Difficult Conversations: Let's Be Honest and Direct

Things are so much less complicated and simpler if you are honest in your relationships. Don't wimp out by avoiding difficult but potentially healing conversations. By going direct, you talk with the right person who can potentially do something different in response to your concern. By being indirect and talking with a third party, you triangulate and make any relationship problem more difficult to solve.

In my counseling practice, I often see relationships get damaged when people break trust by not being brave enough to be honest and direct. All grown ups need to develop their courage enough to have difficult conversations that need to happen. While going direct can seem intimidating or scary, it usually works out with a better ending. Being direct, honest, and transparent with those you love makes you respect yourself more, and ultimately shows more care for the other person. It gives them a chance to do things differently with you and perhaps open up with more of their true feelings.

The poet Mark Nepo writes that when we aren't honest it is as if we put on gloves that separate us from the people and events in our life. There is something unnatural coming between us.

When is honesty and directness needed?

• When we are unhappy in a relationship, or feel our most important needs aren't being met.

• When we are hurt by someone's behavior who matters to us.

• When we feel we are being taken for granted.

• When we need to set a limits.

• When we need to do something different.

• When we feel disrespected or misunderstood.

By being honest, we allow the other person to help in making things better, more fun or upgraded between us. It is a shared responsibility to make a relationship vital, engaging and supportive. While it might be scary to be honest, it gives the other person the respect they deserve, a chance to improve things rather than be blind-sided, or just notice that you fade away. Relationships are dynamic and always changing and without healing conversations, the relationship can't grow.

We need to encourage our children to be brave, direct, and honest as well. Whenever possible, help  empower your child to role-play with you, and handle situations directly at school, with family or with friends as it is age appropriate. If you do it for them, they don't get to build their confidence in relationships.

Having the courage to go direct to the person that you have a problem with makes you grow stronger and more confident. As psychologist and writer Barbara De Angelis wrote, "Living with integrity means: not settling for less than what you deserve in your relationships. Asking for what you want and need from others. Speaking your truth, even though it might create conflict or tension. Behaving in ways that are in harmony with your personal values."

In your relationships, whenever possible, go direct and lead with honesty and your true feelings. Being able to master the ability to have difficult conversations with your partner, your parent, your sibling, your close friend or your child is a key skill for building deep lasting relationships. Avoiding difficult conversations causes relationship atrophy and short circuits your emotional growth. Be brave.

Go Direct In Relationships

Emotionally healthy people develop the good habit of going direct to the person they need to speak with. It may take courage, and it may be harder, but it's nearly always the best practice in your relationships. Taking the harder path, rather than the easier, faster one is often the braver and better choice. It helps you be fully known. It builds intimacy between you and the other person. They grow to trust you if they know you are direct, up front, and honest.

It can feel safer or easier to complain to a third person, but this triangulates you and the person you have something to say to, awkwardly sticking someone else in between. It may be helpful to think about what you would want if the situation were reversed. If someone you are close to has a problem with you, would you want them to show you the respect and give you the opportunity to resolve it directly, or would you want them to harbor resentment, and gossip about you to others? Most people prefer being respected enough to get a chance to resolve a problem between you both sooner, and without a middle man.

Why would anybody want to be the middle man in someone else's relationship? Some people enjoy drama. They like the "special" feeling of holding secrets. They may be bored and find it entertainment. Many people may want to be helpful, but not really think through the outcomes.

What kind of response should you have if someone is repeatedly complaining to you about a third party? Don't live out that script. Be healthy enough to redirect them. For example, "it sounds like you really feel unimportant to that person. I think you really should be telling them, not me. The two of you are the ones that can try to fix that." You can best help by pointing out the braver path. That's real support.

Your relationships can be hurt or put at risk by blurring the boundaries and sharing emotional stuff about your partner, your child, your parent, or your friend with another person. It builds an artificial closeness between the "secret holders," and makes the person you have a problem with an outsider in their own relationship.

If you are not sure how to go direct, or are afraid to do so, you may want to get some coaching from a good therapist who can teach you how to develop your own voice in your important relationships. I often role-play how to do this with my clients, because it makes it easier. This is especially helpful if you grew up in a family with alcoholic, rageaholic, passive-aggressive, or absent parents, and are learning this lesson now.

In order to have truly close and intimate relationships, you need to be able to reserve time to spend together, negotiate differences, demonstrate mutual respect, and honor the sacredness of the relationship between you and the other person. We are always either a part of the problem or a part of the solution. By going direct in your own relationships, and requiring that of others around you, you are contributing to better relationships, and setting a higher standard for yourself and others you care about.