This blog post is part of a series on the new, vastly expanded More Than Two site. This essay spotlights the Communication page. Look for more spotlights in the coming days and weeks!
Image: ots-photo
Another day in the wasteland that is the politically polarized hellscape of US politics. You know what this country needs? More genuine communication.1
The Communication page has long been one of the longest pages on the More Than Two site, and now…it’s even longer! Because more words means more communication, right?
The new Communication page is crammed full of tips, tricks, and techniques for open communication, some of them in brand-new handy-dandy lists, because everyone says people love lists, and who am I to disagree?
I traveled the world and the seven seas overhauling this page, but in this essay I’d like to zoom in on something that doesn’t get enough attention in How To Communicate essays: when communication isn’t (necessarily) communication. Which is why there’s a cute kitten at the start of this essay.
So, adult cats rarely meow to each other, preferring to communicate with tail posure and body language and scent markings and such. But cats are adaptable, and part of the process of domesticating themselves meant learning to communicate with us.
It turns out cat meows aren’t really communication the way most of us think about communication. Cat meows are occasionally requests for food and attention, sure, but a lot of their meows are what linguists call affirmative signaling, communication that simply reinforces a shared social bond. More “hey, ’sup” than “give me food now please, and I mean the squishy kind.”
Thing is, people do affirmative signaling too, all the time, both in romantic relationships and in the subcommunities and social circles they belong to. In fact, subcommunities will evolve entire specialized jargons as a form of in-group communication and affirmative signaling.
Problems crop up when one party expresses what’s intended to be affirmative signaling, which the other party interprets as substantive communication or a specific request. You know the social trope that women complain about their problems and men offer solutions instead of just listening? Yeah, that’s an affirmative signaling misinterpretation, though the trope is pointlessly gendered—men and women both do affirmative signaling, so it pays to be explicit about what you’re looking for. (There’s nothing wrong with saying “look, I’m not trying to get you to fix this, I just need to vent to you for a bit,” and there’s nothing wrong with asking “hey, are you looking for solutions or just a sympathetic ear?” if you’re not sure. See? Communication!)
Affirmative Signaling’s Evil Twin
Image: yuriyzhuravov
There’s a darker, dysfunctional form of affirmative signaling, and that’s the toxic mess of passive-aggressive bids for attention.
A “bid for attention” is an attempt, usually indirect, for someone else’s affection, attention, or connection. Bids for attention can be as simple and straightforward as “hey, I’d really like your attention right now” (see? Communication!), but humans being what we are, they’re rarely so straightforward. Like affirmative signaling, a bid for attention is a communication that attempts to reinforce social bonds. But, because people are messy and we sometimes learn dysfunctional strategies, and many people come from backgrounds that don’t model healthy communication, and we often make bids for attention when we’re feeling left out or disconnected, bids for attention are frequently passive-aggressive and sometimes out and out hostile.
And look, we’ve all done this. You, me, your lovers, basically everyone is capable of doing this—lashing out or being abrasive or otherwise pushing away the person we most want to bring closer.
I mean, it makes a kind of sense. You’re hurting, so you want to hurt the person you blame for your pain, but you also want reassurance and comfort, so you play the Fucked Up Sweepstakes hoping to win Love and Connection rather than Relationship Meltdown. And like I said, we’ve all been there at some point or another, though some folks make it a regular vacation spot, often as a maladaptive response to some sort of childhood toxicity.
Thing is, every time you ride this merry-go-round, you damage your relationship just a little bit. And relationship damage is kind of like radiation damage to a body: yeah, you can heal most of it, but there’s aways that little residue that builds up. Play the game too many times, and the other person may just decide to leave, with you standing there blinking and saying “but we were doing so well, what happened?”
You act out at a romantic partner at your peril. Many of us learn that lesson early on in our relationship lives; some of us…don’t.
When you’re faced with a partner making these kinds of destructive bids for attention in your general direction, it’s absolutely appropriate to say “you seem to be prickly, is something bothering you?” (See? Communication!) It’s also appropriate to set boundaries2: “Don’t talk to me that way,” “don’t use that language with me.” (This has often been, in full honesty, a place where I fall down myself; I have history, which has been the subject of many conversations with my therapist, of not setting boundaries but instead accepting poor treatment until I reach a point where I’ve had enough, and I end the relationship, and my former partner is like “…but you let me call you names and yell at you those other 157 times, what changed this time?”) Boundaries are a kindness to yourself and your lover.
Anyway, the new communication page is rather longer than the old, with a lot of new advice that comes from the past few years of experience and observation, because as they say good judgment (and good communication!) comes from experience, and experience comes from poor judgment.
1 And cats. More cats, too.
2 Remember, boundaries are things you set on yourself: access to you, your body, your intimacy, your property. Not things you set on others. “Don’t call me names” is a boundary. “Don’t call me at 2AM” is a boundary. “Don’t talk to other men” is not a boundary.
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