“Would you please just listen and stop trying to solve my problems?!”

It is a request that comes up so frequently in relationships that we all can relate to it. Your partner is telling a story - maybe from their workday, maybe about a frustrating interaction with a family member, maybe about a health issue they are managing. You slip into “Problem Solving” mode without even realizing you have done so. “What I would do….” or “Why don’t you….” or “My advice is…” or “You need to….” and you are off to the races. The finishline? A problem neatly solved and placed in the “SUCCESS” outbox.

Why does this happen so often?

Some people are highly effective problem solvers. Some people earn their living by identifying and assassinating problems. For these people, it is easy to slip into this mode in their personal lives. Or, maybe the better way to put it is that it is hard for these people to shift OUT of problem solving mode when they get home. Hard to look for interpersonal opportunities other than problem-solving. Because they are valued for their problem solving in all other facets of their interpersonal life.

Also, problem solving is often a form of distancing yourself from your partners experience. By choosing a different path, you expose yourself to distressing emotions. For all of us, it is instinctual to try to avoid painful experience. Unfortunately, this leads to many missed opportunities for deeper interpersonal experiences.

What’s the big deal? Wouldn’t we all like less problems and more solutions?

Well, sure. But this puts the cart before the horse. It presumes valuing of “Destination” over “Journey.” It presumes the story is a problem to begin with, and that the supposed problem is obvious in one telling. So much of our communication is whitewashed today. By the media, by politicians, by institutions… and by us. Do we want to communicate a long-winded story about the ups and downs of our vacation? No. But we are happy to post a picture, and a glossy, twenty-five or fifty word summary.

The moral of the story is: we need to think about other options in conversation with our loved ones. Here is a brief list:

Reflecting - succinctly share the thoughts and feelings of your partner Expressing - reply with what you are hearing, interpreting, and feeling Inviting - imagine there is more to the story, and ask them to keep telling it. Crucial Conversations (Switzler, Grenny and McMillan) has great discourse on inviting others to tell their story. Their technique starts with facts, and moves to observing what emotions they create Commiserating - you share deeply of yourself and your individual experience, without making it about you Reacting - be human! You don’t always have to hold your breath and be thoughtful. You are allowed to react to intense stories. If this is an issue, pause to process it with your partner. After all, it is a more ‘reflexive’ part of expressing. It should AT TIMES help to deepen the discussion. Observing - perhaps there is data in the story that YOU can see, but you suspect is HIDDEN from your partner. Perhaps it is a pattern in the data, or a connection to other stories. Observing is an infomatics approach, where data becomes information that becomes knowledge. Processing - allowing a space for both your partner and you to digest the story Strategizing - sure, this is getting close to problem solving. But this is a broader discussion. Where is the story going? Are their goals? What are they? What are the paths forward? This has a very different feeling than problem solving. Problem solving is the surgeon going in with the scalple. Strategizing is the consultant trying to understand more about the situation and the goals in a broader fashion.