I wonder why people have the instinct to “debate around” rather than just asking for what they want. I get the sense that understanding the why will really help to get ourselves to stop doing it.
1.
Maybe because our instinct is to think, “Well, if they don’t agree with me in the more theoretical sense, why would they do the thing I want?” Eg. if your husband doesn’t agree with you about the value of home-cooked family dinners, why would he agree to your request to have them?
Well, perhaps he doesn’t mind having home-cooked family dinners. Or perhaps he just senses that your preferences are larger than his, and wants to make you happy. In either case, his thinking is roughly, “Sure, we can do that. I don’t agree with you about why, but it’s not a big deal to me and I don’t mind doing it at all.”
I sense that enough positive reinforcement could address this. Eg. “I make requests of people to do things even though they disagree with me all the time, and many times it works!”
2.
Or maybe it has to do with our tendency to get dragged in to arguments. Eg. you start off mentioning that you think home-cooked family dinners are valuable, with the intention to follow up by asking if you can have them more often. But your husband disagrees, and your instinct is to explain why you disagree with his disagreement. Which leads to a rabbit hole. Which perhaps leads you to forget to ask, “well could we just do this even though you don’t agree”. Or perhaps it feels uncomfortable to make the request after he clearly disagrees.
I guess one way to address this is to try to establish some sort of TAP of “Disagreement --> This might be a rabbit hole. Do I have any concrete requests to make before we get going?”
I wonder why people have the instinct to “debate around” rather than just asking for what they want. I get the sense that understanding the why will really help to get ourselves to stop doing it.
1.
Maybe because our instinct is to think, “Well, if they don’t agree with me in the more theoretical sense, why would they do the thing I want?” Eg. if your husband doesn’t agree with you about the value of home-cooked family dinners, why would he agree to your request to have them?
Well, perhaps he doesn’t mind having home-cooked family dinners. Or perhaps he just senses that your preferences are larger than his, and wants to make you happy. In either case, his thinking is roughly, “Sure, we can do that. I don’t agree with you about why, but it’s not a big deal to me and I don’t mind doing it at all.”
I sense that enough positive reinforcement could address this. Eg. “I make requests of people to do things even though they disagree with me all the time, and many times it works!”
2.
Or maybe it has to do with our tendency to get dragged in to arguments. Eg. you start off mentioning that you think home-cooked family dinners are valuable, with the intention to follow up by asking if you can have them more often. But your husband disagrees, and your instinct is to explain why you disagree with his disagreement. Which leads to a rabbit hole. Which perhaps leads you to forget to ask, “well could we just do this even though you don’t agree”. Or perhaps it feels uncomfortable to make the request after he clearly disagrees.
I guess one way to address this is to try to establish some sort of TAP of “Disagreement --> This might be a rabbit hole. Do I have any concrete requests to make before we get going?”