My Best Relationship Advice

Susan Ostrov’s Loveland: A Memoir of Romance and Fiction was released July 15.

I should start off by saying I’m probably the last person you’d want to give you or anyone relationship advice! I had almost no romantic experience when I got married in college, I was   divorced after 24 years of marriage, and haven’t lived with anyone since. By the usual measures, which includes marching into the future till death do you part, that makes me a total failure at romantic relationships.

Was it a failure, though? I not only had some of the best times in my life with all the romances I’ve had (I don’t mean casual dating, which has been something of a disaster), I’ve learned from each of them — both learned what I really like (and don’t), and also how to understand what’s happening while it happens.  So, I’m thinking here of general “advice,” rather than dissecting the specific relationships I’ve had.

Being honest, but not too honest, looking back, I see how difficult it was for me to express my thoughts when I wasn’t sure how they’d be received. Often, my fear of rejection and losing what I had kept me from asking for more, when what I had wasn’t enough. So, I settled, and told myself that relationships aren’t ideal, that no one is perfect, and so on. Which is true.  But at some point, you have to know what you shouldn’t put up with, even if you can put up with it by turning your head away. Relationships are embodied habits: once you both get into a familiar groove of giving and taking, this much and not more or less, it gets harder and harder to change that equation.

I had a therapist once who was just so-so as a therapist, but had a moment with me that I still recall. It started with my complaining, as usual, about a certain gentleman.  This gentleman had, as he so often had, casually answered a question with an evasive and a possibly ironic tone that seemed hurtful to me (I honestly no longer remember what the question was). What I was dwelling on was my sense of being wounded, going over and over the conversation to see if I could read what this person meant by his response. Of course, I was hoping the therapist would read his words, read him, for me. But after some tedious minutes of this (poor lady), she leaned forward and said, “Let’s talk about why you didn’t ask him on the spot, ‘What did that tone mean?’, when he said it.” This shift in perspective was amazing: it forced me to ask myself why I was afraid to question him, which is a kind of demand for the truth. Another way to put this: I saw you have to stand up for yourself or you’ll get mowed down. And if you can’t risk it, you’ve already been mowed down to grass-level anyway. So, risk it!

Now here’s what makes it tricky: There’s a thin line between “standing up for yourself” and being so sensitive to slights and injuries that you’re in a constant, pointless battle with the other for the preservation of your egos. When are you justifiably protecting yourself and when are you merely trying to control the other person? I saw this played out, unfortunately, with my own parents for all the years I lived with them.

Amusingly, I’ve watched reality dating/marriage shows on TV where it’s easy to see this kind of interaction all the time. A is hurt by something B did or said, B apologizes, A is still pissed off and keeps launching offensive attacks against B in the name of “being honest about my feelings,” which causes B to get defensive, whereupon A accuses B of “getting defensive” (duh). That’s not “honesty”, that’s spilling aggression, sometimes without being aware that your hostility is more obvious than you think.

Here’s what I’ve learned: Be honest, both to yourself and to the Other, but be curious also. Be curious about why someone behaved this way or that, what expectations they have that are different from your own, what they might want that’s different than you want, and how you can both get something out of it, even if one can’t win. “What were you thinking?” and “Why do you do that?” (or “say that”), can be aggressive questions, or compassionate questions. The intent (and tone) is everything. The former implies “You’re an idiot or a bad person,” the latter says “I want to understand you because you’re worth it.”

I was very young and inexperienced when I married, and so was my husband. When disagreements came up, sometimes big ones, I had no idea how to talk about them – I mean I literally had no vocabulary to use in talking it out or figuring out what to do. So, I would cry, and he would apologize or bluster, and then, uncomfortable with the anger, we’d pretend to go on as if it were all back to normal. And we never got much better at it once this pattern was established. Adding children to the mix just reinforced the pattern, since the stakes were higher: there’s more incentive to stay together, but that can work for or against you.

One more lesson from reality TV: it’s fascinating to see how often couples interrupt each other while arguing. Sometimes neither completes an actual sentence, or one babbles while the other lapses into complete unresponsiveness. Neither listens to the other, unless it’s to listen for a trigger that tells them to bring out their own six-shooters. If I were in an argument with a boyfriend or husband again, I’d ask for each of us to talk (for a reasonable length of time) until each has said what they want before the other person does the same. No interrupting, no exclamations; just LISTEN, damn it, and learn. And be curious about what you hear before you rush to contradict it, or say why the other is wrong, or make your own case. Ask: what were you hoping for, what was such-and-such like for you?

Of course, having said all that, it helps enormously if the Significant Other is capable of doing the same. Now in my old age, if I were wounded by someone’s words or tone, I would ask, as that therapist once advised me to: “What did you mean by that?” Or at least I hope I would.

Susan Ostrov