Be clear about your wants and needs

Popular wisdom suggests couples should know each other like the back of each other’s hands. Maybe that’s why one notion of romance is that your partner should anticipate your needs without you having to vocalize them. And yet, experts who study long-term relationships have found that the most successful couples continue to be open and explicit about their wants and needs.

Why do I have to ask you for a foot massage!

In 10 Lessons to Transform Your Marriage, The Gottmans introduce a couple, David and Candace, who has had problems clearly expressing their wants and needs. One morning, Candace asked David for a foot massage. Noticing David was busy, Candace caveated the request by saying David could finish his work first. When David finished his calls, he offered Candace a foot massage but noticed that by now she was irritated. Candace didn’t want to feel as if she was just another obligation for David to “schedule in;” she did not want to always have to ask David to make her happy.

Now fellas, before you get too excited, you should note that research indicates men are worse than women at expressing their wants and needs. This is because many men are conditioned to jump straight to problem-solving when comforted with emotional discomfort; over time this makes us so out of touch with emotions that we barely even know our own wants and needs, let alone being able to express them to our partners.

You decide: Homecoming Parade, Truck Parade, or Both?

But back to Candace for now, why is her attitude NOT typical of successful couples? Researchers from The Harvard Negotiation Project discuss a possible reason in their classic book on communication, Difficult Conversations. People – even couples – see the world differently. This is because 1. We have different information, and 2. We interpret the information we do have differently.

As an example of the first point – having different information – the authors cite an example of a father who takes his 4-year old son to a parade. The father sees cheerleaders, football players and floats and thinks “that was an average HOMECOMING parade.” His son says, “That was the best TRUCK parade ever.” Each float was pulled by trucks, which the father barely noticed. The father and son observed the same event, but paid attention to different things.

And even when we notice the same information, we can interpret it differently. The character Alvie Singer in the movie Annie Hall famously complains to his therapist, “We never have sex.” His girlfriend retorts, “We’re constantly having sex.” “How often do you have sex?” asks the therapist. “Three times a week!” they reply in unison.

Tying this back to the foot massage: once we appreciate that people - even couples who have been together for a long time - see the world differently (because they have different information AND interpret information differently), we see why it's usually better to be open about our wants and needs: it eliminates a layer of interpretation. Over time, being open about your wants and needs will probably help your partner anticipate your needs better, but you'll be happier if you don't count on it.

Also see: Post #5 - Healthy versus Harmful Complaining. To learn more about why we are writing these 20 blogposts on relationship science, read this post. 

For more on Difficult Conversations, see these book notes or purchase the book here.