The Conversation is the Relationship

For the last several years I have kept myself on a path of personal growth and development. Sometimes I pick out things I want to work on. More often the universe puts things in front of me that I need to work on. Guess which of these I get more out of. 

I am a person who appreciates peace and quiet. I enjoy solitude. I am comfortable sitting quietly and working on things that interest me. It isn't that I do not enjoy people. Quite the opposite I enjoy the company of people. I struggle with a few things about keeping company. I don't like trivial things like gossip, complaints, and idle chit-chat. When met with these things I often grow quiet. I have learned through experience when a person rattles long enough at me without me giving any verbal or nonverbal encouragement that they will eventually talk themselves out. I resist the urge to say," Do you feel good about that exchange?" When someone is going on and on pointlessly I find it awkward and uncomfortable. I enjoy the fact that some people find me to be a great listener in these circumstances. I even had one person whom I am routinely silent around comment to me," I love talking to you, David. You are the best listener." This was said after a 15-minute soliloquy that I had tuned completely out of to the point I wasn't smiling or nodding at the appropriate spots anymore. 

I do love to talk when there is an actual conversation to be had. I like the exchange of thoughts and ideas. I enjoy getting other people's perspective. I enjoy sharing my own. I am a storyteller always collecting experiences and tales to relate when someone comes along that wants to participate in something meaningful. I get this less frequently than I would like. Part of that is my fault and that fault is something of the subject of this blog post. 

A few weeks back I found myself pondering how many talks I find myself trapped in that are absolutely meaningless. Everyone seems to be looking for a sympathetic ear to complain about problems that they have no intention of solving. Blah, blah, blah my boyfriend or husband this. Yada, yada, yada my job that. As a pragmatist when I start to have complaints or discontentment I quickly pivot to the problem-solving part. Having a conversation then is more about bouncing my perspective of the situation and the solution off of a trusted friend than it is complaining. Granted I have a years-long terrible habit of bitching and complaining. That was the piece of personal growth I have been tackling with A Complaint Free World by Will Bowen I will eventually get past day 1 with my bracelet on the same wrist. If you know, you know. 

My chosen focus was interrupted. I was in a meeting at work when a book - Fierce Conversations by Susan Scott M.D.- was recommended. Some of the other leaders were in a book club sharing their thoughts about the book. It is geared toward improving performance in an organization in much the same vein as Radical Candor by Kim Scott or at least that was my perception from the description. I have a lot of respect and admiration for the young lady making the recommendation. She can get me energized with her insights. I bought the book on Kindle from my phone during that meeting. 

Imagine my pleasure when the book quickly commented "The conversation is the relationship." Obviously, that sentence is out of context, but it started my brain down this series of realizations and epiphanies that I have been processing since. It put some things into perspective that I likely didn't want to admit to. Taylor Swift sang in my head," It's me. Hi. I am the problem. It's me," once again. When an idea spawns that reaction in my brain it is likely to have a good impact. 

Before I start confessing let me do two things. First, I recommend reading the book so you can have your own realizations (apostrophes). Secondly, the sentence above that is so meaningful was said to explain a situation where a man realizes that the frequently difficult conversations his wife insists on weren't a burden on the relationship. Instead, the conversation was the relationship. Seriously read the actual book. I am relating this poorly. 

I have killed more than a few relationships that I valued in a very simple way. I didn't maintain the conversation. Actually, the three people who immediately came to mind all told me that they needed me not to disappear into the ether as is my habit. I would get offended when they suggested that I was ghosting them. I even arrogantly explained in one case that I have long-term friends that I rarely speak to and when we do connect we pick up right where we left off. The implication of this is that there was clearly something wrong with the other person that they felt the need to have constant attention and conversation. I feel like more than a little bit of an asshole admitting this. I was the one wrong. The reality is that they were trying to have a conversation and as I described above I didn't find what they were saying worth responding to and I responded with silence that stretched into absence. The relationship ended without the dramatic cursing and shouting that I would have equated with the final phase of a breakup and yes even friends often have break-ups like this. The relationship faded into a permanent silence without even a last whisper or whimper. In every one of these cases, I didn't realize the relationship was over. I thought they had finally just accepted me as I am and we were cool. I would find out the truth when I reached out some time later and got silence in response.

