeper,” as valuable as these disciplines may be. The royal road for both discovering and reinventing the self is through our relationships with other people and the conversations we engage in. 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.

Similarly we don’t just reveal ourselves in conversation; we can also discover and deepen who we are.

It is not, she writes, that we have to tell

everything, or to tell it all at once, or even to know beforehand all that we need to tell. But an honorable relationship, she reminds us, is one in which “we are trying, all the time, to extend the possibilities of truth between us…of life between us.” When we are not able to speak authentically, our relationships spiral downward, as does our sense of integrity and self-regard.

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? Speaking in our own voice, not in someone else’s, is an undeniably good idea. I’ve yet to ...

in many situations wisdom lies in being strategic rather than spontaneous.

The enormous challenge is to make wise decisions about how and when to say what to whom,

Truth telling, like peacemaking, doesn’t just bloom in our midst. Sometimes it has to be plotted and planned, a challenge that runs counter to the powerful urge to simply be our true, wonderful, spontaneous, uncensored selves.

Obviously we’re most challenged in difficult conversations. We feel angry, frustrated, confused, scared, hurt, insulted, betrayed, exhausted, or desperate. A relationship may reach a crisis point when we can’t make ourselves heard,

Anybody, for example, can encounter trouble being heard, or can fail to distinguish between complaining and establishing a deeply felt position for self—a position beyond compromise. Anybody can fail to take a conversation to the necessary next step. Anybody can speak up (or stay silent) at the expense of the other person or

the self.

he influenced me by the fact that he couldn’t (or didn’t) speak out when it mattered most.

When things were calm and superficial, he was charming and entertaining.

We won’t need to be passive-aggressive if we feel empowered to express our anger or will directly.

he was unable to clarify what he believed and where he stood. The idea of alienating either his mother or his wife was intolerable, and he felt he had to choose between them. He “solved” the problem by saying yes to both (or at least by not saying no) and then behaving in sneaky and secretive ways in an attempt to appease each of them.

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.