Sometimes, a person you care deeply about will ask you a question.

It may be a simple question, it might even be a statement with an expected response; It doesn’t matter – it’s one of THOSE questions; the ones you have already talked about or that you don’t WANT to talk about. It’s a loaded gun with a hair-trigger pointing at a barrel of TNT.

And you would like to say, “Look; can’t we just move on from this? I understand that you are scared/worried/annoyed/embittered/angry/afraid/negative about this but I thought we resolve this last time and wouldn’t it be nicer if we could spend our time together enjoying ourselves and looking at the good things we have going here; especially since we only have a short amount of time together.”

But you’re running late/in a hurry/a little tired/not paying attention and you say something like;

• “Sure…” or
• “Uh huh…” or
• “Do we really need to do this now?” or
• “Whatever you want.” or SOMETHING…

And then it hits you. Both. The Emotional Tsunami smashes into you and sweeps the relationship over all the old rocks you carefully avoided/re-arranged on the way to where you were and BLAM! You’re having an argument. Possibly The Same Argument you have had before.

Wonderful.

So, how can you avoid this?

Every. Single. Time. You are asked a question; tell yourself this;

This is going to take about 30 minutes. Do I have 30 minutes to spend cleaning up whatever happens so that I can continue as if it hadn’t – because THIS IS GOING TO TAKE ABOUT 30 MINUTES TO CLEAN UP.

Then answer the question the person you care deeply about asked you. If you spend less than 30 minutes dealing with whatever happens after that. You are ahead. You have SAVED yourself time.

If you expect it to take 30 minutes you will change the tone of your voice; you will change the attitude you bring to the answer; you will craft your answer more elegantly, with more care and attention than if you approach it from the “I’m in a hurry” mentality.

It will not take 30 minutes when you spend the time, up front, making an effort to care about the two of you, rather than having to bring yourself to that point AFTER you have had a disaster. Both of you will feel better and you might, just might, have answered That Question for the last time.

Don’t count on it though :)

Image by aeshaw90.