I didn't equate relationships with conversation until very recently. People are in a permanent position in my brain either seen as a friend who I care for perpetually, an acquaintance (meaning someone I know but don't have disdain or affection for, or someone I dislike and would prefer to avoid.  I equated relationships in my brain in these terms as the shared feelings between two people and their choice of involvement. I genuinely didn't understand that my silence was me choosing not to participate in the relationship. I was always a bit hurt and surprised when I would reach out months or years after the conversation had ended and the other person seemed offended. 

Once the epiphany splashed through my neurons some things came very into focus for me. First, as is obvious by the above paragraphs, I am terrible at relationships of all types. I had blamed this on people not appreciating that I am different and introverted not that I lacked development, comprehension, and maturity in maintaining the necessary structure of relationships. The fact that there was a concept where I was thinking that other people were the problem really should have been a dead giveaway that I was the one in the wrong. Any belief I have ever had that substantiated itself on the terms of me being right and everyone else being wrong is fundamentally flawed. I have known that for a very long time, but I haven't proactively taken a personal belief inventory and fixed those things. 

It also became clear that there was a big difference in the quality of relationships that I have with people who I talk to regularly and those I don't. There were some big signs of this that I had been in denial about. I lost a marriage to silence once upon a time. It was easier to blame this on other factors. The truth though is that we had become comfortable allowing the problems to be unspoken until there was a lot of resentment and discomfort. Things ended. It was both of our fault. I played the victim and bitched and complained for years after the fact refusing to learn the things I needed to learn. 

My first developmental book of the year confirmed something for me that I have been thinking about for years. I read If Life is a Game, These are the Rules by Dr. Cherie Carter-Scott. Holy cow, that is the third Scott in one blog post.  It framed the idea that no matter what you do in life the universe is going to continue to present lessons until you learn them. That echoed so firmly with my life experience that I devoured the book over about 4 days reading it before bed and just after waking. 

There is such a drastic difference in the relationships in that I have an open ongoing conversation with those I do not. The feelings of comfort and familiarity come from the intimacy of meaningful conversation far more than they do any other factor. Gosh. I made that way too complicated. Let me try that again. The more you talk meaningfully with a person the closer the two of you will become. The less you engage in conversation the more distant you will become.  

The universe has been trying to get me to grow past this point for a long, long time. To put it into perspective one of my familial relationships growing up suffered from a lack of meaningful communication. It was the one I most longed to improve. It is funny then that I grew up to struggle to communicate meaningfully in relationships. 

As I mentioned I had a marriage fail because we both repressed the conversation. Our default position was to praise the benefits of the fact we never had fights or even said a crossword to one another. That was actually a big symptom of our problem. We neither felt comfortable enough with the other, to be honest, nor candid enough to say what we each felt. The inability to be open and honest (the subject of an upcoming post I am planning) comes from lots of places. I tried to start several conversations. When they weren't welcomed I lapsed into a brooding silence and because I am a feeler who views the world through the emotional spectrum first I got deep in my feelings. Things fell apart gradually and then very suddenly just as it was predicted in Fierce Conversations. 

People base relationships on all sorts of things. Sex, money, mutual interest, hobosexuality, and the convenience of proximity are some of the top of the list. Having an activity partner is up there too. Those things can inspire a relationship, but without honest communication, the relationship is doomed. People, all of them, have a need to feel seen, heard, and understood. Your loyalty is going to lie with the people who make you feel valued in those ways through conversation. Don't get me wrong I am the master of the intense looking of longing and it opens many bedroom doors. The truth is unless there is some engaging pillow talk after then things are likely to fall flat. 

