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July 30, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
09:19
1715 Breaking with Bullies - A Media Article Analysis

An article about marital conflicts goes wiiide of the mark.

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Hey everybody, Steph. This is an Opinion Ocast, just about an article that I read that troubled, bothered, bewitched, and bewildered me.
So this is from Maclean's Magazine, quality Canadian publication, August 2nd, 2010.
How to talk to spouses who aren't talking.
Something's triggered yet another angry, stony silence.
Here's what not to do. Here's the problem.
Your wife makes sarcastic comments about you in public later when you object.
She insists you have no sense of humor.
At home she withdraws into a stony silence.
You try to talk to her, but she says she wants to be left alone.
If this infuriates you and makes you want to scream or file for divorce, psychologist Robert Nain has some advice specifically for people living with angry romantic partners.
Sarcasm and stony silence are just as much anger issues as yelling and name-calling, says Nay, who's been helping couples deal with anger for thirty years.
In his new book, Overcoming Anger in Your Relationship, How to Break the Cycle of Arguments Put Downs in Stony Silence, says Nay, admits it's impossible to force change on someone, but, quote, there's a lot you can change, even without the cooperation of your angry partner.
With a strong lead from you, there's a good chance your partner will follow and repairs can be made.
He points out that you wouldn't let a shop clerk yell at you and call your names, quote, but when it's the person you love most who imposes his anger on you, it's easy to get ropes into trying to compensate, ride it out, and extend empathy.
The trouble is by doing so over and over, you signal to your partner that hostility, yelling, name-calling, and sarcasm are fine with you.
When you make changes, he writes, your partner is faced with a dilemma.
Keep doing the same old thing without getting the same old reaction from you or change.
You cannot control your partner's decision, but you will immediately feel better about your own life.
To break the cycle of stony silence, a form of passive aggression, Ney advises, quote, stop making heroic efforts to figure out what your partner wants.
If your partner says, I don't really want to talk, or I'm not hungry, take it at face value and try not to become a mind reader, asking questions like, Are you mad at me?
And, Do you resent something?
Counter-withdrawal isn't a good solution either, says Nay.
Instead, quote, Let your partner experience the logical and natural consequences of his or her passive tactics.
So he says, This immediately reduces the physiological tension.
If the other refuses, you sit and say, I really want to hear what you have to say, but I wish you would sit, so that I can relax and just listen.
When your partner's voice escalates, bring your voice lower, advises Ney, and try to, quote, agree quickly with anything you can agree with to take the wind out of the other's sail.
You don't have to agree with the specific allegations, he says, but try to agree in principle to something.
For instance, you could say, quote, While I don't agree that I never call mom and dad, let's not quibble over that, I do agree with your main point that we should try to do more for them.
Don't apologize just to end the conflict.
Quote, This will only solve your problem for a short while.
In the long run, you have just humbled yourself just to keep the peace clearly undermining your self-esteem and right to be heard.
If you have trouble asserting these rights, writes Nay, you need the support of a counselor who can help you get strong enough to set firm boundaries and hold to them.
Why, he asks, quote, would you want to stay with someone who cannot accept you want to live your life without threats and conditional love?
I tell you, this is, you know, I mean, the last sentence, of course, I completely agree with.
Let me read that again. Why, he asks, would you want to stay with someone who cannot accept you want to live your life without threats and conditional love?
Of course, that's all family members, I would say, and friends, not just spouses.
So, what bothered me?
Well, what bothered me was that he's not actually counseling honesty.
He's counseling management.
You know, like, if your partner is standing and yelling, invite them to be seated and say, I really want to hear what you have to say, but I wish you would sit so I can relax and just listen.
But the reality is that I don't think any human being alive wants to hear what someone has to say when that person is yelling at them.
That is just not what makes people tick.
I mean, my approach, of course, is quite different, which is to be honest and to say I'm both frightened and angry by what's happening and I don't know what to do about it.
But to sort of do this management thing, I think, is not good.
I really don't like with, you know, try to agree with whatever you can in order to take the wind out of the other's sail.
I think that, and then he says don't appease, but isn't that just appeasing, right?
I mean, what if you don't agree with what's being said or certainly don't agree with how it's being said?
