‘We need to talk ...’ Ouch! If we are totally honest, who amongst us doesn’t die inside just a little when we hear our partner utter that ominous invitation, even at those times when we know full well there is an issue between us that has to be addressed? But why does the prospect of a ‘talk’ make us feel that way? Is it conceivable that the sinking feeling in the pit of our stomach is an inner voice to be heeded rather than to be brushed aside?

The novelist Rose Macaulay once complained that, ‘It is a common delusion that you make things better by talking about them.’ This seems an extreme position to me: talking things through undoubtedly helps on occasion, and people like me would be out of a job if it didn’t. However, I do agree that Psychobabble has promoted the general misconception that the majority of tensions experienced in relationships are the result of communication failure. Surely, the argument runs, if couples could only learn to talk to each other properly, without scrapping, and really seek to understand each other’s point of view, the large part of their difficulties would be over? This may be so, and couples counselling is founded on this very maxim, but what if talk isn’t always the best answer?

First we need to make the crucial distinction between ‘talking’ and communicating, which is a much larger concept. It’s not that most of us are bad at communicating: if anything I would venture to suggest that a lot of difficulties in our relationships occur precisely because of just how well we communicate. It’s what we communicate that tends to create the problems: most of us can convey our hurt, anger, ridicule, and rejection only too well (if you are seeking independent confirmation, just ask your partner ...). The trouble is that since these emotions are conveyed primarily through non-verbal channels over which we have limited control, we can continue broadcasting them at full volume at the very moment we are ostensibly ‘talking’ to resolve the issues between us.

Make sure you’re in the right frame of mind before you talk to your partner...

We have already seen how influential Alex Pentland’s so-called ‘second channel’ of communication can be. Minute fluctuations in our movements, tone of voice, levels of agitation, our fluency and various other non-verbal markers tend to make our true feelings transparent, even when we seek to mask them. One aspect of non-verbal communication that Pentland’s team have focused upon is the non-conscious mimicry that tends to occur automatically when people spend time in each other’s company. Various studies have confirmed that people tend to copy each other’s body language, facial expressions, speech patterns and vocal tones. These micro-synchronies often take place incredibly fast, much faster than they can be consciously processed. As psychologist Elaine Hatfield points out, it took Muhammad Ali at least 190 milliseconds to even detect a signal light and another 40 milliseconds to respond with a punch. Yet college students have proved capable of synchronising their movements in less than 21 milliseconds, literally less than the blink of an eye. Fans of body-language books should pay attention to this: the speed with which this all happens naturally is so fluid and instantaneous that any attempts to replicate it deliberately are always going to feel clumsy and awkward and are seldom going to be very convincing.

Moreover, the more emotive the situation, the less likely you are to be able to monitor or modify these aspects of your behaviour effectively. Yes, by all means read the body-language books and do your best to adopt a suitably open posture, maintain an appropriate level of eye contact and mirror your partner’s gestures. Above all, take especial care not to broadcast the non-verbal signals such as eye-rolling that signal contempt since, as relationship expert John Gottmann has shown in the lab, any signs of contempt may well prove fatal to your exchange and possibly to your relationship. However, the chances are your true feelings will still leak out. If you are angry or stressed, your partner will know it. While we may choose our words with care, we are much less consciously in control of the subliminal cues we are giving out. Let’s not forget that you are disadvantaged here by the fact the other person knows you a little too well. They have been learning the nuances and subtleties of your non-verbal repertoire for some time. They will instinctively and subliminally detect your clumsy attempts at concealment and the authentic emotions that escape anyway will be highlighted. And, naturally, if your partner rumbles your deliberate use of communication techniques of any kind, they will quite rightly feel manipulated. Needless to say, this will not enhance the quality of your ‘talk’.

In a negotiation of any kind, both parties have in mind things that they want from the other. Usually they will be prepared to make concessions in order to achieve them. Even when the currency of exchange are concrete tokens like goods, services, or rates of pay it can be difficult enough for the opposing sides to reach a settlement both can live with. But when a couple ‘talks’ things are even more complex and the stakes exponentially higher. Neither party is likely to be satisfied with superficial changes in behaviour; what they really want is validation of their point of view. Sara doesn’t just want Finn to apologise for his outburst over Christmas; she wants him to agree with her that his actions were completely unacceptable. For his part, Finn needs Sara to recognise that he was being pushed beyond all reasonable limits by her sister’s constant carping, that it’s crazy that Sara just puts up with it, and that his girlfriend was lucky he didn’t do something considerably worse.

