How to Evade Difficult Conversations   

In a previous post, I shared “Deer-in-the-Headlights – A Poem About Overwhelm” and promised you, among other things, a way to escape futile conversations with a “Get out of Jail, Free” card.

True to my word, at the bottom of today’s post, you’ll find an instantaneously downloadable “Get out of Jail, Free” card you can quote or print out to help you politely evade immobilizing exchanges. I think your past, present, or future partner will love you all the more for sharing it.

Why? Because optimism isn’t preventative.

Preparing for continued intermittent relational stress is as common-sense as buying QuickBooks: if you detest bookkeeping, you want tools that make it easier!

Plan Your Escape

However, since feeling like a deer-in-the-headlights is so overwhelming… in those moments, your problem-solving capacities are debilitated. You’re actually highly likely to forget, fumble, or miss that window entirely. Right? Most likely, you’ll just feel “glued to the spot.”

Again.

Let’s face it: difficult conversations are a recurring energy-suck. (Common enough that you’re reading a blog post about it.) And tension – a word frequently used to describe how we grow and strengthen our muscles – will recur whether you want it to or not.

Not Your Fault

Just because you can do something about quarrels (which I’ll provide more support for in other posts) doesn’t mean the preceding tension is your fault.

“Fault” is, in fact, a cumbersome and useless lens. Being in a position to stop something midway does not mean it’s wrong that it happens in the first place. The ability to put a stop to something does not imply that you could’ve just shut it off earlier or prevented it altogether. Or should have. Or that anyone else could/should have.

Regardless of whether or not you cause the glitch, you can help resolve it.

Contention is just a glitch of life. A tricky glitch. Because you can only help debug this particular system from within the system.

“It’s never too late” is a platitude

Emailing or handing the “Get out of Jail, Free” card to someone after the fact might feel futile, hopeless, or like “too little, too late…” Let’s talk about timing.

Sending your girlfriend a “Get out of Jail, Free” card on the 3^rd day of a drinking binge without having let her know where you were or whether you were being faithful would qualify as pretty bad timing.

In less extreme situations, like if you’ve only just walked away from a small glitch, handing her a “Get out of Jail, Free” card before you’ve had a good-to-okay day together or a night to sleep on it (hopefully together) would probably go down as almost too early. Odd how timing works.

“Good timing” would be any halfway decent, okay day that’s been spat-free-so-far, regardless of how many days before your last spat was. (I know: this is ironically EXACTLY when you’re least likely to think about it, least likely to want to think about it, and least likely to feel the urge to do anything about it, am I right?!?!)

The Opposite of Abandonment

The “Get Out of Jail Free” card doesn’t support you in abandoning the conversation entirely, nor your girlfriend, nor yourself. It supports your relationship. It helps you both “stick it out” through the hard stuff without accidentally abandoning yourselves.

This is important, because it’s in these kinds of moments that both parties tend to abandon themselves and/or the other.

What I mean by that is: it’s easy for Person A to get so preoccupied with what Person B’s behavior might mean, that their own behavior becomes uncontrolled, unconscious, like a firefighter barging through obstacles to what they want to salvage as if the relationship is going up in flames. Person B may feel so analyzed, scrutinized, mentally invaded or emotionally encroached upon, that Person A mistakes that for suspicious levels of guarded defensiveness, or frusrating obliviousness to what Person A feels is “obvious.”

When you walk away in order to reset that dynamic, you do so with the intention to return and enter into a different dynamic, or do a different dance, and seek a different flavor of connection.

Promising to report back in after X minutes is pivotal. As is actually doing so.

“Checking in” Doesn’t Mean “Checking it Off”

“I’ll be back in 30 minutes. I love you so I will want to resolve this ASAP. I can’t promise to resolve this before life can continue, though. That’s too much pressure. I need to express love along the way, even while this is unresolved. Make sense? How about tomorrow over dinner we bring our new insights and questions. That’s what I can offer. that’s the soonest that can work for me.”

Promising that this topic can be discussed “Thursday instead of TV” or “Saturday, when my work deadline is over” might feel like the WRONG thing to say to a girlfriend who’s looking urgent enough that even the slightest disengagement feels scary. But I swear, if Thursday is honestly the first moment that you can imagine having this conversation GO WELL, and you don’t have what it takes right now, speaking that truth will set you free.

It’s boundary-setting. Honest and true. Not what you wish were true, but the actual, honest-to-goodness truth.

And you’re walking away. So if she’s mad about the truth right now, check in again in 30 minuntes. She may see that that’s just what’s true. She may realize it won’t go well before you (both) recalibrate.

If she doesn’t, you can always reassure her you want this resolved, too, and you know it’s not easy, but it won’t work if you’re upset. If you go on another walk, or ‘away’ in any way, shape, or form, give her your new ETA as a way to prevent her from feeling ‘abandoned’ or rejected.

Here’s that pivotal “Get out of Jail, Free” card.

I’m truly curious:

Did you print it? Email it?
Are you waiting for the next post, first?

Please DM me on social media, or email me, Bree [at] “website!”