Page 415 - The Social Animal

Liking, Loving, and Interpersonal Sensitivity 397

door. What is going on? Here are two people who love each other.
How did they get into such a vicious, hurtful, spiteful argument?
One of the major characteristics of humans that separates us
from other organisms is our ability to communicate complex infor-
mation through the use of a highly sophisticated language.The sub-
tlety of communication that is possible among humans is truly
awesome. And yet, misunderstandings among people are frequent.
Moreover, misunderstandings typify even those relationships that
are close and caring. Though hypothetical, the argument between
the Henshaws is not at all unrealistic; rather, it is typical of hundreds
of such conversations I have heard as a consultant trying to help
straighten out dyadic communications that are garbled, indirect, and
misleading.
It would be relatively easy to analyze the argument between Phil
and Alice. Each had a major concern. Neither was able or willing to
state in a clear, straightforward way what that concern was. For Alice,
the major concern seemed to be her intellectual competence. She was
afraid Phil thought she was dumb or boring; her major implicit com-
plaint in this argument was that Phil didn’t acknowledge the cogency
of her statements during the political discussion, and he seemed to
be implying that the only reason Tom paid attention to her or seemed
to be interested in her statements was lust or sexual flirtation. This
hurt her, threatened her self-esteem, and made her angry. She didn’t
express the hurt. She expressed the anger, but not simply by reveal-
ing it; rather, she took the offensive and attacked Phil by implying
that he is stodgy and uninteresting.
Phil’s major concerns seemed to stem from a feeling of insecu-
rity. Although he enjoys Alice’s vivacity, he appears to be afraid of the
possibility that, with increasing age, he may be losing his own attrac-
tiveness as a man. Thus, he assumed that Alice’s agreeing with Tom
was akin to her siding with Tom against him—and he attached sex-
ual connotations to it because of his own insecurities. When Alice
called him “old-fashioned,” he seemed mostly to hear the “old”—and
he quickly defended his masculinity and sex appeal, which Alice,
driven by her own anger, promptly ridiculed.
This kind of argument is familiar among people living in close re-
lationships. Important feelings and concerns are present. But instead
of being discussed openly, the feelings are allowed to escalate into hos-
tility, which only exacerbates the hurt and insecurity that initiated the
discussion in the first place. As the divorce rate remains high in the