For both parties often the only good outcome of the ‘talk’ is the other person signing up to their particular view of the world. Contrary to common belief, it is often not sufficient for a couple to understand where each other is coming from: these peace talks are often derailed by a covert agenda to achieve consensus, even when perspectives are utterly irreconcilable.

More importantly, validating your partner’s worldview under such circumstances invariably involves casting yourself into an undesirable role in that world. It’s agreeing to be that ‘insensitive brute who can’t control his temper’ or the ‘passive doormat who lets anyone speak to her whichever way they choose’. In these negotiations, concessions come at a heavy price. No one likes to deny their own viewpoint or occupy a devalued position in someone else’s meaning system. Unconsciously, participants in such talks are well aware that not only their construction of reality but their very identity is under threat.

Even if, for the sake of restoring the peace, one partner ultimately decides to endorse the other’s worldview, the emotional cost can breed underlying resentment that only erupts later in the context of some other issue. If you do go down the talking route, if at all possible, find some re-frame that allows both of you to emerge in a positive light with your dignity intact. If you have to, just agree to differ. Author Alexander Penney reminds us: ‘The ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but hold hands.’ Do not try and bludgeon your partner into admitting that you are in the right. You may win the battle but you will almost certainly be losing the war.

So if talking is so fraught with hazard, what are the alternatives? Ignoring issues isn’t usually advisable (although you’d be surprised how often it seems to work for some couples). To understand another way forward you need to strip things back a little. We often over-complicate things when it comes to our relationships and frequently the issues that preoccupy us and which are the subject of endless debate with our partners are not as pertinent as they feel. We could all do worse than heed this very basic truth: the people we find most attractive and the ones we are closest to are those who consistently make us feel good.

Disappointingly simple, I know, but you would be surprised how often we ignore this at our peril and then end up wondering why we don’t feel emotionally connected any more. The people who make us feel good do this in two main ways: first by stimulating positive, enjoyable emotions in us; secondly by validating or affirming us. We naturally seek out the company of people who can trigger a rush of ‘feel good’ hormones in us, and those who persist in seeing us as a Good Thing, especially when they know about our failings too. As Edna Buchanan put it: ‘True friends are those who really know you but love you anyway.’ Research into friendship conducted by Carolyn Weisz and Lisa F. Wood from the University of Puget Sound, Washington, also disclosed that even more important than intimacy was the ability of best friends to support and validate people’s preferred identities. If these things hadn’t taken place at some stage you would never have ended up with your partner in the first place.

If restoring harmony depends upon re-prioritising these objectives, then intense verbal exchanges are not necessarily always the most effective way or direct way of achieving them. Consider the hormone oxytocin, which is a powerful bonding agent. It makes people feel close, warm and secure with each other. It is released by breast-feeding mothers to promote attachment with their babies and also during orgasm. Now if you are hacked off with your partner you may not feel in the mood to proceed straight to the ‘make-up sex’ (although making love rather than verbal war can be a surprisingly effective way of circumventing emotional distance). However, oxytocin is also released across the full spectrum of physical contact ranging from massage through to sustained eye contact. A reassuring stroke of the shoulder (providing it is meant and received in the right spirit) can be more healing to your relationship than picking over the debris of your last fight, or can at least set the scene for a less fraught exchange between you. Those hormones will help soothe your relational troubles away ... if you let them. Touch is hugely powerful, and if couples could bear to make themselves sit and hold hands for a few minutes before they talked, the conversations they have subsequently might be very different.

Now of course you are probably reading this thinking, ‘Physical contact of any kind is the very last thing I want with them right now!’ Indeed, you may not be ready or willing to make your partner feel good. If this is the case you have some work to do before you talk. You need to focus on the other aspect of the people we like to be around – their ability to hold on to a positive representation of us. Rather than seeking validation from your partner, your best chance of success in repairing the emotional breech is simply to put effort into affirming them instead. The theologian Thomas Jay Oord gives us a useful definition of agape, one of the Greeks’ subcategories of love: ‘an intentional response to promote well-being when responding to that which has generated ill-being’. This captures the spirit of what we are aiming for here. However, you will be relieved to hear that I am not advocating that you have to start paying them compliments or telling them how marvellous they are. This is a job best done initially on your own, in private.

In the course of your conflict your internal model of your partner has been damaged. You don’t see them as a ‘good thing’ right now because you are still smarting about what they have just done. But while you see them in a negative light, even if you say nothing at all, your partner will sense it. In this state you are no longer a psychic ally but a threat, and they will protect themselves against you – either by attacking you or withdrawing from you. The internal representations we hold of people are hugely powerful things, influencing both our behaviour and theirs in ways we can scarcely conceive.

