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I will now be moving forward in my series on language of specificity and talking about verbal deletions in communication. In order to do so I want to give a little bit of back ground about how these deletions in communication can arise. I've posted a video to have more of a conversational tone... as much as that is possible for me :-) I talk about the Paul Grice's 4 Maxim's of Conversation and how they interact with the least energy principle to produce gaps in conversation and communication...

David J. Parnell | Evolved Communication

You walk through the door and as soon as you see her face, you know something’s wrong… That look puts your hair on end as the familiar pressure squeezes your chest. By now that pressure is a much too familiar friend… the perfect elixir of anxiety, stress and frustration. Her pitch shoots through you like a bolt… “Why didn’t you grab dinner for me and the kids!?” she screams… You try to explain “I didn’t realize that I was supposed to”. She responds, “I’m going up to bed… alone”. How the hell were you supposed to know to bring home dinner? She always cooks… How much longer can this go on? You really love her, you’re watching your marriage wither in your arms and you’re powerless to stop it.

Stop. Rewind 1 hour… just as you got back to your office from your meeting the phone rang. She called to talk to you about her interview and to check on when you were getting home… “Uugghh, the kids keep complaining about food…. everything went well, I was busy all day getting ready for the interview but I think I got the job… When are you coming home?” You tell her that it’ll be an hour or so and she closes with an “I Love You” and your feeling pretty good right about then…

Well we know how that turns out… You’re blasted when you get home and it is another sleepless night all the while having no idea why… She didn’t tell you to get food on the way home! She said the kids were hungry, but that’s why she cooks, isn’t it? Your so frustrated, you love her so much but you just can’t seem to stop the fighting.

Now let’s step back and take a third person view of this situation. To the emotionally involved and untrained eye, it is difficult to say how and why this fight occurred. On further review though, this is a clear and simple case of mismatched communication and translation modes.

All verbal and non-verbal communications exists somewhere along a continuum that ranges from 100% Inferential to 100% Literal. In conjunction with this, the actual translation of a communication lies somewhere on the same continuum. As you can imagine, a mismatch can and DOES cause serious issues in any relationship.

To illustrate this, an example of a 100% inferential communication is “I think I’m hungry”. On the other side of the spectrum lies a 100% literal communication which sounds something like this “I want you to get me a turkey and swiss sandwich on rye in the next 5 minutes... please”. An example of a literal translation of the inferential communication will be “interesting… what’s on TV?” and an inferential translation of the literal communication is “why are they being so rude?”  

Now, getting back to “your” hypothetical above… Your wife is an inferential communicator and a inferential translator. Her quick communication that the kids were hungry and that she was busy all day meant “grab dinner on your way home.” In the literal sense, what she “communicated” was that she is tired so pick up food on the way home. Your “communication” back (which was NOT showing up with food) conveyed to her that you don’t respect how hard she works and don’t care about her or the kids.

Now although you are more of an inferential communicator as well, you are the consummate literal translator… NOW do you see where the communication gap occurred? You never heard anything resembling “pick up dinner.” And so the story goes….

This is a major issue in most miscommunication occurring in relationships whether they are intimate or not. Think back on some of the arguments you’ve been in… I bet you can find some mismatched communication channels with very little trouble. The good thing is that there are ways to spot these and you can actually do exercises to help remedy the issues that arise as a result. Please visit The Evolved Communicator to learn more.

David J. Parnell | The Evolved Communicator

Flash  back to four years ago and imagine your present boyfriend is sitting at home watching TV… He checks his watch… it is now 3 a.m. and his then girlfriend hasn’t come over yet. She promised that she would be home right after the bar closed and there he is, still alone with no communication from her. Not being able to take it any longer he decides to drive over to her house. This was the 3^rd time this happened and he just didn’t understand what the heck was going on.

When he arrived at her apartment, the light was on in her bedroom so rather than go to the door he wanted to surprise her at the window. Well, when he crept up to the window he nearly lost his dinner at what he saw. She wasn’t alone and it was the most painful thing he had ever felt… To this day he still really doesn’t speak about it.

Flash forward to now… You are on your way to your apartment where he is waiting for you after a night out with friends. You decided to grab something to eat afterward so you’re a bit late. When you get inside your boyfriend is waiting up for you and he is furious… No communication from you drove him crazy and despite your best apology, he just won’t stop. He said that you coming home late means that you don’t care… You don’t know how to work through this and he just storms out…

This interaction is the literal VICTIM of what is known as a “Complex Equivalence”. A complex equivalence is any time an individual’s belief system has equated an external action to an internal state and communicates it as such. These associations are rarely formed at the conscious level and can be super powerful. As I have touched upon on some of my other posts, we have a brain that relentlessly searches for pattern and predictability. The potential negative side effect of this is when it erroneously attributes a cause/action to a certain outcome. In this situation, the boyfriend’s mind equates tardiness to an absence of love or caring. When this happens he doesn’t even realize that he ISN’T communicating effectively.

Now there are several problems with this belief as in this case, it clearly DOES NOT mean that you don’t care. As far as your concerned, you were just hungry. As is usually the case in these matters, your boyfriend doesn’t really know why exactly he feels badly either. He just does and he is reacting to it the best way he know how.  The trail of thought/physiological processes goes as follows:

1. She said that she would be home at 2:00,
2. It is now 3:00, she hasn’t communicated with me since this afternoon,
3. The last time this happened I drove to that person’s house,
4. I saw something that destroyed me,
5. They were late because they were doing something that hurt me,
6. The fact that this person is late means that they are doing something right now that is or will  hurt me,
7. I need to protect myself,
8. Fire off hormones to prepare for protection,
9. Bad feeling ensues,
10. Defend myself and my actions.

Now, unfortunately for you, not being an expert communicator you are not able to spot the complex equivalent. Unfortunately for him, he has no idea that he is actual communicating a complex equivalence. The complex equivalent LEAVES OUT all of the information that is displayed in 1 – 10 and as a result leaves you less than equipped to deal with this in an effective manner. That is a lot of information and although it leaves a nice and direct trail to the cause of his bad feeling, you don’t have the tools to find it much less follow it. So how are you going to help stop this fight?

For methods on how to spot these and better yet, how to question them in an effective manner to advance your communication skills, feel free to explore The Evolved Communicator to learn more.