Legendary Couples Therapists John and Julie Gottman Say This Common Communication Advice Is Dead Wrong
If you’re worried about broaching a difficult subject with your partner or your team member and you go online looking for advice, you’re likely to come across the same exact tip again and again. Therapists, coaches, and academics all offer the same suggestion: use the formula “When you do X, it makes me feel Y” to kick off the conversation.
“Use the premise of ‘when you do [x], I feel [y]’ to neutralize the blame game and express yourself clearly,” instructs one PhD psychologist, for example. The idea, explains another coach, is to center your feelings and head off defensiveness: “No-one can argue with how you feel about something, as they are your feelings.”
“When you do X…” has never worked for me
All of which sounds sensible enough, but as someone coming up on 15 years of marriage, I’ve always found this advice to be essentially useless. Despite the careful phrasing, the underlying tone of accusation comes through loud and clear, emotions get heated anyway, and the conversation is often derailed.
Are my husband and I just doing something wrong? Is our marriage rockier than I thought? I was relieved to learn recently that the problem likely isn’t us. Even better, the…
