Communication
What to do when they are having a bad time
Supporting a partner through a difficult period is a specific skill, and the instinctive responses are frequently the wrong ones.
Communication
Repair attempts, listening, and the four things that predict trouble.
Communication
Talking to a partner about their family
Among the most difficult conversations available, with a set of rules that make it survivable.
Communication
Saying no to a partner
Refusal inside a close relationship is harder than in almost any other context, and avoiding it produces worse outcomes than doing it badly.
Communication
Talking about the future without it becoming a test
The conversation is necessary and it is generally conducted as an interrogation, which produces answers nobody can rely on.
Communication
Conversations that keep stalling
Some subjects get raised repeatedly and never progress, and the pattern usually has a structure worth diagnosing.
Communication
Criticism you did not ask for
Unsolicited advice and correction from a partner is a common friction point, and the underlying question is about standing.
Communication
Assumptions, and how to check them
Long relationships accumulate beliefs about the other person that were accurate once, and almost nobody updates them.
Communication
Talking about sex without it becoming an audit
The subject is difficult to raise for identifiable reasons, and the standard approaches make it worse.
Communication
Bringing something up at the right moment
Timing accounts for more of a conversation’s outcome than wording does, and the good windows are narrow and identifiable.
Communication
Text messages and the medium problem
Written messages strip out most of the information a conversation carries, and relationships route an increasing share of their content through them.
Communication
Saying what you actually want
Hinting is the default in most relationships, and it fails for structural reasons rather than because the partner is inattentive.
Communication
Complaining without criticising
The difference between a complaint and a criticism is a sentence structure, and it changes what happens next.
Communication
Listening in a relationship is not the same as listening at work
Most people apply a problem-solving register to conversations that were not requests for solutions, and the mismatch causes more friction than the topics do.