Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Tellin' It Like It Is

There is a general theme that runs through many of the letters that I get from people who have some sort of relationship issue or other. And that is they simply don't understand that being direct with a mate is often the easiest and best way to go as far as resolving the problem at hand. Think about it. How many times have you been in a situation where when you finally confronted your relationship partner about his/her--inconsiderate behavior, infidelity, lack of emotional support, intimacy shortcomings, incompatibility--the issue was either put to rest for good or at the very least compromised over to a point of mutual satisfaction.

To take but one example involving my girlfriend and me: We've been dating for over a year now. Early on in our relationship there was an issue of my not showing enough interest in her career. The problem was I didn't even realize that she was bothered by this. Apparently, however, it was the case that when we would both meet up after work for drinks or dinner, I would go on and on about my job, but didn't show nearly the same level of concern about her work. My girlfriend has a stressful, time consuming job in the legal sector, and she quickly got fed up with my seeming lack of curiosity about what exactly she did for a living and the difficulties she faced in trying to work her way up the corporate ladder each day.

Rather than let this fester inside of her for months before finally either dumping me or raising the matter so deep into our relationship as to be too little, too late, my girlfriend got in my face about it straight on. Without mincing words, she just came right out one day and said to me that when it came to our nightly conversations, I was a jerk in that I never made any attempt to listen to her when she tried to talk about her job, but that when it came to my work, she couldn't get me to shut up, not even for a minute.

Here's the thing. As soon as she confronted me about this, I knew she was 100% right. And therein lies the beauty of being direct with your partner: When you just come right out and tell it like it is--whatever it is--as long as you speak from the heart, openly and honestly, chances are that you'll get your point across in way that beating around the bush will never be able to match.