How do people go about bringing honest communication into their friendships and relationships?
Being lighthearted and using a little humour allows you to be honest about stuff that annoys you about friends/partners without being offensive. But only if we’re talking relatively minor things. Practical things, or minor character traits that are still likeable or acceptable in context. But that’s all I can think of being an issue with friends or partners. It has to be about relatively minor stuff, or at least stuff you can tolerate and forgive and accept. Something you get over because you like/love that person a lot. If you don’t like major things about friends or partners well, what are you doing with them in the first place…? I don’t believe resentment is a result of not being outspoken about what annoys you about friends. It’s not that by naming what annoys you, it disappears! Honesty is not a magic tool to ‘redesign’ other people’s characters to our preferences. It’s a selfish concept of honesty frankly, not because it may be offensive, but because it demands that others adju
I think timing also matters. If I present the criticism as an immediate reaction to something, it’s likely to trigger a defensive backlash. If the conversation is more removed from whatever’s been irritating me, it becomes more impersonal for both people, and we’re both more likely to be objective and rational about it.
It requires that one of the people go out on a limb and actually let the other know their true feelings. I would also say that open and honest communication is easier if the people have known each other for a while. There has to be a base of trust there already for the other person to want to communicate openly.
In my experience, the resentment doesn’t necessarily go away as a result of the honest criticism. Sometimes it’s that the friend/lover isn’t intentionally doing those disliked-by-me things — those things are either unconscious, or deeply ingrained, or in some other way completely inaccessible to my friend, so s/he continues doing it even so. Other times it’s that although the thing I dislike affects our relationship, it has utility in the other aspects of my friend’s life, and for that reason they’re not prepared to change. That’s why I have come to feel that the best route to mitigate resentment is to just talk about the tendency, without being critical or specifying that it’s annoying. An open, curious, “I’ve noticed that in X situation, you do Y,” kind of thing. It usually leads them to open up and say, “Yeah! I think I’ve been doing that since my parents’ divorce. My dad used to always Z, so probably I’d Y in order to make my mom feel better.” I’ve found that once I think I know w
You’re framing the questions in the wrong way. Honest communication comes from talking (honestly) about how you feel, not from talking (at all) about the other person. “You do X, Y, and Z and it’s annoying” is an accusation. Even if it’s true, the recipient of the accusation is most likely to switch into defensive mode, which isn’t going to further honest communication. You’ve basically triggered a fight-or-flight response, not rational thought. This is what “I” statements are all about. “When you do X, I feel Y.” “When you’re late for picking me up, I feel abandoned and resentful.” There’s also a structure you can use of “I notice X, I feel Y, I want Z, I’m willing to A.” “I notice that you’re often late in picking me up. I feel abandoned and scared when that happens. I’d like to figure out a way that works for both of us so that you don’t feel frazzled and resentful, but that I get picked up on time. I’m willing to shift my work hours, if that would help.” Once you have a firm handle
