Have you ever noticed how much drama in movies arises from an unspoken rule that characters are not allowed to communicate well? Instead of naming the problem, they are forced to avoid it until the plot makes it impossible to ignore. This is the cheapest way to create effective drama, but if you can’t fully immerse yourself in the logic of the film, the whole time you’ll want to yell, “Can’t someone just talk about what’s happening?”
Take La la Land. A large portion of the film’s drama could have been avoided if Ryan Gosling’s character told Emma Stone’s character: “I feel pressure to get a steady schedule that includes a lot of time on the road because I feel like you want me to grow up and get real about my career. Can we talk about if that’s what you really want, and be clear about our priorities?” Instead, they never talk about it, and their false expectations result in the relationship breaking down.
Or: good will Hunting. The entire movie feels like it could have been abandoned if someone emotionally intelligent said to Matt Damon’s character: “I think you have tremendous intellectual capacity that you’re wasting here – why are you getting into fights instead of trying to do something interesting?”
Communication failures like this make for good storytelling where we, the audience, watch the characters stumble toward understanding. but you shouldn’t do that stay Like someone is waiting for the scriptwriter of your life to arrange a convenient solution. Functional people don’t leave things unsaid – they name out loud what comes up.
This seems a very simple thing. And yet, many of us don’t do this. It is my experience that the movie argument is endemic in dysfunctional organizations, friendships, and marriages. People wander around in a fog of denial, simply assuming that their worries will go away. They wait until the problem can no longer be ignored, rather than naming the problem before it becomes serious. Perhaps they don’t even realize on a conscious level that the dynamic in question is capable of being named; They take it as a background fact about the universe that they can push against but not change.
What does it look like when you step out of the film logic? I remember the first time I realized I could do it. I was at a bar during my first year of law school with a few people from my class, including a woman with whom I had gotten into an awkward situation due to an unfortunate misunderstanding about a guy I met. The awkwardness in my emotional brain was calmed down to “we don’t like each other, we have a beef.” But that particular evening I had a moment of clarity, and instead of trying to avoid her I went to her and said, “I think we’ve gone down the wrong path because of that stupid thing, and I’m sorry about it – I have nothing against you.” In an instant, her flat warning turned to relief when she saw me walk away, and she said, “I’m so glad you said that, I feel so bad about it.” She became my closest friend in law school.
Results like this are common when you figure out how to break the fourth wall. Whether or not both of you were already conscious of the real, underlying issue, when it is spoken out loud, the result is usually reliefAs if a spell has been broken. Even if the content is uncomfortable, it feels good in the way that cutting through layers of unreality always does.
Some other lines of dialogue that make bad movies, but make life good:
“I’ve noticed that lately, whenever we make plans to hang out with each other, you invite someone else to join us – is this intentional?”
“I always feel a little awkward around you, and I’m worried it might seem like I don’t like you – I just wanted to say that’s not the case.”
“I’m sensing low-level tension between us, like maybe we’re quietly angry at each other but trying to remain polite. Is it just me?”
“Sometimes it feels like when I hold back in meetings, it changes the energy in the room – like maybe you’re afraid to engage with me directly like other people are. Does that feel true?”
Reading these examples, you may have noticed that it is rare to hear people talk like this. I think there are a few reasons for this.
For one thing, it is easy to mistake silence for informed diplomacy. If your manager is pressuring you, and you’re putting up with it, it’s easy to think that you’re just a good employee, and everyone knows how good you are. But unless your manager is quite emotionally intelligent, they will have no idea that you are unhappy, especially if you are putting on people-pleasing behavior to try to hide it.
The second reason is that it may feel as if by naming an issue you are making it a bigger issue. But problems are real, and affect you, whether you name them or not. Naming the issue means you can have a conversation about it.
Finally – often, the people who are most eager to name the issues A kind of sucking. They are critical, judgmental people who give opinions on how others should live without skills. Think about the person you’ve just met who confidently offers unsolicited advice about what they think is your problem.
But the answer is not to maintain a conspiracy of silence. The answer is to be adept at naming issues.
Tip 1: Take yourself out of the movie
Before you name an issue, it may help to ask: In reality, is this really an important enough issue to name? Or are my feelings about this issue an expression of something deeper that would be even more powerful to deal with?
