3 Steps To Bring Up An Issue In Your Relationship Without Starting A Fight

As a therapist that specializes in relationships, one of the most common things clients ask me about is how to start and have conversations with people in their lives. Whether it's their partners, bosses, friends, parents, or anyone else, it can feel daunting to have a conversation about something important and potentially difficult.

How do you start it? How do you express your thoughts and feelings in a way that doesn't sound accusatory? How do you express what you want to be different without just saying, "Change your behavior, k thanks!"

Well, look no further. I've got you covered. 

Combining a handful of communication techniques and theories, I've come up with a three-step framework (that actually has four steps) to help you have a conversation with anyone in your life. This technique has been used by CEOs, kids, parents, and educators — literally anyone can use this. The acronym for this framework is AEO, which stands for acknowledge, explain, and offer. But before you jump into AEO, there is one other step.

Have you ever been emptying the dishwasher, and suddenly, your partner comes up to you and starts talking about something important? Or maybe you're at the copier at work, and your boss walks over and drops something on you. Or you're on the phone with a family member, and they tell you something that rocks your world? Yeah, it's no fun to be blindsided.

We often talk about consent when it comes to sexual interactions, and as a sex therapist, I believe that consent is just as important when talking about communication. Let's normalize consenting to conversations. How does this look?

All three of these examples allow the person receiving the information to decide when is good for them to step into a container of conversation. While the information given may still feel blindside-y, they aren't being blindsided by the conversation. 

This is where people typically start conversations. We start by explaining what we're thinking and how we're feeling—and sometimes, these two things get mixed up. Have you ever heard someone say, "I feel like you," or "I feel that…" Those are thoughts disguised with the starting part of "I feel."

When we use the word "feel," it's really important that we're actually talking about a feeling, whether that be a physical sensation or an emotion. When I ask someone how they're feeling, I am not asking what they're thinking. If I want to know what they're thinking, I'll ask that. Try and catch yourself if you're doing this in your life (99% of people I know do this). 

When we phrase things in this format, it takes the blame off the person while still letting them know how their actions affected us. Rather than starting a conversation off with "you never call me and clearly don't care about our friendship," it allows the person to understand you're hurt, sad, and let down rather than trying to infer that from an intense statement of blame. 

Even if we manage to naturally express our feelings and what's helping to create them, we often leave it at that. I like to tell my clients that it's like taking a fiery basketball of feelings, passing it to the person they're talking to, and saying, "OK, now you fix it." Sound familiar? Whether you've been on the passing end or the receiving end of this, it can leave you feeling confused and unsure of what to do next. Even the person having the feels may not know what they need or want next, which can create more strain and conflict.

So, how do we avoid this? The person who is talking needs to take the time before sharing to think about what they want from the person they're talking to. We need to help the people we're talking to help us—and we can do that by sharing kindly, as calmly as possible; using this framework; and giving them a potential solution (or at least a step in the right direction). That's the Offer statement.

While you can just pull it out of nowhere, I'd encourage you to share with the person you're going to talk to that you are going to use a framework to express how you're feeling, thinking, and your needs. You can tell them that a therapist who teaches about communication wrote an article about a communication framework that resonated with you and that you want to try and use. That way, when you're speaking potentially super differently from how you typically communicate, they're not thinking "what is going on?" the entire time you're talking. In the beginning, you can even pull out a little cheat sheet that says your A, E, and O statements.

This AEO framework is beneficial for both the person using it and the person on the receiving end. As the person speaking, it can feel overwhelming at times to get across your thoughts, feelings, and asks without becoming overwhelmed with emotion, reacting to how the person you're talking to is looking, or just forgetting what you wanted to say to begin with.