534 - When We're Asked to Change (and When It's Okay to Refuse)
Have you ever been asked to change?
Today we’re talking about being asked to change, whether it’s behavior or deeper fundamental beliefs. Being asked to change by a partner can be scary and difficult, so we’re going to dive into the feelings that come up in these situations and when it’s okay to refuse when a partner asks it of you.
It can be scary when someone asks us to change, especially if it’s a deep fundamental change, solely on their behalf. But when we’re in long-term relationships, accommodations sometimes have to be made or behavior has to change, especially the more entwined peoples’ lives become. Asking for and receiving requests for change is an important skill to foster in yourself.
When we’re asked to change, we might feel some or all of the following emotions:
Spectrum of discomfort.
Feeling of failure.
Feeling of disagreement.
Sadness.
Embarrassment.
Frustration.
Rage.
It can be helpful to be emotionally honest about a change request, but we have to be careful not to stray into being emotionally punitive, toxic, or abusive when making a change request. It’s also vital that the one being asked to change takes the time to understand where the other person is coming from. The more compassion and understanding we have for each other the easier it can be to deal with the emotions coming up.
When ASKING someone to change, ensure that the request is:
Collaborative, by using “we” language instead of “you” language.
Positive.
Specific":
Requests for change that are specific (i.e. that state the action that the person should take to change) will elicit less resistance than requests that are vague (i.e. that simply complain about a situation without specifying what action should be taken).
Empathetic:
Does your partner recognize your feelings of shame, guilt, embarrassment, or remorse at being asked to make a change? Do they recognize there could be a potential for these feelings when being asked to change?
The point of this is not to “catch” or “grade” your partner, nor to disregard your partner’s request just because they didn’t make it in the “right” way. The point of the exercise to help offer a guide through the difficult emotions that may come up when you’re being asked to change.
Is it even ethically acceptable to ask someone to change?
Most or the research that exists on this topic focuses on requests around behavior change, rather than requests about fundamental identity or personality.
It is generally acceptable to ask for change concerning behavior, such as communication patterns, shared resource management, specific actions that impact the relationship in a direct way, or ways of showing love and appreciation.
It’s harder to accept change requests around things such as:
Identity.
Autonomous body decisions (appearance, medical decisions).
Other relationships, especially pre-existing ones.
Basic personality traits.
Mental health challenges or past traumas.
Some gray areas that can be considered are:
Changes to time spent with others, such as those in your social circle or with other partners.
Career choices or lifestyle choices that do impact the relationship.
Religious or spiritual practices that intersect with the relationship.
Some possible red flags or rubrics to consider:
Requests for changes that create closeness vs. create distance.
Requests for changes that promote growth vs. enforce control.
Requests that come with threats.
Requests that are demanded immediately without discussion or understanding.
Requests that isolate you from support systems.
Requests that require giving up your autonomy fully.
If this request to change feels unacceptable to you, figure out why that is.
Transcript
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Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we're talking about what to do when a partner has asked you to change. Maybe it's a small change in behavior, a partner asking you to be a little more communicative via text, or asking you to take a turn with planning the next date, or maybe it's something big, fundamental, and more challenging. A partner telling you they can no longer be a listening ear to your break-up processing, or a partner asking you to completely change how you show up during conflict. Either way, it can be challenging to fill a request for change.
Today, we'll dive into how we deal with feelings that come up when we're asked to change, as well as evaluating what is and isn't acceptable for a partner to ask us to change. If you're interested in learning about our fundamental communication tools as well, we reference them on the show all the time. You can check out our first few episodes for those, but we also have them in beautiful polished book form. That's Multiamory: Essential Tools for Modern Relationships.
It covers our most used communication tools for all types of relationships, and you can find links to buy it in paper form, e-book form, and audiobook form at multiamory.com/book, or wherever you get your books.
Dedeker: Has anybody romantically ever asked you to change? Not like have they ever romantically, in a romantic way, no.
