Having the Hard Conversations: Do I Quit or Grit?

By: Dwight Bain, NCC

It’s hard to bring up difficult topics at home, but what if the health of your marriage or family is at stake? Best-selling author Tim Ferriss describes it like this, “A person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.”

Life is about relationships, so if you wanted a good life, you would do everything possible to make your relationships better – right? Not necessarily. Sometimes the most important parts of a marriage or family relationship cross into the uncomfortable topics no one wants to bring up. Drinking, rage, smoking, addictions like spending, or porn or gambling, or cheating? What about a tough topic millions of Americans struggle with as their parents are aging- that of impairment with driving skills, or money management or living alone.

Tough conversations don’t get easier as you ignore them, they get harder.

When you are trying to keep the peace, but need to speak up should you ‘grit’ and try harder to keep it all together by yourself – or should you ‘quit’ trying an approach that doesn’t work? Quitting may sound like the cowards way out, and if you are passively ignoring tough topics waiting for them to go away, remember it doesn’t work.  Face the issues that need to change – find the courage to bring up the tough topics now – or find a counselor to help guide the process.

Someone told me it is easier for couples to talk about remodeling their kitchen instead of remodeling their marriage. Why? One decision is about spending money to make the house more inviting, which seems odd, since a failed marriage almost always ends up with the marital home being sold in the divorce. The other path is to talk about erosion in the relationship, or shared responsibilities, or resolving past hurts – or stopping abusive language – or honestly talking about addiction. It might hurt feelings to bring up the tough topics with the people you care about – but silently waiting for the right time allows the relationship to worsen, or the behavior to become more toxic, or in the case of aging parents – the risk of falling in their home and being alone.

Gritting it out alone doesn’t make a problem go away – but finding the ‘off’ switch to quit tolerating or living in silent frustration can be over with some help. Relationships are one of the most important parts of life – find the courage – or reach out to a trusted professional so they can guide the process of having the hard conversation. Kristen Bell talked about how her marriage to Dax Shepard changed from the lessons about quitting old behaviors they learned in therapy. She described starting dramatic fights, then slamming the door to leave, and drive off to ruminate on being ‘right’. Once they learned to quit the conflict cycle, but to quite the conversation their marriage improved and they shared what they learned with others.

Quitting the fear could be the most courageous thing you do today. Take a breath – find your voice and make a choice to end the cycle of silence about what needs to be voiced. Are you ready to quit silence about essential conversations? Speak up, and if it doesn’t go well reach out for professional help. You don’t have to grit it out to prove a point – life is too short to suffer in dysfunction, because what you are ignoring is the erosion that may lead to an explosion of more pain. Face it now to prevent more pain as you build a connected relationship with the people who matter most. 

In the upcoming posts of this series, we’ll explore specific types of hard conversations (examples: End of Life, Moving out, Cheating) and how to navigate them effectively. Let us know what Hard Conversations you're having difficultly with and we will give you some useable tools! 

Stay tuned!