Of course the title is from Strother Martin’s character in the movie, Cool Hand Luke, repeated later in the final scene of the movie by Luke himself. Spoiler Alert, that movie did not end well, as many of the arguments we have in any relationship do not end well. Because we have a failure to communicate. Let me suggest a significant reason for these common failures.
First, let me take you back to your time in the fourth grade. You might remember when we studied English with the practice of diagramming sentences. It was probably a traumatic experience for most of you. If so, stay with me, we’ll get to the communication part. When you diagrammed the sentence, you started with identifying the simplest parts of the sentence with increasing complexity. That’s where the trauma increased as the complexity increased, unless you were one of “those” kids.
For now we will remember the simple stuff. There was the subject, or noun, the action word or verb and then the direct object. The subject was what the sentence was about or the one doing the action. The object is receiving the action. We’ll just talk about those two, the subject and the object.
Consider in any conversation the one who is being talked about is the “subject” of the conversation the listener is the “object”. The most common hi-jack of the conversation is when the object takes over and becomes the subject. This can be sooo frustrating to the subject, the one trying to communicate important information about themselves.
Here’s how it gets hi-jacked. One person (the subject) is talking about their experience, “I had a rough day because my car wouldn’t start because it was so cold.” The listener might then feel very guilty that they did not have the battery checked as they promised and say, “I was going to get the battery fixed, but we had to spend Saturday with your mother.” Immediately, the focus of the conversation shifts. It is now about the other person’s guilt. This is where the “Oh, it’s now all about you” starts.
Instead of allowing the subject to remain the subject, by saying something like, “that sounds really difficult”, the object becomes the subject. When this happens, we’ve got a failure to communicate.
For men, I use the acronym D.E.A.F. for how we shift the conversation to us. We get Defensive, Explain, Accuse or Fix. Whenever we do any of these things we now make the conversation about us and we stop listening, we go D.E.A.F. Challenge yourself to not fall into any of these patterns. You know which one is your favorite “go-to”. She knows as well.
For women, there is a tendency to bring up his past mistakes or too quickly relate things to your experiences. There is this thing called emotional memory, it’s why women remember things with more clarity or color, not necessarily exactly how it happened, but how it felt or was experienced. When he brings up a story you can hi-jack it by bringing up his similar failures. Now it about you and your experience when he messes up. Or you can just bring up your similar experiences without hearing him out. Women talk to each other like this, with no problems. But your man is not a woman, so hear him out without making it about you.
Be curious and dig in a little, “tell me more about that.”, “what was that like?” or “when did this happen before?” Just stay with the subject until the story runs its course, then in a moment you can bring your part into it. If you want to move on to you as the subject, say something like, “Would it be ok if we shift to something I was thinking, or do you have more to say about that?” Listening is one of the most profound gifts of love you can give. Keep the subject the subject and love each other well!
Ken Curry, LMFT has incredible insight and experience into how couples communicate – and fortunately for his clients, and you – how they miscommunicate, too. He is determined to help his clients understand one another and overcome issues in their relationships, and truly cares about the outcome. For more information, or to schedule an appointment with Ken or any of our other couples counselors, call (720) 489-855 or click here to request more information.