Jase: Did they do it in a romantic way?
Dedeker: Someone you're romantic with asked you to change, big or small.
Emily: Yes.
Jase: Yes.
Dedeker: Did you want to tell me about it?
Emily: My partner asked me to be monogamous after being non-monogamous.
Dedeker: That's a big one.
Jase: Yes, that's a big one.
Emily: That was a big one.
Dedeker: I would characterize that as a big one, yes.
Emily: Yes, for sure.
Jase: Yes.
Emily: Absolutely. I asked a partner recently, "Can you maybe jab at me in a funny way a little bit less?" Because sometimes-
Dedeker: Oh, yes.
Emily: -it hurts a little.
Dedeker: I've had that conversation.
Emily: Yes, I know that-- Sometimes partners, I think, or just people in general, they think that they can joke in that way, and it's chill. I'm not really jabbing at anything that's hard for them, but sometimes it does hurt after a while. It's like, "Hey, maybe-- This is a request. You can say no, but do you think maybe you could do that a little less because sometimes it does hurt a little bit?"
Dedeker: Sometimes I've had to ask male partners specifically to be like, "Hey, the way that you are socialized to joke with and bond with your male friends is not the same as-
Emily: How you should do it with me.
Dedeker: -how you should do with me."
Jase: Interesting, yes. I feel like one that's come up on both sides of being asked to change or asking someone else to change has to do with amount of PDA, public displays of affection-
Dedeker: Oh.
Emily: Oh.
Jase: -when we're together.
Emily: Interesting.
Jase: I feel like it's gone both ways in both different situations depending on the social situation that we're in, or around family, or in different contexts of that like, "Can you change the way you are about touching me?" Or them asking that like, "Can you be more affectionate so people actually think we're together, and we're not just siblings or something?" It can really go both ways, which is interesting.
Dedeker: "Can you stop calling me your sister? It's not kinky."
Jase: Right.
Emily: "Hey, sister." Yes. Oh my God.
Jase: Do you know what? Actually, I had a partner who got upset that people would sometimes ask if we were related, if we were siblings, if they saw us while we were at work, and we worked together. To be fair, I do feel like we did look a bit like each other, so it wasn't just totally coming out of nowhere. She took that as you're not showing enough affection for me in public so that people realize we're that type of relationship, and not this other one.
Dedeker: Interesting.
Emily: You were like, "We just look alike. It's fine."
Dedeker: I was asked a few years ago by a partner who sat me down, and this was a few days before Valentine's Day, and he sat me down, basically asking like, "Hey, could you take Valentine's Day seriously, actually?"
Jase: Oh, assume-
Emily: What?
Jase: -you're not a sentimental one about that relationship holiday?
Dedeker: No, his face was-
Emily: That's fascinating.
Dedeker: -like, "There's been some years past where you brush it off as nothing, but it's actually important to me and my colleagues in general, and more important to me. I would like if you maybe took it a little bit more seriously." I did not take it very well. I got very defensive. Once I got over the defensiveness and calmed down, then it was an opportunity for me to examine, "Yes, what is that about?" Was able to open up and be more vulnerable about like, "Yes, I think I've picked this up from my family of origin, and how non-sentimental and extremely pragmatic they are about holidays-
Emily: Everything.
Dedeker: -and everything." That's not the most recent time I was asked to change, but that's something that pops up into my brain.
Jase: That sounds like a great segue into why we're doing this whole episode.
Dedeker: Yes, it's so funny because I think that we can understand that it is dangerous to just expect someone to fundamentally change, or just expect that someone is going to change on our behalf.
Emily: I think it's a little scary to ask a person to change, or to request that they do a different type of behavior. I have found over time all of the dating life that I have had, that it's almost impossible to expect somebody to change, and to actually see them implement that, unless they really want to do it themselves.
