What's the Problem Here?

“You have GOT to not argue!”

“What?” Rick replied.

Rick’s counselor, John, repeated the sentence—slowly for emphasis to Rick’s incredulous ears. “You have GOT to NOT argue!” Clearly there was a disconnect here, thought Rick, a thirty-two year old attorney. “Does this guy not know what I do for a living?” Rick and his wife had been meeting with John for a while at this point, and it seemed like John was trying to address something fundamental in their marriage. Still, every neuron in Rick’s brain flamed at John’s words.

In truth, this was not the first time John had given Rick counsel of this nature; hence his chagrin, and the note of urgency in his voice. Rick and Stephanie had started counseling seeking help in coping with a number of family challenges—an unexpected job loss, their parents’ grave illnesses, the stresses of raising young children. But somewhere along the way the topic had turned to the relational dynamics between them. They had begun delving into how they communicated, and why what perhaps should have been reasonable disagreements between two rational adults frequently devolved into shouting matches and even expressions of physical aggression. In the worst of times, if a door wasn’t slammed, then a glass was shattered, or a picture frame hurled across the room. They had both been raised as “good kids,” and by all outward appearances they were the picture of "calm, cool and collected." But behind closed doors they were capable of a level of causticity and derision that left them both embittered and ashamed. Finally, they had begun to want to know how they got to such desperate places together, and how to avoid them if at all possible.

“Okay, so how do I do that?” Rick finally asked. As he understood it, the way to get what you want—be it from a judge, a client, or a witness­-- was with words. State your case in three bullet points, right? He remembered the old “IRAC” method—Identify the issue, Cite the governing rule, Apply it to the present fact pattern, and draw the appropriate Conclusion. It’s basic first-year legal writing. And if your opponent has a counter-argument, well, there are plenty of ways to deal with that. Find the fallacy in their reasoning—maybe a hidden premise, or an unwarranted logical leap. Or maybe the other person is not “comparing apples to apples” i.e., the case law she is citing is not “on all fours” with the current scenario.

Yet John was telling Rick that continuing to argue with his wife would actually be the death of his marriage. “Hmm,” said Rick, “I thought being a good communicator was a good thing. After all, don’t most misunderstandings come from a lack of clarity? And how will I ever get her to listen to me? I don’t know about all this…”

Does Rick’s story strike a chord with you? Has your spouse ever accused you of being too argumentative? Of being defensive? Or not listening to what she is saying? Would your husband say that you overwhelm him with an endless barrage of words and emotions that is often too much for him to handle?

Relational conflict is, of course, not exclusive to attorneys. But it may be that we lawyers have a special challenge in using the correct parts of our brain to help navigate matters of the heart. Most of us were wired for analytical thinking and argument well before law school; indeed, admission to law school is a good indicator that one has well-honed skills of communication. And legal training is designed to enhance those skills even further. As 1Ls, we are instructed to “think like lawyers.” Hours are spent pouring over the opinions of Justices Marshall, Hand, Brandeis, and Holmes—the cream of the crop of analytical reasoning. Daily, one does battle with sharp minds on the faculty and among fellow students. And in practice, whether in the office or the courtroom, argument is our very stock-in-trade.

But matters of the heart seem to work a bit differently. The same communications skills and techniques that work so well in law practice frequently seem to complicate our interpersonal relationships. When two people are each clamoring to be heard, employing whatever rhetorical devices and verbal maneuvers come to mind in an effort to win the point, oftentimes neither ends up listening to the other, and thus neither ends up feeling heard or cared for. Even once one partner or the other finally surrenders, or the battle subsides due to mutual exhaustion, there has already been considerable damage done to trust and safety in the relationship.

Now, one might think at this point—“Okay, simple enough. Argue at your office, or in the courtroom, but not with your wife. Point taken, lesson learned, move on.” But often it is a bit more complicated than that. For one thing, sometimes we have shifted to “argument mode” in communicating with our partner before we even know it. For another, the underlying defensive nature that defaults so quickly to “argument mode” runs very deep in our psyches.

In future installments, this blog will look at ways that our relationships can be improved as we learn to pay attention to our methods of communication, and adopt different principles that can help build up and encourage our mates, rather than staying mired in a linguistic battle for advantage.

Until the next post, try to take note of when, if ever, your conversations with your significant other begin feeling more like a motion argument than a heart-to-heart dialogue. And, if you are really brave (and willing to take the answer seriously), ask your spouse or partner for feedback on how you communicate with them in a disagreement. You might be surprised at how much relational capital is gained just by your asking of the question.