That’s Not What I Meant! How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships
Dec 19th, 2007 by Jill
That’s Not What I Meant! How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships by Deborah Tannen
“The more contact people have with each other, the more opportunities both have to do things in their own way and be misunderstood. The only way they know of to solve problems is to talk things out, but if different ways of talking are causing a problem, talking more isn’t likely to solve it. Instead, trying harder usually means doing more of whatever you’re doing — intensifying the style that is causing the other to react. So each unintentionally drives the other to do more and more of the opposing behavior, in a spiral that drives them both up the wall.” (pp. 113-114)
Deborah Tannen’s book, That’s Not What I Meant! How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships
When I moved in with G, Kathy’s and my worlds collided. She was a warm, interesting, inspiring person. Her eyes always struck me — from the moment I first saw her, she looked like someone fundamentally good and trustworthy. Over time, though, I didn’t know how to interpret the things she did in our relationship — they were so different from the things I would do to demonstrate friendliness — in my world, they almost looked like hostility. They were incredibly stressful to me, and I didn’t know what to do.
The way I show friendliness most is through space — offering people space, autonomy, freedom, listening and observing, accepting the choices they make that are different from mine, and moving slowly. I feel things strongly, but tend to understate my feelings an ideas in real-time conversations, unless I know someone very well. I think (and Kathy, correct me if I’m wrong) that the way Kathy was reaching out to me to demonstrate friendliness in our early days was through offering me involvement — invitations, requests, offers of help, crossed paths, conversations, lending things, asking to borrow things. In other words, normal stuff. If anyone’s the freak here, it’s me. But, even if I am a freak, it’s who I am — or was. It was the way I knew. It was the way that worked for me — or at least, I thought it was the way that worked for me. Looking back, it’s debatable as to how well it really did work for me. I was lonely a fair amount of the time. But my friends were very close, very special, and very trusted and I loved the relationships I had through this way of being.
When I read this book, and I realized that the ways we showed friendliness were not only different, they were opposite. The way I was showing her friendliness most likely looked like hostility to her, too! Each of us could be reaching out honestly in friendliness, and yet each of us could be interpreting hostility from the other one because we were so different. I think that’s what happened in our early days. We were both trying so hard to be friendly — trying over and over, more and more — until we were so friendly, we didn’t speak to each other for a year.
The funny thing is, I don’t actually need as much space and slowness and unquestioning acceptance as I thought I did. Understanding that Kathy was showing me friendliness, even though it was in a way different from my way, changed everything. That was all I really needed. Once I realized that her offers of inclusion and involvement were coming from a place of friendliness, it was all of a sudden easier to say “no thanks” if I needed to, but it was also easier to try new things and stretch a little. I found that I wanted to. It was also easier to speak her language and to explain a little bit about where I’d been coming from.
It was life changing, because not only could I now understand what Kathy was really communicating to me, I could also understand a much wider cross section of the world in general. The world started to look friendlier, and I became less fragile and shy. It was like the Rosetta stone. It was a world-opening gift.
If you have someone important in your life whose style is radically different from your own and you’re at a loss for what to do, this book is fantastic.
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