July 16, 2017

Interview with Dr. Duana Welch: How To Have Tough But Essential Conversations With Him

Interview with Dr. Duana Welch_ How To Have Tough But Essential Conversations With Him

Interview Transcript

Mike: This is Mike Hennessy. And on behalf of the team of LoveEvolveAndThrive.com, I’d like to welcome you to today’s interview with Dr. Duana Welch. Duana Welch earned her PhD in Developmental Psychology at the University of Florida Gainesville. She is the author of Love Factually: 10 Proven Steps from I wish to I Do as well as the popular relationship blog called Love Science, which addresses advice on how the public can benefit from empirical scientific research about successful relationships. To learn more about Dr. Duana Welch, visit her website at www.LoveScienceMedia.com.

Duana Welch, thank you so much for joining us today.

Dr. Welch: Thank you so much for having me here.

Mike: Dr. Duana Welch, one of the common problems women tend to face while dating is trying to figure out how to share their feelings with a man without scaring him off or overwhelming him. For example, at the end of the day, the man tells a woman he will call her and the woman waits eagerly for his call only to be disappointed that he doesn’t call. If he calls a few days later, the woman maybe delighted to get his call but may also be angry and disappointed that he didn’t call sooner. But she fears talking about it would make her appear clingy and nagging.

Dr. Duana, can you share your advice on how, when, and why women should have uncomfortable but essential conversations and how they can use those conversations to build a deeper connection and create a stronger bond without it leading to a destructive conflict? And does the answer depend on how long the relationship has been going on?

Dr. Welch: Well, Mike, that’s several questions and they’re all really important. And I’ve been on the losing side of all of them. I think most people who have dated for any length of time have. It’s very frustrating and painful. And yes, it can make us very angry when someone says to us, “I’ll call you.” And then they don’t or they call considerably later. And what do we do about that?

I recently received a letter from a woman at my website who said that she had met a guy at her gym and it turns out that they had had a connection through mutual friends a long time ago.

He kept flirting with her. Send her a lot of flirty text messages. This went for something like three or four months. And finally, she said to him, “So, when are you going to ask me out on a proper date?” And all contacts ceased from him.

So one of the reasons that women are afraid that they will come off as clingy or dependent or nagging or whining when they kind of call a man on his failure to call or his late call is that probably yes, you are going to be perceived that way.

Men don’t need to be told to pursue you.

We live in a world where men are so very much taught that it is their right, their duty, their responsibility, their privilege to be the pursuer. And so, if they’re not pursuing you, there is a reason for it. And it all adds up to as the book says, “They’re just not that into you.” I’m sorry to say. And I have had men who just weren’t that into me, and that’s just the nature of the biz. Not everybody we like likes us back.

So if it’s really early in a relationship and he’s not calling you when you want or he’s not calling you as often as you think he should or as soon as you think he should then your option really is to continue dating other people and let this one go.

What I found out from the woman who was being flirted with by the text message guy was that she had waited four months for him to ask her out. She hadn’t gone out with anyone else in those four months. That’s a third of a year. She spent on a guy who really just wanted to flirt. And that’s not in her best interest.

So, you should be dating until a man makes some level of commitment to you.

And by that I mean, he has said, “I’m crazy about you. I only want to see you and I hope you would not see anyone else.” Until he indicates those three things that he wants to be exclusive, he is exclusive with you and he cares about you at some level then you’re still dating other people. You’re not letting him be important enough that you feel like you need to have that deep, lengthy conversation that frankly, yes, it’s going to make you seem clingy.

Men like to pursue woman that they perceive as being high status.

And high status at some level means, she can afford to do without me. She can afford to tell me no. She is too busy to just be waiting for me.

Men want a joy, not a job. They want someone they pursue, not someone they perceive as an ankle weight. So, you don’t school a man that you’ve just me. You just move on.

But let’s say that you’ve been dating for a little while and you have reached that level of commitment. This has gone beyond the first few meetings or maybe on the first few meetings, he said those things and you have a level of commitment and he said, “I’ll call you tomorrow.” And he didn’t call for three days or something like that. OK. Then you do need to say something. But how you say it is really important.

There is longitudinal research, meaning research following the same couples over years and even decades to find out which couples are happy, which couples are unhappy, which ones last, and which ones don’t. And most importantly, why and how you can become one of those really happy couples, not just at the beginning of your relationship but how you can have those conversations that deepen your relationship and bring you on the same side, on the same team so your love really will last a lifetime.

A lot of this research was done by Dr. John Gottman.

He is the gold standard or maybe we should even say platinum standard scientist on this topic. And he finds that first of all, arguments always end on the same note they begin on, which is really interesting because a lot of times women are the ones who start an argument unless you’re in a lesbian relationship, in which case, it’s always a woman starts the argument.