Jase: That's the interesting piece is, yes, we've often talked about if you're with someone with this expectation that they're going to change a fundamental part of themselves, they're not going to, so don't just keep banking on that happening. At the same time, being part of a relationship, especially a longer-term one, there will be change. There will be accommodations that are made from both people and behavior changes going both directions in order to have a healthy relationship at all. It's this weird catch-22 of we will change and that is an important part, but also don't go in expecting someone to change drastically for you, especially their fundamental nature.
Dedeker: I think the likelihood increases that either you're going to have to ask someone to change or someone's going to ask you to change as you entwine more together, as you take on more projects together. That can include everything like caregiving, parenting, managing a shared living space together, or communicating around having multiple partners, that the more entwinement, I think, there's just more opportunities where we're going to have to ask for behavior changes and make modifications.
Emily: That's, I think, an interesting distinction as well, behavior change versus fundamental personality change.
Dedeker: We will get to that.
Emily: Yes, I'm very interested to dive into that because that, I think, is the real crux of this is a thing that is very difficult for somebody to change unless they really want to, or is behavior, I think, like what we just talked about Dedeker like, "Hey, you maybe poke at me a little bit more than I would like. Can you do that a little bit less?" That's a very specific behavior that I think is a little bit easier perhaps to remember and to stop oneself from doing over and over again.
Dedeker: You think it maybe an easier change to make?
Emily: Yes. Whereas, if you have a fundamental intrinsic value system in place that somebody is asking you to change, I think that that is extremely challenging.
Jase: With that said, it can be hard sometimes to tell which of those it is, and also how to have those conversations, which is why the skills to ask for change well and the skills to receive those requests for change are so important to maintaining healthy and sustainable relationships.
Dedeker: Well, where I wanted to start was, I got curious about, in relationships who is it that asks for change? What do people tend to ask for in relationships? I found this unintentionally funny study 2009. It's titled Desired Change in Couples: Gender Differences and Effects on Communication. This was published in the Journal of Family Psychology.
Jase: Doesn't sound funny yet. I'm waiting for the punchline.
Dedeker: No, no, no. They surveyed 453 heterosexual couples. It was all couples who were either married or living together and who also had a three to seven-year old child. Now, they found that--
Jase: What? It's very specific.
Emily: Yes.
Dedeker: Also, it's hetero parents of small children. They found
what women tended to ask for were they wanted greater increases from their partner in things like their partner's parental involvement. They wanted their partner to increase their emotional and companionate behaviors, like as in, "I want more time together, I want more attention, I want you to start interesting conversations with me," et cetera, or they wanted their male partners to help more around the house and in planning their lives. The men asked for more sex.
Emily: Ain't that the truth?
Dedeker: That was it. That's what they felt.
Emily: This was 100% of respondents, or just like an overwhelming majority, or what are we talking about here?
Dedeker: An overwhelming majority. It's so funny that reading through this study, literally in the study's conclusion, they were like, "Hey, media people covering this, don't just say that women want all these things and men just want sex. Don't say that. Don't say that." No, they did clarify that what was actually happening in the data is that men and women they did want the same things, actually, in pretty much every domain. Like either they wanted increased attention, increased time together, or decrease, I don't know, criticism or things like that. Both genders wanted significant change in the same direction, just not as much. For example, they say that both men and women desire more sex, but men want even more change than women do. That both men and women desire increases in spending time together, but women want that change even more than the men do, or want a bigger amount of change.
Emily: Interesting.
Dedeker: Does that make sense?
Jase: Sure. At first, it might seem like we want different things and so we're at odds, but maybe we actually do want the same things, just in these different amounts, and that feels easier to resolve.
Dedeker: They were saying that this is ultimately, it's just about relative amount of change, and maybe that's easier for two people to get on the same page about as opposed to it being diametrically opposed desires. That does happen in relationships. Sometimes it's like one person wants more sex and one person wants less sex, and that's a little bit more of a trickier situation than we do both want more sex. It's just like, maybe you want way, way more, and I only want a little bit more.
