When To Speak Up .........And When To Shut Up

But how often, really, does one partner have no notion what's on the other's mind? When I evaluate a couple, it's not at all unusual for them to cite "communication" as a problem: "He'll say anything—he has no notion how he undermines me."
Rarely is the impasse caused by lack of information. Think how hard it is to keep a secret in an intimate relationship. But it is common for thoughtless speech to stir up discord. There may even be instances where silence is, as advertised, golden.
I am thinking of a story a husband told me in praise of his wife. He had come home on a Friday griping about his job. The managers were ratcheting up the pressure, and now an immediate supervisor was hinting that a promised promotion might not come through. His wife looked annoyed, but instead of speaking her mind, she puttered and listened and offered vague encouragement. On Saturday, she said, "About that supervisor—" And the husband interrupted: "I know. I'm going to have to confront him or go over his head."
"She could have laid it out for me the night before," the man told me. "She may have been thinking that I'm timid and insecure. Other women have said as much. But she was patient. She let me vent, let me spend a night mulling it over."
I asked him what his wife's silence meant. He said, "She has faith in me. She knows I'll do the right thing."
I like this story because it indicates where communication lies.
Communication is not just putting ideas into words. It's getting ideas across, preferably in a way that allows them to be used. Timing is crucial.
But what of spontaneity? Many people believe intimacy means being able to say what you think: "I'm through repressing my feelings. What good is a relationship if I can't express myself?"
I see the point in this objection. Women have been forced for too long to control their responses. We may admire Jane Austen's shrewd heroines, but we wouldn't want to live in a world that demands such extremes of social calculation. No one should have to weigh every syllable.
All the same, self-expression often benefits from forethought. That's why writers revise. Sometimes I think therapists have done great harm by overemphasizing immediacy in communication, as if the ideal marriage were like psychoanalysis from the patient's position, where you say whatever comes to mind without censorship.

It is worth noting that psychotherapy from the therapist's standpoint is very much a matter of timing. Trainees often lie in wait for moments when emotions run high, hoping to express an insight when it will have the most impact. This strategy works for some patients but leaves others feeling ambushed. The point of therapy—or of fruitful communication in marriage—is not for one party to look clever or to humiliate the other. Many years ago, a psychoanalyst I admire, Fred Pine, of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, wrote an essay titled "The Interpretive Moment" about communication techniques that leave the other person feeling respected. I like to remind overeager trainees of an adage from that paper: Strike while the iron is cold.
There are moments when speech is likely to damage intimacy. The heart-to-heart that seems so appealing when you've had too much to drink won't do anybody any good. Nor is it a useful strategy to mention one more annoyance as the two of you are headed to bed.
Sometimes bad moments declare themselves in the middle of a discussion. If you find yourself making the same point five times, maybe the problem is not that you've failed to make your opinion clear. He knows what you've said. He disagrees, or emotionally he can't afford to agree right now. Perhaps your insistence carries a secondary message, that you find him disappointing in an important way, and you may need to think through the larger problem separately, and perhaps on your own.
Psychotherapists pay attention to what they call the working alliance. You can't bring up hurtful issues, can't hope to change things for the better, if you're not on the same team. Early in a relationship, all that counts is creating trust and comfort. Solving problems through explicit negotiation makes sense only if the effort serves the prior goal of relationship building. Nonverbal communication might serve the purpose best: working side by side, sharing pleasures, touching, being there.
Particularly in times of stress, you need to have faith that the two of you can tolerate a little unclarity and muddle through, and not just with the small issues. The big, ongoing struggles—about time, money, and the expression of affection—may need to be postponed.
In hard times, it's worth considering a role for simple curiosity. What exactly is he trying to say? People like to be understood with precision, especially if they are hurting. It is said that rather than listen, men suggest solutions, but women can do that, too. The motive may be less to fix the problem at hand than to reform the other person, or to insult him: "Stop whining about your boss! Be a man!"
Even constructive suggestions can come across as undermining. What many people need is a response that suggests they are capable of finding their own solutions. Or—if they're asking for advice—an acknowledgment that the dilemma is as complex as they feel it to be: "That is complicated. I'll want to think it over."
Couples may actually be energized by letting an issue remain unsettled for a while. The ability to tolerate ambiguity implies confidence in the relationship as a whole. It may be enough to say, "You're right, that's a problem, and sooner or later we'll need to address it." To be sure, this approach works best if you actually intend to sit down on a quiet afternoon and put in your two cents.
None of this is to say that couples can't be spontaneous or that they must suppress annoyance. One of the great problems of self-help prescriptions is that they equate shaky couples with all couples. If the two of you are resilient, smart-mouthed street fighters, you may amuse each other by saying whatever comes to mind. You may even both learn something from what pops out of your mouth. But if your relationship is strained, or if it is just young and untested, you might consider paying attention to the timing of squabbles and, if you need to strike, waiting until the iron is cold.

