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Comment by karmelapple | Hacker News Reader

This book was extremely influential to me and changed my outlook. If you’re reading the book and sense insincerity, I’m not sure how to address that beyond encouraging you to read it with a lens that it is completely sincere.

Since reading it, I have been amazed at how unclear many people communicate. They say things to express some basic emotions - anger, frustration, etc - but so many people do not express in clear terms the root of this feeling.

In your example, the woman does indeed want the boyfriend to stay at home. But saying you want someone to do something, at a minimum, doesn’t explain why you want that. It also doesn’t give them much recourse to either object, or come up with alternative solutions.

I’d be happy to discuss it more!

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I can't agree with an idea that encourages you to not say what you want, for me, this is the opposite of good communication. If you want your boyfriend to stay at home, you should say so and then explain why. Not actually saying it is likely to make the situation more confused and lead to conflict.

It encourages you to first understand and say what you need, then talk about what you want as one possible solution.

We're very "good" at solutionising what we think we want rather than what we need. One of the things I took away is a way to clearly consider and express the root cause of something. In the DJ example not wanting their partner to go may be due to any number of reasons that aren't clear to the DJ, they could be lonely, feel insecure, feel mistrustful of fidelity, feel ashamed at their own lack of passion for an activity etc. Any number of these things can come to the surface when you start saying why something bothers you rather than the first solution your brain offers up, plus it's a much nicer conversation when both parties are involved in building the solution.

What's also nice is I've had better "shower conversations" with myself to figure out what I really want from situations.

Saying why you feel the way you do is key to NVC.

Importantly, saying it without coming down with harsh judgment on the other person is also key. You truly don’t know what’s going on in their mind, or what motivations they may have had in doing something. NVC encourages realizing this and avoiding assigning feelings or intent to the other person, since you don’t know if that’s accurate.

“I feel lonely much more than I want to when you’re gone DJing Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I don’t like feeling lonely. Can we figure out something to help me feel lonely less often?”

And yes, you could say “I wish you’d stay at home,” but is that really the desire? The desire is to feel lonely or ignored less of the time in this scenario I think; maybe I’m wrong!

Maybe the DJ said she couldn’t come with thinking she would be bored. Maybe she’d love to come, but thinks he doesn’t want her there.

Saying clearly the why, without judgment on the other person, certainly seems to be pretty NVC to me.

So, the problem I find is this.

It seems natural if asked: "Can we figure out something to help me feel lonely less often?”

To respond: "Ok well, what do you want?"

If you're not willing to give actual things you want, then the other person has to "mind read." And from my experience in relationships, when people are trying to mind read what the other actually wants, this always ends up in issues/problems.

Mind reading is not the goal of this conversation.

The response you said might happen - "OK well, what do you want?" - would indeed be a desired response. The reason is that the response leads to a conversation, where they can both talk about possible solutions. And the solution doesn't have to be "don't go DJ tonight," although that could be one.

Imagine if the conversation instead was this:

Girlfriend: "I don't want you to DJ at the club tonight."

DJ thinks: "What? She knows this is really important to me, but she just wants me to stop going. What the heck. She doesn't want to support me in this now, after I've done it for so long?"

DJ says: "This is really I important to me. Stop trying to control me, I don't try to control you!"

Girlfriend: "I'm not trying to control you, I just want you to stay home tonight!"

DJ: "Sounds like control to me!" huffs out of the room

Giving the DJ some amount of context can help avoid anyone feeling accused, and can help someone misinterpret why someone wants something.

Hah, but sometimes the non-verbalized component of this communication method is a bit silly if they actually want you to consider ‘not go’ to be the only option.

“Oh, when you said you would feel alone you were actually (more or less) forbidding me from going out tonight.”

Why don’t you just say that then...

> encouraging you to read it with a lens that it is completely sincere

Ok, you've convinced me to not go anywhere near this book if it teaches you to 'communicate' like this.

Can you help me understand what part of what I said, or how I said, has convinced you to not go anywhere near this book?

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