Jase: I'm curious, and we won't have the answers to this, but I always think about in studies like this, where we're focusing on gender and we're focusing on heterosexual couples, there's this kind of how much of this is a result of the enculturation of the people involved. What I mean by that is I could see a world where both people what they want is more intimacy and connection, but to the men, they feel like what that means is sex. The way that I get intimacy and connection is through sex. The way I get your attention is sex.
Dedeker: That's a whole other topic.
Jase: For the women, they might be socialized to think that means something else. That's an equally fascinating talk.
Emily: Absolutely.
Dedeker: I thought that was interesting. I wanted to talk a little bit about-- and this is just anecdotal. I didn't pull any research for this specifically, but about what comes up for us when we're asked to change, whether that's us personally or more generally speaking, because I think that I'm having a hard time recalling a situation where a partner has asked me to change a behavior and where my instant reaction has been just like pure joy. Oh, I'm so glad.
Emily: Sure, yes.
Dedeker: Maybe if I was like, oh my God, I didn't even realize that I wasn't doing that. Of course, that's so easy if it felt like a very easy lift, but I think most of the other times it's brought up more negative, more troubling feelings.
Jase: There have been some times where it's like, "Oh, I was actually holding myself back from that because I thought you didn't want it. Oh, great. Let's do more of that." You're right. The majority of the time, I feel like for me, I tend to go to more often than defensiveness to this feeling of like, "Oh fuck, something's wrong with me. Oh gosh, I'm so sorry. I've really screwed this up. I've failed you. I've let you down." I think that tends to be my most common reaction. Not always, but often.
Emily: I have a little bit of both. I've been defensive at times, and I've also been like, "Oh shit, that doesn't sound great that I'm doing that, I'm so sorry. Let me try to fix that behavior." Yes, it can be a lot of discomforts, even maybe a little bit of sadness or embarrassment at times.
Jase: Yes, for sure.
Emily: Though also sometimes it's like frustration of like, "No, but I am doing that thing. I'm consciously putting a lot of effort into doing that thing," and you think I don't.
Dedeker: You asked me to do that last week, and I very specifically tried to, and you're not noticing.
Emily: Yes, exactly.
Dedeker: Or just, I think the discomfort of disagreement, if you're like, your partner asks you to change your behavior and you feel like, I don't think that's a reasonable request to make of me, then that can bring a whole other host of feelings along with it. I think fundamentally for me, it's like this feeling of, "Oh my God, I thought we were on the same page, and we're actually totally not on the same page in our relationship."
Jase: There can be like that rug pull feeling of, "Oh, I thought I knew where we both stood, and now I feel like I don't know anything about what's been going on."
Emily: My ex often would ask me to not talk about our relationship on the show, for instance. I don't know, dear listener, what y'all think, but I felt like I really tried to minimize it or if I alluded to it, I did it very gently, but I know that there were still things that he picked out that I said that were terrible, awful things to say. Like that I felt resentful of him, for instance, even though I was just essentially trying to figure out like, "Hey, I'm having these feelings of resentment. How do I solve those feelings? How do I figure out a way past those feelings?" I used our relationship as an example, but apparently that was a big problem.
Jase: That is an interesting case where, from your point of view, you're throwing yourself under the bus of being like, "I have this problem I want to work on," but he interpreted it more as, "Hey, you said this shitty thing about me,"
Emily: That was my sense of it.
Jase: I can see other cases where you're not talking on a podcast, but where that kind of thing happens, that to one person, it's like, "I was showing affection in doing this thing." To the other person, it's, "I felt like you were hurtful by doing this thing." I guess maybe in a way, like the poking that you were talking about could fall into that category.
Dedeker: Oh, yes, totally.
Jase: The two people saw the same action as a completely different emotional feeling, a different connection or disconnection.