Life Skills to Master Before Your Next Date

Setting Your Internal GPS

You have to know where you want to go (and who can help you get there) in order to point your life in the right direction. Are you searching for someone to travel around the world with you? Then perhaps the home-owning workaholic with the needy wolfhound will never be more than a fun distraction until your next flight. Are you just looking for a fun distraction until your next flight? Terrific. But be clear with Mr. Wolfhound about this from the outset, so as not to break any hearts (including your own).

Knowing When to Close the Tab

The problem with anxious Internet stalking before meeting IRL is that you tend to find whatever it was you were looking for: the accomplished ex-girlfriend, the misspelled "its", the disparaging tweet about your favorite Orange Is the New Black episode. Then again, you'd feel really silly if you went on a date with a registered sex offender because you hadn't done your due diligence. So by all means, do a background check—you'd do as much if you were looking for a petsitter. Read the first story. Check the first picture. And then, unless you're good at not saying "Oh I know you were class president, I read it in your high-school-paper archives," stop there. A creepy stalker vibe can be a real conversation killer.

Selecting a Restaurant Like a Superhero

If I could have one superpower, it would be the power of Dinner Deciding. I would be that person with the ability to size up the company, mood, tastes, weather and general vibe of an occasion, and then leap in a single bound to the most perfectly perfect restaurant. If you have this superpower, please invite me out to dinner. If not, spend some time before your next date thinking about the ideal thread-the-needle spot: a place where you know the menu but won't run into all your friends, a place that has charm but isn't too cutesy, a place close enough to home that you can get there with cute shoes and makeup intact but not so close that an invitation feels implied...and extra superhero points if you know of some secret, off-the-menu trick or just-right, drinks-and-dessert joint around the corner.

Punching Up Your Elevator Speech

At some point, you're going to need to explain how you coordinate the regional office's bulk orders of hotel carpeting in a way that makes sense and sounds interesting—i.e., without all the vague blandness that once made a friend confess she'd thought you were sharing your CIA cover—particularly if the other person is in a totally different line of work. After all, if you're not interested in yourself and what you do, how do you expect anyone else to be? For your next trick, refrain from the boring, old volley of questions ("And what do you do? And how do you like that?") and master...

Using This Conversation Conversion Chart

You know how sometimes you realize you're out of conversational eggs, so to speak, and so you have to find a replacement, like the way you'd use applesauce in a cake? Next time, refer to this handy conversion chart!

Instead of "Do you have siblings?" try "What was you favorite childhood vacation?" Instead of "What's your favorite restaurant around here?" try "What's the best meal you've eaten in the last six months?"

Instead of "What do you do?" try "What's the weirdest thing I would find in your office?" Instead of "Seen any good movies?" try "What's your secret favorite movie? Not the one that makes you seem all smart, but the one you'd watch 1,000 more times?"

Reading the New Body Language

To be polite (and to ignore your BFF's constant "So?!" texts), you've turned your phone off, which you had to Google how to even do. Good for you. And yet, there's no need to freak out if your date is still fumbling with his phone. He might be nervous, or he might be waiting for a family member's post-op, all-clear text. You really never know. If the mood is right you might jokingly point it out—"Are you live-tweeting your hummus review?"—but don't get all up in his face about his smartphone addiction...not at least until the second date.

Recovering From a Gaffe with Confidence, Grace and Jazz Hands

You're going to torque your shoe heel into a street grate or overturn a wine glass or accidentally bite his ear when he goes in for a goodbye kiss (cheek or mouth? Where is he going?!). It's a rare and special art, however, to know how to lightly poke fun at yourself enough to put the other person at ease without going so far that you make them feel an uncomfortable degree of responsibility to reassure you. Trust me. This balance is my life. The key is to remember that he'd rather focus on your best qualities than judge you at your most awkward—give him a chance to do that.

Gracefully Declining the Next-Day Mini-Golf Session

We've written it many times, you've heard it from many sources and here I am, about to say it again, but we can't help it; it might just be one of the most powerful lessons you ever learn in your whole life, and no it's not how to right-click with a touchpad although that is surprisingly helpful. It is: YOU CAN SAY NO. Maybe this date was a disaster. Oh well! With any luck it was at least a disaster in a funny way that will make a good story some day. If, at the end of the night, wistful-for-ex, loud-chewing, Bluetooth-wearing, nightmare-date Guy is ready for more, don't shuffle your feet and claim to be busy every day for the rest of your life. Try a smile, and something polite but firm like, "I don't think we're compatible," or "I'm not sure this is what I'm looking for," or, "I'm not interested in something steady right now." And then do what any sane, mature adult does: Block him on Facebook.