I have repeated the sin of allowing relationships to get infected and fester with things that should have been said and weren't. I have allowed myself to wimp out and not say things that need to be said for fear of a bad reaction. I have watched that dry up connections with people I care for deeply. It sucks. 

The first step in fixing this is realizing that just talking to someone isn't enough to grow the relationship. Real conversation requires that one person in the group to really engage in listening. I think I am good at this part. I know I have to be able to mechanically hear the person I am talking to. If there is some sort of issue with the phone connection (assuming I am not talking in person) I am not the least bit shy to call it out and reconnect. If someone is talking too low for me to hear them, which I assume will happen more and more as I get older, I am not afraid to ask them to speak up. Next comes the ability to focus on what they are saying rather than what I am thinking. Listening to respond with a clever rebuttal isn't listening. That practice is mistaking conversation for debate. 

Too many people do this. All of their conversations are verbal sparring sessions where they are allowing their mind to race ahead of whatever a person is saying to counterpoint or agree with it. I used to do this. I stopped myself by recognizing the behavior. Then I  made a practice of focusing just on what is being said rather than my thoughts or feelings about it. If I find myself anxiously wanting to respond I give myself a required three-beat count before allowing myself to jump in. Those few moments are generally enough to keep me tuned in. 

The next part of listening is tricky and that is because everything we listen to has to be filtered through our perception and interpreted. Every person has bias. Some of these we know going into a conversation. Some of them are subconscious. I generally check my interpretation by asking questions and making clarifying statements. The phrase," Tell me more about...," is particularly magical. I also enjoy asking," Did I understand you to say..." as a pivot into summarizing what they just said to me. My goal here is to get the person to open up and tell me more. I am showing them my interpretation so they and let me know I got it right or warn me that I missed the mark. I have noticed this practice also makes the conversation register more with me. I am interacting with the conversation and showing the person I am talking to that I am engaged. 

The thing I particularly struggle with in listening is even when I get everything else right, I want to offer advice or opinions in response. I am very intentionally working on NOT doing this. I am not really qualified to offer advice on many topics. Advice should never be unsolicited. No one really wants an unsolicited opinion either. Shut up and just listen. 

Even worse, I always want to relate to the person talking to me through my own stories. This is OBNOXIOUS on my part and while I do not do it to turn the conversation about me I can see that it certainly seems that way. Perception is reality. I am a storyteller by nature and LOVE having an audience. I freaking crave it. I enjoy it when people engage with my stories. The correct feeling here is I really get jazzed when I have an audience that is enthralled by something I have to say. This is the curse of a storyteller. I save these things up for fireside chats and my journal as much as I can. 

One of my biggest biases in conversation is people talking about things I find trivial. Now I am not saying that everyone I chat with has to hit me with insights about the meaning of life or their beliefs on the existence of the afterlife. Good grief I am not sure I can carry on relevant conversation about topics that are serious and meaningful to most cultured or educated people. I am something of a sheltered bumpkin. One insult that was delivered to me manifests itself often is that I lack culture because I don't drink coffee, or alcohol, or go to concerts. I don't like coffee, beer, liquor, or crowded and loud places very much. I also can't speak intelligently about sports. All of those things strike me as trivial. They don't register as important to my life. Rather than point that out to someone speaking passionately about their favorite coffee place that I don't drink coffee I try to engage by asking how they discovered the spot, what they like about it, or what their favorite drink is. I avoid those inner narcissistic groans of boredom and carefully do not have to chime in with," I don't drink coffee. I haven't had caffeine in 10 years." These are things I have said in response many times. It is a conversation killer and makes me super awkward and often quickly cut out of the polite chit-chat. What is trivial to me isn't the same to other people. Trust me, it hurts my feelings when I am excited to show off my most recently mastered card trick and someone says," I hate magicians, and people who do card tricks are weird." 

For all of that, I do tend to veer quickly past the polite conversation like," How was your weekend, " and "How are you doing." The person who asks these questions and expects a real response is very rare. I am skipping the appetizer these days for the more robust main course. This requires a bit of work in getting to know things about the person. I mean you have to not only remember the person's name, but it helps if you invest some brain cells in their significant other's name, their children's names, and a general sense of who and what is important to them. 

