Some Subjects Need An Up Close Treatment

         

Some subjects – like your sexual relationship – demand an up close treatment. "Up close" means familiar, fundamentally accepting, trusting, open, flexible. "Up close" is the opposite of "distant," which is out of touch, unfriendly, distrustful, relatively closed and rigid.

If you can help it, you don’t want to discuss any of the big subjects from a distant place. You are not going to do well if you and your partner talk about money, raising the kids, your unhappiness, affection, sex and similar "sensitive" topics when you are feeling really distant from each other.

Your mutual distrust and out-of-touchness is bound to interfere. You won’t be sympathetic to the other person’s point of view. (In fact, you may not even listen to it.) You will probably push your own views in an antagonistic and rigid way. And the subject itself will probably end up a distant second to your complaints about each other.

Is there something that you and your partner really need to talk about? Are you worried that it won’t go well? Yes? Then first do your best to move the relationship from distant to relatively up close.

How? Spend some time – a few days even – being mutually generous and understanding before you talk. And when you do sit down to explore the subject, reassure each other that you will listen sympathetically and treat what each other says with respect.