Then I think that just to find things to agree with.
He's just basically talking about management.
The other thing that bothers me is that If you've, you know, dated for a couple of years, been married for five or ten years, and this stuff is still going on, I'd like to know, I'd like to see some evidence, I'd like to see some facts about what sort of odds are you facing, right? So my question is to this guy, I'm going to try and get him on the show maybe, but my question is to this guy.
Or where's the evidence? So what proportion of couples who take this advice end up in happy marriages?
This is sort of an important question, because to my way of thinking, this kind of stony bullying goes way back to childhood and is the result of unprocessed early traumas, and the resulting bullying only makes these things worse, so you sort of co-join psychologically with your abusers and so on.
So my question is, well, what's the success ratio?
If you've been doing this for 30 years, what is the success rate for this kind of stuff?
Because from my perspective, I don't think you go for management in relationships.
I think that's a pathetic thing to do.
I think you go for honesty in relationships.
Because... Passive aggression is just a form of bullying and manipulation, and so having a, quote, strategy to defuse the situation and agree with what you can agree to and please sit down and blah, blah, blah, I mean, it's treating the person like a child.
It's just going to make them more angry and just going to make them more upset.
But I'm just curious, you know, he says that there's a good chance your partner will follow and repairs can be made.
Well, what is that good chance?
If I'm selling a heart medicine, I need to give some sense of what the...
What the chances are of success.
And this guy's giving advice about people who should stay with, people who are pretty abusive.
And so what's the success ratio?
And he also doesn't talk about the downside, right?
And this is the problem as well, right?
So he doesn't say, look, if you stay with this person, And it doesn't work out, then you've just dropped another couple of years into an abusive relationship.
And you're then further scarred and further broken and so on.
And that is, you know, then talk about the downsides.
I mean, my sort of perspective.
I'm, you know, perhaps much more quick to pull the plug.
But certainly in my relationships that didn't work out, I wish I'd pulled the plug.
Sooner and earlier.
And I think that, you know, people need to, I think, have the courage to say that this is not a positive relationship.
And now, I found that the odds of reform within my own problematic relationships were effectively zero.
And I was in therapy and I worked pretty hard and I'm pretty good at communicating and so on.
So I worked very hard to rescue my relationships.
But the success ratio was precisely zero, even with three hours of therapy a week, lots of homework and working on it peacefully.
And so I'm going to, I mean, this is my own history, right?
And I've certainly talked to people at FDR who tried to reform abusive relationships.
And the success ratio is very low.
It's very low.
I'm not saying zero, but it's not far from there.
And the ones that I've heard about that are better, I haven't had a chance to talk about people in depth.
Further, so this guy doesn't give any odds of success.
He doesn't counsel honesty and vulnerability.
He doesn't give you the downsides or the risks.
And he basically says here, why would you want to stay with someone who cannot accept you want to live your life without threats and conditional love?
So what's your time frame?
This is the other thing that is important.
Like, so what's your time frame? Do you try this for three months?
And if it doesn't get better, you know, does he then say, well, then you should think about getting a divorce or you should think about breaking up with this person because three months is ample time for someone to change or six months or whatever.
But he just gives you these strategies.
And I'm very much one for, if you have a wolf in the house, I don't think that you don't call the exterminator, right?
Or the guy who will take the wolf and set it free in the woods or whatever, right?
You don't call that guy and he says, okay, we'll try not to make too much eye contact with the wolf and don't leave any food around and And, you know, don't shower because they get attracted to the smell of deodorant.
And, you know, give it a wide berth and give it a room of its own and, you know, organize your life around this dangerous animal in your house.
He says, no, you've got to get the wolf out, right?
And so this guy is saying, you know, here's how you can manage...
This difficult, dangerous, and somewhat abusive person in your life.
But he doesn't give you, it doesn't explain the downside.
He doesn't give you the odds of success.
And is it too much to ask that if you're saying to people, you should not leave abusive relationships, but you should attempt to manage them?
Is it too much to ask to say that, I'd like to know what my odds are of success here?
If the odds are 5%, that's one thing.
If the odds are 90%, that's another.
And the fact that he doesn't have odds that have been provided, to me is pretty telling.
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