So Gottman found that about 80% of the time in a heterosexual union, it’s the woman who starts an argument. And the women who start off really harshly, what he calls a harsh startup, kind of like starting your engine cold, the argument always ends harshly. It never ends in a way that brings more closeness and more resolution to the argument.

The woman who come closer to getting what they want meaning, they get their partner to understand their perspective and maybe to agree with part of that perspective and maybe it changed his behavior at least somewhat to align with her needs, the woman who get all of that are the ones who has soft startup, they’re very gentle in how they approach this discussion. They don’t start in by saying, “You damn jerk! You don’t care about me at all. All you care about is yourself. You called five days after you said you would call on the same day.”

That’s because that startup is so harsh and it’s also employ something called criticism.

I was very surprised to learn as perhaps some of you will be that there’s no such thing as helpful criticism.

Constructive criticism in relationships simply does not exist. I say this based on more than 35 years of outstanding science, following the same couples across time to find out who got happier and who got less happy. And criticism always made the relationship worse 100% of the time.

So it sounds like I just told you, “Well, just don’t approach difficult scenarios.” But that’s not true. This research also found that the happiest couples were the ones that brought up difficulties the most often, which I find really interesting. So they’re not criticizing but they are bringing up the difficult issues as they arise. They’re not stockpiling them and waiting until there’s a boiling point or blowing up. What these, as I call them relationship mechanics or doing, is they’re employing soft startup using complaint rather than criticism.

So, I want to tell you the difference between a complaint and a criticism because if you’re like me, most of us were not raised seeing examples of complaining rather criticizing. We were raised here and people criticize one another which again is going to make your relationship worse and will make you seem like you’re nagging and clingy and dependent and all those things that you don’t want to seem like you are and you don’t want to be.

So, here are some differences.

With criticism, you start with a word “you” or the word “you” is implied. That tends to be followed by the words always or never although that’s not invariably true.

Criticism is very general or global. It’s not specific to this present time and place.

And a criticism focuses on your partner’s defects such as name-calling or pointing out a flaw in their character.

Now, let’s contrast that with what a complaint looks like. A complaint usually starts with the word “I” and it goes on to say, “I feel or I felt” and then it stays really specific to this one time and place. Oh, that’s so hard for me.

By the way folks, I didn’t know any of this until started reading the science and it really revolutionize my marriage, my other relationships that I care about because I learned how to make those relationships better instead of how to win at any cost.

So you say, “I feel or I felt.” You keep it really specific to this time and place. And then instead of focusing on your partner’s defects, you focus on your feelings so that your partner can hear what you’re saying.

So let’s do a few examples of that. Let’s say that he did wait a whole week to call when he said he would call you within the next day or so. OK. This is a criticism.

“You selfish jerk! You always wait until the very last minute to call. You don’t care about me at all.”

The reason that doesn’t work is that people with any level of appropriate mental health at all, any level of appropriate mental health, they are going to defend to themselves just as if someone came at you with a closed fist, you would either recoil or you might raise your fist at them. You’re going to defend yourself in some way. You’re not going to just take it. So that’s why that doesn’t work.

So let’s talk about a complaint. A complaint would start with, “I felt confused when I didn’t hear from you for a week.”

Notice that in this example, I avoided saying I felt angry or I felt enraged. You may have actually felt those things but I’m avoiding saying that because that would be a harsh startup. Those words even used in a construct of a complaint are going to be a red flag for him to defend himself. So I changed it to, “I felt confused when I didn’t hear from you for a week.”

This is a complaint. It starts with “I feel” or “I felt”. It names an emotion, keeping the focus on me and my feelings and it labels the behavior that I found confusing.

Even better though, the best is if you can frame this so gently that it doesn’t really even seem like a complaint. Here’s an example.

“I miss speaking with you this past week and I felt a little bit lonely without you.”

That sounds like, “Wow! You’re such a great guy, just wanted more of you.”

Put yourself in this person’s position.

I know that we’ve all been criticized ourselves. If someone said they wanted more of us, wouldn’t we be a little inspired to want more of them too? If we’re in a committed relationship where we love them, the answer should be yes.

So again, this is only for relationships where exclusivity has been achieved. If you’re newly together, you don’t want to say you’ve been a little lonely. As far as this other person goes, you should have been too busy dating other people for you to notice that you didn’t get that call.

You and I know that you did notice. But you shouldn’t let on with a guy that you barely know because research shows that indeed, men perceive women who are desired by others and who are actively dating others as a hot ticket and someone they’re going to work harder to have. So you don’t want to say basically, “Hey, I got nothing going on here.”

But once you’re exclusive, you’re supposed to be only dating him and you can say these kinds of things in a gentle way. You can apply this to almost any situation. So I go through this exercise repeatedly with my students in class because of course, we’re all out there in the real world and we’re struggling with this issues and it’s difficult for most of us to hear the difference between a complaint and a criticism.