A very intelligent woman I miss and was once a friend remarked to me (as I have written about before) that there is very little special about me that attracts people to me. My magic comes in the form of always making myself available for response. This negative compliment obviously stuck with me. It could be said it haunts me. I have to even admit that it probably has made me much less available and responsive to people and helped get me into the situation I am in today where I have gone too far the other way. 

See, I like people. I keep up with their information a bit more than I should. I do this without interacting over social media. All of mine are active, but I have taken everything but Reddit off of my phone so that I waste very little time on it. I mean don't get me wrong. If you comment on this via Facebook when I post it I will eventually sign in and see it, but I would much prefer you ping me on FB Messenger and talk to me. While we are on the subject of social media I am not a fan of people sharing TikToks or reels as a form of communication. TALK WITH ME! I crave meaningful and intentional connection. 

Beyond listening to people it is really important to remove distractions to demonstrate that they are important. I have gotten so used to doing six or seven things at a time that it has become difficult to disconnect from everything and invest my concentration in a conversation. In a world where we are almost always connected to several forms of communication and social interaction all of the time the person who silences all of that and just tunes into one conversation is powerful. If I am putting all this effort into relationship building it seems hypocritical to not be able to put the freaking phone down for the duration of three scrawny ass tacos with a side of rice and beans.   

Nothing shuts me down quicker than the opposite of this. If I am opening up to talk to someone and am focused on what they have to say and they are too worried about TikTok or whatever is on TV then I gradually and then suddenly lose any interest. Have that happen time and time again and I will lose any investment and quickly after I clam up and have very little to say. 

The funny thing about all of this is that I had one last epiphany. The worst relationship to have with someone is not to have them hate you. I learned many years ago that carrying around hate involves consciously carrying a person in your thoughts. Hate requires strong feelings and that often means you have quite a lot that you would like to say to a person even if it is just to tell them off in a devastating way. Even that can spark a conversation. Sometimes it leads to reconciliation when different points of view are shared. Most things between two people aren't as simple as we would like them to be. 

The worst position to be in with someone is having nothing to say to one another. This is the equivalent of not wanting to waste time or energy because they do not rate the effort. They become a nonentity in your life and there is nothing else to talk about. I have had plenty of relationships that seemed to be " all over but the shouting," and during that hostile exchange there were sparks found to keep us talking and working through. Having no words for someone is a form of banishing them to oblivion. If done correctly it ends the relationship permanently. It takes no effort and leads to them being forgotten. I think this is the surest evidence that relationships are the conversation. 

I want to have much better conversations to strengthen much better relationships. I want to be present. Most of all I want to say what I really mean. This takes courage I don't always feel. It is often easier not to call others out on their bullshit. It is often easier to smile and nod along through someone is being ridiculous or unreasonable. It is often easier to hold back and spare someone else's feelings. 

Oddly enough my Mom always accused me of having an aversion to doing things the easy way. She pointed out that I was always doing everything in the most difficult way possible. I cannot deny this in most cases, but when it comes to real talk I am much more likely to take the easy path and leave things unsaid or unaddressed. It is something I am focusing on changing because I have realized how high the stakes are for leaving things unspoken. I have to admit this isn't going to be easy. Maybe I am addicted to the hard way after all. 

One last thing before I wrap this up. Not everyone is going to appreciate the changes I am suggesting. Having a real connection in a relationship as a result of open and honest conversation isn't something that happens immediately. It is like going to the gym. The changes are really gradual until suddenly you are in the best shape of your life. If you look in the mirror or at the scale there will not be evidence of your difficult and intentional work won't be there for a bit. Keep at it. Trust the process. Find the practices that work best for you. Better conversations will make better relationships if you just hang in there. Trust me. I have been talking myself into the post for weeks now. I don't talk to anyone as much or as well as I talk to myself.