The simple question that changed my relationships

You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get a bagel

Hi! I’m Jacqueline Nesi, a psychologist and professor at Brown University, co-founder of Tech Without Stress (@techwithoutstress), and mom of two young kids.

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5 min read

Let’s take a look at three very different social interactions:

#1: You are in labor. In fact, you’ve been in labor for 13 hours. You are less than one centimeter dilated. Knowing you have a long road ahead, and that you’re extremely hungry, you decide you need a bagel. The hospital policy states that you can only consume clear liquids. You ask the nurse if you can eat something. She says no. What do you say?

#2: You receive a work-related email asking you to donate your time to something—a committee, an advisory board, a panel, an interview, an “informational conversation,” etc. You do not have time to do this thing. You politely decline and receive an email back emphasizing the minimal time commitment and the importance of the initiative. They ask you to reconsider. What do you say?

#3 Your spouse likes to hang bath towels haphazardly on towel rods, with sections of the towel bunched up in such a way that they dry unevenly (almost certainly spawning mildew and long-term lung damage from mold inhalation). You like to hang towels on towel hooks (neatly, perfectly, good for lungs, etc). You’ve been having this debate for 12 years. One day, you notice the discrepancy in towel hanging strategies in your bathroom. What do you say?¹² 

We encounter tricky interpersonal situations like these everyday. In fact, the majority of our days are spent navigating relationships with other people—whether it’s our doctors, our co-workers, our spouses, our kids, or our cable companies’ customer service reps. Often, we navigate these situations on intuition alone. We let our emotions (or, in some cases, bagel cravings) decide the ways we respond.

But what if there was a better way?

The question that changed my life

Interpersonal effectiveness is a set of strategies from Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), designed to improve our relationships while meeting our own and others’ needs. Today, we’ll focus on one specific strategy that I’ve used almost everyday since learning it. 

Here it is: When you’re in the middle of a conversation (or argument, or email exchange), stop and ask yourself one question.

What is my goal?

I know, I know. You went to school for 10 years for that?! You ask. But hear me out. 

There are three basic goals we might have in any social interaction:

Goal #1: Objectives. To get something we want or need

Goal #2: Self-respect. To maintain self-respect (i.e., not sacrificing our values, beliefs, or integrity)

Goal #3: Relationships. To maintain (or create or improve) a relationship

The degree to which we care about each of these goals varies across different situations. To illustrate, let’s go back to the scenarios above. 

What is your goal? 

When you’re in labor and you want a bagel, your priority is Goal #1: to get what you want. You need that bagel. You don’t care so much about maintaining a long-term relationship (#3) with the nurse (who, by the way, is kind, selfless, and just trying to follow the rules). You’re probably also not-so-focused on maintaining self-respect at this point (#2).

When someone is trying to talk you into doing something for which you have neither time nor interest, your focus is likely going to be Goal #2: to maintain your self-respect by doing what’s best for you (i.e., a polite but firm “no.”) 

When you have a *creative difference* with your husband about bathroom towels, getting what you want (Goal #1) actually doesn’t matter that much. Here, it’s all about Goal #3: maintaining a good relationship with the person you love, despite their inexplicable towel-hanging strategies.

Of course, the permutations are endless. If you bring up a concern with your child’s teacher, your priority may be to get what you want (#1), but you also need to keep in mind your relationship with the teacher (#3), since you’ll be interacting with this person for the rest of the school year. If a disagreement with your spouse is about more than just bathroom towels, Goal #3 (maintaining your relationship) is important, but asserting your needs (#1) and staying true to yourself (#2) might be even more essential.

The key is slowing down and asking yourself the question. 

Have your bagel and eat it, too

Here’s the benefit of stopping to consider your goal in a social situation: it gives you guidance on how to act.

For the people-pleasers among us, it stops us from prioritizing being liked at the expense of getting what we need.³ For the hot-tempered among us, it stops us from prioritizing being right at the expense of our relationships.

If your goal is to get what you want or need, you’ll clearly assert that need. You’ll say, for example, I understand the hospital policy. However, I need to eat something if I am going to be in labor for another 24 hours. I am happy to explain this to the doctor, too. And, with repeated assertions like these, the medical team will eventually acquiesce to your bagel demands.⁴⁵

If your goal is to maintain self-respect when asked to do something you don’t want to do, you’ll stick to your guns, offering an honest but definitive “no thank you” to any repeated requests or attempts to convince you otherwise.

And if your goal is to maintain your relationship with your spouse, you’ll use gentle humor to diffuse the bathroom towel situation. Or, more likely, you’ll just let it go.  

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Stuff Sapiens Might Like  

Some of the things I’m reading, listening to, and loving this week. I think you’ll like them, too! 

• Buffalo Fluffalo by

  Bess Kalb
  . Fun pictures, a positive message, and lines like “a snuffalo, scruffalo, surly old buffalo, who was ever so snarly and gnarly and tuffalo”?! My toddler and I both giggled the first time we read this new children’s book. [PS - I also love Bess’s newsletter
  The Grudge Report
  .]

• Superhuman. My husband has been trying to convince me to download this email software for years. I finally caved and, exactly as he predicted, I cannot stop talking about it. Superhuman sits on top of your existing email provider (e.g., Gmail). Through a combination of keyboard shortcuts, “snippets” (i.e., pre-written text copied from emails you’ve sent), and other features, it’s significantly reduced the time I spend on email. I am a believer.

• Mini Picasso Tiles. I mentioned my child’s love for Magna-Tiles last week, and a fellow techno sapien introduced me to these! All the fun of Magna-Tiles (or Picasso Tiles, which as far as I can tell, are exactly the same thing), but miniature! Grabbing these for future travel days, to break out after reaching our Ms. Rachel capacity.

• This Dyson customer service rep. Speaking of interpersonal effectiveness…I hope you, too, are lucky enough to return a Dyson product one day and get this little confidence boost.

Do you want to see more Stuff Sapiens Might Like? Feedback? Ideas? Let me know!

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1. This footnote is being written prior to my husband’s review of this post because I’d like to have it on record that, when he reads it, he will say “The root cause is that we don’t have enough towel racks!”

2. Update: my husband read this post and, when he reached footnote #1, said “I did say that!” then quickly amended, “Or maybe I just thought it.” A brief discussion about the number of towel racks in our bathroom ensued. Love is patient, love is kind.

3. As a certified people-pleaser, I often need to remind myself that the goal is not to be liked in every situation—sometimes the priority is just to get what I need. When someone tries to cut me in line at the pharmacy when I’m picking up my son’s prescription, for example, I can just say “I was actually here first.” I don’t even need to apologize to them, believe it or not. Anyone else a people pleaser? (Only answer that if you want to! Honestly, whatever you prefer is totally fine with me!)

4. You’ll get the bagel mid-labor. You’ll immediately vomit. The nurse—an angel on earth whom none of us mere mortals deserve—will somehow resist the urge to say “I told you so.”

5. I’m fascinated by other people’s “birth stories” and maybe one day, I’ll share mine here, but for now, I’ll just share the relevant details: with my first child, I started having contractions around 9pm (on my due date! The most punctual I have ever been!). By 10am the next day, I was less than a centimeter dilated. This is when the bagel debacle occurred. The doctors then broke my water, I got an epidural soon after, and the baby was born around 6pm. Incidentally, my son now loves bagels, too.