So I ask my students, “What examples would you have of difficulties in your relationships? It could be with a boyfriend, girlfriend. It could be with just someone in your life.” And one of the men in my class said that he got really upset. His brother ate some pizza that he’d been saving for himself. They were rooming during college.

And so, we came up with some ways to criticize his brother. For example, “You pig! You ate all my pizza and you’re just selfish jerk.” And the theme criticism, there’s an unspoken sometimes but often voiced feeling that this person always does this, that they’re a bad person and that they’re very selfish. So that’s why that word “often” comes up in the criticism.

And then we said, “Well, OK. How can you complain?” What the class came up with was, “You know, I was at work for eight hours and I was getting hungrier and hungrier. I was really thinking about how much I wanted that pizza and I came home and it wasn’t in the fridge. And I felt really frustrated. I would really appreciate it if you could leave my food alone when I’m clearly setting it aside.” And the class agreed they could probably hear that better than they could hear an attack against them.

So let’s go to an example about dating that one of my female students did. She said that whenever she was out with her boyfriend, her boyfriend tended to eye other women appreciatively and it made her very uncomfortable and angry.

And so, the class came up with some really good criticism. Those are easy to think about. They said, one of the criticisms they gave was, “You pig! You can’t even keep your eyes to yourself for one second. You don’t even care about me at all.” Again, that’s a criticism. It starts with you. It has contempt for the other person. It labels them with name-calling. It doesn’t just refer to this one time and place.

So we moved on to a complaint that we could have. And the woman in question said, “I feel like I’m not enough for you when you look at other women.” That is true. But framing it even more gently will get you more mileage.

Again, this isn’t my opinion. This is based on a lot of excellent science. So we tried to come up with an even gentler way to begin the conversation so that her boyfriend could come over to her side and be on the same team.

And that folks, that’s a big rule of thumb that separates happy couples from unhappy couples. The happy couples view their interactions especially the difficult ones with a goal of bringing both people on to the same team. The unhappy couples just want to score their point and win the argument.

Happy couples are willing to lose the argument or impartially express the needs and wants in order to strengthen that relationship. They are willing to think about how to as gentle as possible to bring their partner on to their team. So we thought OK, how could she do this?

And what she wound up saying was, “I feel a little ignored right now. I need to be the only woman in your line of sight tonight.” The men in the room agreed that they would be able to hear that very well. They wouldn’t feel criticized. They would feel like, “Oh, yeah! Yes, I need to pay attention to the person that I’m with.”

So it turns out that happy couples, the relationship mechanic which tends to be the woman again, she complains and she complains very gently. And folks, this is a learned skill. If you’re currently feeling like, “Oh my gosh! I’ve always criticized and I’m terrible about this. My relationships are going to go horribly.” I want you to know that I criticized and my relationships went horribly but I learned.

This is a learnable skill.

Research showed that when couples were randomly assigned to either learn these skills or not, that the couples who learned these skills went from being unhappy to much happier. So you can learn how to complain rather than to criticize. And you can progressively become more and more gentle.

It’s also important to note that research found that even though the happy couples complained the most, if all they’ve been doing was complaining, the relationship would have been terrible. Yes, you’ve got to complain to have a great relationship. But you also have to have a lot of positive interactions.

Think of love like a bank.

If you went to a real bank, how many dollars could you put it and then take out before you were flat broke? Well, it’s a 1 to 1 ratio at a real bank, right? So you could put in $5 and then if you took $5 out, you wouldn’t have any more money in the bank. The bank of relationships works a little bit differently.

In studies, the couples who are just barely hanging on by their fingernails are putting in $5 for every $1 they take out. That sounds like a lot. They have five times as many positive interactions as they do complaints or criticisms. And yet, they’re just barely making it.

The happy couples, remember the happy couples complain more often than anybody else, they over balance. They are positives. They actually put $20 in the bank for every $1 they withdraw. So they have 20 “I love you’s” or “you look great in those jeans” or “your butt is so cute” or giving a peck on the cheek or saying, “how about it haba haba haba?” whatever it is that makes your partner smile. They have 20 times as many of those as they have complaints.

So what we’re seeing here is that happy couples just have a lot of interaction. They have more complaining interaction than other couples but they also have a lot more positive interaction. And that’s what it really takes to make marriage lasts not just – or make love lasts not just for weeks or months or years but really for a lifetime.

Mike: Dr. Duana Welch, thank you so much for joining us today.

Dr. Welch: Thank you very much for having me again.

Mike Hennessy: This is Mike Hennessy and on behalf of the team at LoveEvolveandThrive.com, I would like to welcome you to today’s interview with Dr. Duana Welch. 

For free tips and thoughts on relationship advice for women, from hundreds of experts and authors, please visit our website at www.LoveEvolveandThrive.com.

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