What to say and how to say it

A conversation can be a tricky thing to negotiate at the best of times, but in a relationship it can sometimes seem impossible. How do we find a way to balance what we need to say with the best way to say it?

Plenty of women don’t find it difficult to say exactly what’s on their mind. Some shout, some fiercely lay out their position, some calmly sit down and talk things through, all perfectly happy to put their feelings out there in the open and deal with the potential fallout later.

I’ve never been able to do that. Instead, I tend to rephrase things over and over, from a million different angles, until eventually I’ve analysed it so much that either I neutralise it or, more often, end up empathising with a partner’s point of view so much that I feel guilty and apologise for being grumpy in the first place.

I’ve been thinking about this habit of mine since Art of Conversation started. In every other area of my life, I’m a fairly forthright, ballsy kind of a creature. I can hold my own in contentious meetings. I can write a letter of complaint that would make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. I once got ripped off on the internet and pursued the man who scammed me with such ferocity that he not only gave me my money back but apologised like he’d killed my firstborn too.

But when it comes to relationships, the truth is that I become a bit.. errm...  rubbish.

I know I’m not the only woman out there who has this going on. Maybe it’s because we’re socially conditioned, as females, to nurture and protect. Maybe it’s because on some level we still find it unseemly for a woman to shout and scream and lose her temper. Maybe it’s because we still believe that a good wife or girlfriend should put her partner first.

I’m working on it. My new partner was a good friend for eight years before we got together and he’s wise to my neuroses. He’s seen me in action before and he’s not interested in the Stepford Wife that he’s seen me become with other boyfriends. We first knew each other back in Leeds and we’ve instated something called the Rule of Yorkshire Bluntness – whenever one of us finds something difficult to say or we’re worried about phrasing it right, we say “Yorkshire blunt?” and then just blurt it out and worry about the phrasing afterwards.

It might sound strange to ask permission before saying what I really think, as though I’m not being honest the rest of the time. But that’s not it. Instead, it’s a way of sidestepping all the complications that come with being in a relationship so I can get to the point.

I guess each of us has to find a way of expressing ourselves when it comes to relationships. For some women, a big blowout will clear the air. Others need linguistic tricks to get them off the hook. Perhaps it’s not about finding the balance between what you say and how you say it, but what you say and how you feel about saying it that matters...