Shortening the Horizon

A surefire way to make sharing a basket of fries into an intense existential drama is to be thinking the whole time, "Do I want to marry this person?" Take it easy, Sister. Try first: "Do I want to see the dessert menu?" Baby steps. What's the best horizon for you to consider? Twenty more minutes? Another meal? A day trip? Seeing each other in sweatpants? People reveal themselves bit by bit, which doesn't mean you have to stick around to see more, just that the real question is whether you want to. And if the answer is maybe, then ask yourself one of the only easy questions in the universe: Do you, in fact, in your heart of hearts, want any more ketchup to go with those fries?

Men You Need to Meet (But Not Marry)

1. The One Who Never Wanted to Commit—Until He Met You

This sounds like the dream, right? The guy who proclaimed to all that he'd never settle down with anyone ever, and then ate his words when you came along? But the problem is that no matter how wowed by you he is now, the moment things become less exciting, less overwhelmingly amazing between the two of you (and the moment will come), he is likely to have second thoughts. And that will make you feel awful. Maybe you'll sense it happening, in which case you'll probably try harder, to do whatever you can to make sure things don't get less exciting. But that's a basis for a performance, not a marriage.

You need to meet this guy, however, so that when you meet the guy you should marry you can tell the difference. The one you ought to marry will be a person who wants to be in a committed relationship and who will work with you to make your marriage strong. He won't feel he has made a mistake, or been duped, every time something between the two of you isn't perfect, because he will already know that relationships, like other true and meaningful things, operate on an axis that has nothing to do with perfect—they are messy, real, evolving things. That's what's so great about them.

2. The Guy Who Knows Everyone, I Mean, Everyone, In Town

This is a guy who'll save you when you need to get a table at the hot, new restaurant or a contact at a company to which you're thinking of sending your resume. But be wary. This guy is always chatting on the phone—or sending emails or responding to texts—during dinners, holidays, all the times when you long for attention. Makes sense: He's responding to all those other people who need an in at that trendy restaurant or a professional contact, after all, and he's got to keep his Rolodex up-to-date; it requires constant effort. His desire to help, his sociability, these are some of his best qualities—as a friend.

3. The Funny, Charming, Sensitive Guy Who Pouts and Says "Nothing" When You Ask Him If Something's Wrong

He's got so many wonderful qualities. So please, date him—if only because you'll learn a lot about the importance of another quality: open communication. The thing about marriage is that it's really long. You might be the greatest, most thoughtful and kind-hearted person in the world; I guarantee you are still going to occasionally piss him off.

It's easier, for all of us, to sit in silence and seethe and think self-righteously that if our partners were better people, they would know why we are mad and wouldn't have to ask. It's a lot harder to say, "I know you didn't mean it, but that joke you made in front of our friends about my slow work habits made me feel lame." Yet, so much of marriage comes down to just those moments—spitting it out, explaining what's wrong and giving your partner a chance to apologize and do better the next time. The brooding guy who punishes you with silence? After a while, you're likely to become so afraid of making him angry—and so unsure of what exactly bothers him since he never tells you—that you'll have to tiptoe around him.

4. The Guy Who Is So Good-Looking—or Wealthy or Successful—That All Your Friends Are in Awe

Here's my advice: See what it feels like to walk into a room with him. Watch your friends' and acquaintances' eyes widen ever so slightly. Just remember, it can be har to separate the feeling of pride and exhilaration that comes from having won the affection of someone deemed desirable from the more tender feelings that are the basis of love. Marriage is made up of so many amazing moments other than walking into rooms. Make sure the guy you marry is the guy you most want to stay up late with when it's just the two of you, the one you love being alone with at home.

5. The Earnest, Bright-Eyed Younger Man Who Adores You

This guy not only wants to commit your every utterance to memory but also heartens you with his sweetness and solemn desire to find love. This will help you more than you know, especially on those days when the men you've dated have caused you to question whether guys even have feelings. (We all have those days.) This man will help you to feel optimistic about humanity and about yourself. But you can't get romantic with him over the long term. Not because of his age—there's nothing wrong with walking down the aisle with someone younger—but because one-sided adoration inevitably curdles into resentment that the feeling isn't mutual. You might not even want to get romantic with him in the short term because he might feel some real feelings and what you might really like is the flattering reflection of yourself you see in his admiring gaze. By choosing to let him go, you'll have done the right thing—acting in the best interests of two connected people—which is exactly what's required when you meet the man you so, so, so need to marry.