Dedeker: I think there's another tricky thing here. We'll get to this more at the end of the episode, when we're talking about what is acceptable for someone to ask you to change and what isn't. That sometimes a partner may make a request for change in your behavior. For some reason, the way it lands on you feels like, "Oh my God, they want me to fundamentally change who I am." When maybe that's not actually what they're asking.
For instance, like in your case, Emily, I could see a version of that going down where you ask your partner, "Hey, can you ease up a little bit in the way that we joke around with each other?" Maybe for some reason that hits some nerve with him, and it feels like a threat to who he is. How could you ask me to change my sense of humor or change the way that I show up in relationship and my playfulness?
That, depending on particular topics, and I think we all have certain more sensitive topics and more sensitive areas of our identity or weird things that we've attached our identity to, where if a partner brushes up against it, it can feel extremely, extremely threatening. I think that's when these really big emotions come out, like rage and really deep shame or really deep sadness or indignation.
Emily: I will say, yes, early on in a relationship, because I think that was the first time I've ever requested something like that of him. We've been dating for eight months or something, so not a huge amount of time. I was a little worried at what his response would be. I was pleasantly surprised that he was like, "Sure. Sorry about that."
Dedeker: Great.
Emily: Yes, off to a good start. I know for sure. I was pleased because I think when you have relationships where when you ask somebody to change, they have a very different response or a very volatile response. Sometimes you tend to think, okay, everyone's going to act like that, and maybe I shouldn't ask somebody to change in any way, but at times people can surprise you.
Dedeker: When this happens, whether your partner has asked something big of you, something small of you, and whether you're having big feelings or small feelings, how do we deal with the feelings that can come up? I want to make a call back to the research that I referenced in the last episode, Our Cognitive Reappraisal episode, where we covered this 2022 study, when we're asked to change the role of suppression and reappraisal in partner change outcomes, published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.
This was the study where they recorded these interviews with couples where one person, the requesting partner, was given a minute to think about what they wanted their partner to change. Then they were given one minute to tell their partner. Then the change target the partner who's being asked to change, was given a minute to respond. They were given a few more minutes together to talk freely, and then they were released into the wild, essentially.
Jase: Then they also followed up with them over time, too, right?
Dedeker: Yes. I actually found an interview with the researchers on this blog, TherapyTips.org, where they talked about how even though the study was looking at emotion regulation in the change target, the person who was being asked to change, they also looked at emotion regulation strategies in the partner who's requesting the change as well. They found that the partner who's requesting the change sometimes may choose to emotionally regulate through suppression.
They may try to conceal or minimize their negative emotions about the changing partner or conceal their negative emotions about what they would like them to change. For example, they shared that the requesting partner may hide how much their partner's behavior upsets or frustrates them. Or they may act like the change request is less serious than it actually is. Or they may hide negative feelings like anger or sadness that could come from feeling like their partner is not making enough
effort toward pursuing the change, or the partner is not actually trying to meet the request.
As for how this played out when they did this other analysis where they were tracking these couple's week to week to report-- this was after they had their little conversation discussing what the person wanted them to change, and then they followed them week to week to track how that change effort was going. They found that the requesting partner who suppressed their emotions more than other participants reported that their changing partner was further from their ideal over the course of eight weeks.
Emily: Whoa.
Dedeker: This suggests some potential drawbacks of requesting partners suppressing their emotions, but of course, for the researches needed, they give all their same caveats. What do you take away from that?
Jase: The first thought that jumped out to me was if you're suppressing those emotions, because you're trying to stay calm and be reasonable in what you're requesting, that it's possible the other partner hears that, but then doesn't take it that seriously, or doesn't give it as much weight as you want them to, because you were hiding that from them, because they couldn't see how much this affected you.
Dedeker: Maybe you were worried about the feelings they're going to have in being asked to change. That's why you would hold back or--
Jase: Yes, totally. That's what I mean though. That as the receiving partner, if the other person was holding back their emotions, so you don't know how much this means to them, you might put less effort into it. Like you mentioned that the person who asked if they suppressed their emotions felt like the other person didn't do as much to change. I wonder how much of that might actually be true, that just the message didn't land as hard on the other person that this change matters.
