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Someone over on Quora shared something their first philosophy professor said:
If you can’t paraphrase somebody else’s position in a way that they would agree with, you don’t understand it, and if you don’t understand it, you can’t debate it.
What a brilliant statement!
How often do you argue with your wife when you could not paraphrase what she thinks in a way she would agree with? And how often have you fought about something when neither of you really knew what the other thought?
I can recall a couple of times when Lori and I realised, after way too many angry words, that we were actually on the same page. And there were far more times when we weren’t nearly as far apart as we initially thought. We could have saved all that frustration and hurt if we had started by making sure we each understood what the other thought and wanted.
Next time a discussion with your wife is getting heated, say “Just to be clear, are you saying ____?”
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This is really great advice! Another thing I often run into, ESPECIALLY when communicating via text/email is reading nuance into what is or isn’t there. I try to respond promptly whenever I can, with as much of the requested information as I can, and generally observe normal conversational courtesy. To me, that is normal and if the response doesn’t come, I’m tempted to feel ignored (in my defense it frequently is actually because she is talking to or texting a friend and ignores the incoming messages until later, only to forget about them altogether), if there’s a response but the information is missing or incomplete without an explanation I am tempted to frustration that she isn’t taking the time to get the information I need to me (she might be busy or not have it with her), or if the only response is a short one word answer I am tempted to feel like I just don’t matter enough to her to bother with a little courtesy.
Reality is often different from my knee-jerk reaction. My wife sees the world through a very different lens than I do. I think with text or email she often completely forgets that there is a person behind it and it becomes just a response to a system like information input into a computer. It doesn’t even register that her response might seem terse or discourteous. She was talking to a friend and didn’t want to interrupt the flow of the conversation to check the message, not knowing that it was me standing somewhere filling out a form needing information I didn’t expect, so why would she?
There is often some other explanation if we can slow down and communicate. Of course, that’s not always easy but it is better than hard feelings for a misunderstanding. Communication is key! If only it wasn’t so difficult…but it is worth it.