For example, let’s say you wanted to tell a friend that you were upset by the way they were bragging about how lavish and expensive their wedding was. Is this really the core issue? Or is the real issue the underlying dynamic of competition fueled by both parties, where the relationship becomes worse as you both fill every conversation with claims to social status?
To explore the possibility of going deeper, it may be helpful to take the movie metaphor literally – if you were an audience member watching the movie, what would you be yelling at yourself to say? What would a reader of this script say is the real, big unnamed issue?
Tip 2: If you feel you can’t name the problem, say
Let’s say you want to name a problem in one of your relationships, but you’re worried that bringing up the problem will start an argument. Congratulations. Now you’ve got the problem of naming. You are allowed to say the following: “There is an issue I see in our relationship, and I want to address it so that our relationship is stronger. But I’m nervous to name it, because I’m worried it might start an argument, and I really don’t want you to feel attacked.”
This is advice that often applies to any meta-problem that makes negotiation difficult. You can always solve the secondary problem. Many of my relationship advice conversations with friends go like this.
Friend: “I want to talk [issue] With my partner, but when I come to this issue, I get nervous about it and stop understanding anything.
Me: “Okay, what if you say this: I want to talk about this issue but it makes me nervous and I don’t understand anything.”
Friend: “…Oh, why didn’t I think of that?”
I suspect the reason they don’t think about it is that one way to avoid difficult conversations is to come up with a secondary problem that provides an excuse to avoid conflict, and then assume it’s unreachable.
Tip 3: Name things before you’re sure what they are
Sometimes, it’s hard to name a problem because you don’t fully understand it yet. But that’s totally okay — in many settings, you don’t need to fully understand your feelings before you name a conflict, or what’s wrong. It can be empowering to say: “Something felt off about that meeting, like maybe something important wasn’t being said.” Or: “I feel like something strange is happening in this conversation, but I don’t know what it is.”
Humans are almost telepathic in their ability to sense when an interpersonal dynamic is off – when someone is emotionally uncomfortable, or engaging in concealment. We all know that itchy feeling when no one is really being honest in a conversation. Pretty surprising how mental we are, isn’t it?
Yes, we are psychic, but we are also stupid. Our understanding is that something strange Often accurate, but our stories about what weirdness represents are accurate are often very far away. So, to move from an interesting intuition to an accurate story about reality, naming the intuition helps to engage other people in the discussion.
I have historically been hesitant to present my intuition because it seems sloppy. But having overcome the “funny feeling” about a good-on-paper candidate with poor results on more than one occasion, I am now eager to make statements like this: “It may not make sense, but I can’t shake off a funny feeling about that person. Do you get the same thing?”
Of course, this requires some social conscience. If you’re a junior employee at a new workplace, it may not be strategically wise to approach the CEO with the statement, “Hey, I can’t help but notice the vibes are off.” But if you work closely with someone, you make a mistake in terms of transparency.
You might ask – what, exactly, is wrong with the film argument? Maybe you don’t need to pay attention to everything anymore. Sometimes the solution will present itself. and I agree. Sometimes a little hopeful silence to see that the problem you are having with someone else is just a mood that can change is not fatal.
But over time, optimistic silence has a devastating effect. If you don’t name the real problems in your life, you eventually become disconnected from your internal compass. You stop paying attention to your life on an experiential level, because you want to live in a superficial world of self-consolation. You lose the ability to look at your life honestly.
Sometimes, I notice this when working with people who have spent time in organizations with poor feedback cultures. They have been taught that naming problems is so bad that they focus on solving serious issues while maintaining peace, all the while walking an invisible psychological obstacle course. Over time, they get caught up in pleasing people, and this can distract them from the real issues of their work. When people are like this, it is difficult to improve, because they find it psychologically damaging to recognize their limitations.
This is a skill I’m still working on getting better at. It is rare indeed that one reaches the summit – there is no conflict over naming issues, and is maximally efficient in doing it. I’m not there yet. But I’m on my way and it feels good to be moving in that direction. The better I get at this, the less I feel threatened by conflict, and the more it seems like an opportunity to clarify what’s really going on, to get closer to myself and others. I don’t want to be the character in the movie who is hopelessly obsessed with conspiracies and is too afraid to investigate it objectively. I want to be like that director, who understands each character’s drama well, and finds the scene more interesting as a result.
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