How to Have the Conversation You Keep Avoiding

Work out what you are actually asking for

Write the first sentence before the evening arrives. Write one sentence rather than a script. Read it back to see which of the five it is.

If it is understanding, say so. Be ready for the fact that being understood does not oblige anyone to change. If it is a request, name the change in behaviour rather than in character, because character cannot be asked for. If it is a decision, say that a decision is needed and give it more than one evening.

This step usually shortens the conversation by half. It also removes the most common ending, where both people finish exhausted and neither can say what was agreed, because nothing was being asked.

Separate what happened from what it meant

There is what occurred, which is usually not in dispute, and there is what you concluded from it, which almost always is. Collapsing the two into one sentence is what turns a conversation into a row.

You did not call, and I decided you had stopped caring, are two different statements. Said together as you never care, the other person defends against the conclusion and the actual event disappears.

Say the observation. Then say the meaning you made, marked clearly as yours. This is what I saw. This is what I told myself about it. Is that what was happening? That last question is not politeness. Very often the answer changes the whole subject.

Speak from your own life

You know your side better than anyone and you know their side not at all, so speak from the part you have evidence for. What your week is like. What you find yourself dreading. What you have stopped saying and why.

This is not about softening language. Speaking from your own life is more direct than accusing, and usually harder, because it means admitting what you mind rather than establishing that they were wrong.

It also removes the trap of the character claim. You are selfish invites a defence. I have been going to bed angry twice a week for a month invites a conversation.

Then become curious, properly

At some point you have to stop and want to know what it is like being them. Not as a courtesy after making your case, and not as a pause before the next point.

Ask something you do not already know the answer to. What is the hardest part of this for you? What did you think was happening? What have you been not saying?

Then let the answer be uncomfortable. If you can only accept answers that confirm your account, you were not curious, and the other person will have worked that out within a minute. Curiosity that survives an unwelcome answer is the thing that makes these conversations worth having.

Choose the conditions carefully

Late at night, after drinking, in the car on the way somewhere, over a text thread or in the ten minutes before one of you leaves. These are where avoided conversations tend to happen, because avoidance eventually breaks through at the worst moment.

Choose the time on purpose. Say in advance that you want to talk about something, and say roughly what, because ambushes make people defensive before a word is said. Agree that either of you can stop and come back to it, and mean it, since knowing there is an exit is often what makes people able to stay.

End with understanding, not a verdict

Pressing for a resolution at the end of a hard conversation usually produces an agreement that neither person believes by the weekend. A better ending is smaller and more honest: what each of you now understands that you did not understand before.

Sometimes that is enough on its own. Sometimes it produces one small thing to try. Sometimes it makes clear that a bigger question is waiting, and naming that is progress rather than failure.

It is also possible to finish and find nothing needs to change, because what you were carrying turns out to have been a misunderstanding you had been feeding privately for months. That is a good evening's work.

A short exercise: five lines before the evening

Twenty minutes, on paper, alone. Nobody else ever needs to see it.

1. 1Write which of the five this conversation is for: to be understood, to understand, to request a change, to decide or to stop carrying it alone.
2. 2Write the observation in one sentence, with no conclusion in it.
3. 3Write the meaning you made of it, marked clearly as yours.
4. 4Write the one question you genuinely do not know the answer to.
5. 5Write what a good ending looks like if nothing is decided.

If you cannot complete the first line, the conversation is not ready yet, and that is worth knowing. If you can, you already have the opening two minutes, which is the part people rehearse for weeks.

Three shapes this takes

Composites. Notice the shape rather than the details.

Where the book comes in

The Alternative Is Unthinkable is about the things people cannot bring themselves to say, and about the cost of leaving them unsaid for years at a time.

It does not give you a script and it is not therapy. It is a way of getting honest with yourself first, which is what makes the conversation with anyone else possible.