I was very struck by the first chapter of Stephen Covey’s famous book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. What impressed me was not his approach to micromanaging life (which seems to me completely unsustainable for most mere mortals), but an anecdote he tells about his son. Covey and his wife had been getting increasingly worried about their child who was struggling academically and apparently came across as emotionally immature and socially awkward. His parents dutifully attempted to boost his self-esteem with a relentless diet of praise and encouragement but nothing seemed to be working. In the end, it dawned on Covey that the real problem was their internal representation of their boy. He explains:

‘When we honestly examined our deepest feelings, we realised that our perception of him was that he was basically inadequate, somehow “behind”. No matter how much we worked on our attitude and behaviour, our efforts were ineffective because, despite our actions and our words, what we really communicated to him was “You aren’t capable. You need to be protected”’.

By challenging the inadequate image of their son they carried around with them, Covey and his wife gradually released him to become a confident, self-assured and capable young man. Unfortunately, when couples ‘talk’ this dynamic is often reversed. If it goes well for you, you successfully wrest from your partner an acknowledgement that your freshly-minted negative image of their inadequacies is actually the more accurate account: the fact they have stuffed up and failed proves it, and they need to accept this. Keep seeing them like that and neither of you are going to be charmed by the ultimate result.

Like it or not, your primary psychological task, for as long as you want to be with the person concerned, is to be the standard-bearer of a positive image of your loved one (even if you do hate their guts right now). Once you achieve this again, being around you will be an enjoyable, affirming experience for your partner, or at least an emotionally safe one, even if you do nothing else. I sincerely believe that only under those circumstances can your relationship move forward.

Take yourself away, set aside your hurt for a moment and remind yourself of the qualities you admired in your partner when you first met. Mentally rehearse the good times you had, those occasions when you felt proud to be with them. Internally reassert your faith in them, even if you feel they are challenging that faith to its limits right now.

There is actually good experimental evidence that this works in the form of a study that found levels of marital satisfaction were much higher amongst couples that unrealistically idealised their partners. This was the discovery of Sandra Murray and her colleagues, who followed 222 newlywed couples throughout the first three years of married life. Naturally, when the research was published, there was some scepticism about the wisdom of looking at your partner through such rose-tinted glasses. However, I suspect the study doesn’t necessarily reflect the naivety of the couples involved so much as their ongoing commitment to a process of active affirmation and a commendable desire to remain true to the very best image of their chosen Other they could possibly internalise. If love is blind, perhaps that is only because it deliberately chooses to keep staring into the sun. Or maybe Rabbi Julius Gordon hit the nail on the head when he wrote: ‘Love is not blind – it sees more, not less. But because it sees more, it is willing to see less.’ It is no coincidence that partners viewed in this way felt grateful, appreciative and pleased with their relationships. It’s a fundamental and universal need to have someone on our side, to keep faith with the best in us, come what may. This is probably one of the highest services that one human being can perform for another.

Many successful couples swear by the adage of ‘never letting the sun go down on your anger’. It’s good advice, but it doesn’t always have to be achieved through protracted negotiation and ‘sorting things out’ verbally. Sometimes the best policy is to go back to basics, reset the dynamics of your relationship and leapfrog over the contentious issue for the time being. Go away, lick your wounds and retrieve a less blemished vision of your partner. Thus equipped, then try and ensure that your company is affirming or pleasurable. Do something you both enjoy together. Share a joke. Cultivate a sense of solidarity by gossiping about someone else you both have an issue with. Cook a meal you both really like. I know all these things sound completely counterintuitive when tensions are running high, but if you can manage it you will lay a much stronger foundation for a meaningful reconciliation.

If you can do this, your non-verbal communication will take care of itself. This matters because it is through this channel that we experience emotional attunement with the other: mothers and infants speak volumes to each other in their easy, complementary dance of reciprocal gestures and expressive cues, and often not an intelligible word is uttered by either party.

Of course I’m not saying that you shouldn’t talk; there’s definitely a time and a place for it. But it isn’t always straight away. Bad talk is not necessarily preferable to no talk. And if you are going to have a heart-to-heart, then at least try and make sure that’s what it is, rather than a full-frontal assault on your partner’s identity. Your conversation needs a context so take care to create the conditions under which it stands the best chance of being fruitful: before the talking can really start there may be other things you need to do first. No one is going to be able to have an effective conversation with you unless they feel safe.

And remember, the time you are most likely to force your point home is the time when you need to tread most carefully. I have always admired the wisdom of the author Marita Bonner when she wrote:

‘She did not talk to people as if they were strange hard shells she had to crack open to get inside. She talked as if she were already in the shell. In their very shell.’

If talking between couples could only be more like that, I’d be all for it, and Relate would probably be out of business.