Dedeker: With my last big breakup, something I spent a lot of time on with my therapist was, looking back, I had a lot of regrets around-- I really didn't want to be giving ultimatums to my partner. I didn't want to say something to him like, "This needs to change," or "I don't think I can be in this relationship anymore." I was so worried about-- I don't want to be a person who's threatening a breakup, because that's such shitty behavior. I didn't want to feel like I was manipulating. I think I overcorrected with a number of things where I so hid how serious this was for me, but I think the message--
Jase: You were too chill about it.
Dedeker: I wouldn't say that I was chill about it. I would not go that far, Jase. I would say that, I don't know, that was a question I had for her, was, how could I have delivered that message without just sounding like an asshole? She wasn't that helpful. She was just like, "I'm from LA. I would have just said it."
Emily: I don't know. I think that it is important to be honest about your emotions and to also express that this is very meaningful to me, and this matters a lot. If I don't see a change that there's going to be an issue there. If a person doesn't know that, then it probably becomes that much easier for them to just stray back into the same existing behavior patterns and not truly see, "This is something that my partner is really not okay with. I should make an effort to change because I care about them and I love them and I want them to be okay."
Jase: I'm also curious now, since you mentioned, Dedeker, that they observed that the asker, the requester, if they suppress their emotions, they reported that they didn't think their partner was changing enough or fast enough. I do wonder how much could be that result of, "I didn't get it out. I don't feel like I clearly expressed myself, and so I still feel some upset about it," even if maybe objectively, however you could measure that, which is hard, maybe objectively there was the same amount of change. It really was just they weren't able to perceive it as much because they were still holding onto the feelings they didn't express or they didn't let themselves show.
Dedeker: That's an interesting take on it.
Emily: Sometimes getting those feelings out there can help, maybe not diminish them, but just at least get it outside of your body and having to process it internally. That external processing can hopefully lead to some, I guess, diminishing of the intensity of that feeling.
Dedeker: Yet at the same time-- the takeaway is you should be emotionally honest when you're making a change request of your partner while also not straying into just being emotionally punitive, or toxic, or abusive, or aggressive when making a change request. I think also there's a piece here where if you're the one being asked to change, I think this indicates it is important that you take the time and you bring the curiosity to really understand where this is coming from for the other person and really understand what they actually feel about it, as much as they are able to share with you. Sometimes, that's hard to get out of a partner if they have complicated feelings around it already.
Jase: Yes, absolutely.
Dedeker: Here's the deal, is when I was writing this episode, I ran into this topsy-turvy, which is that I wanted to write this episode to focus on these change targets, when we are the change target, when we are asked to change. But so much of the research and the literature and the advice out there is focused on the asker on the request.
Jase: Really?
Dedeker: Yes.
Jase: I wouldn't have guessed that.
Dedeker: Really? Why wouldn't you have guessed that?
Jase: I don't know. I guess I would assume that most people would think asking for them to change is the easy part. It's how do you change or how do you accept that is the hard part or the complicated part?
Dedeker: I think it makes sense.
Jase: It makes sense. It does make sense, but I didn't expect that going into this.
Emily: How do you ask well enough to get what it is that you want?
Dedeker: Exactly.
Jase: Sure.
Dedeker: I think that's how so many people, and I've been there, feel desperate. Like, "Oh my God, my partner is driving me nuts. How can I get them to stop doing this thing? How can I ask? Can I unlock the key of how to effectively ask them for change? How do I convince them to change?" I think that's where most of the resources out there focus.
Jase: That does make sense. I could also see those are the people reaching out for help too-
Dedeker: Exactly.
Jase: -because they're sitting there thinking about it longer usually than the target of change who often it's like, whatever the knee-jerk reaction was, they either do or they don't. That's a good point, that they're more likely to be the ones searching for studies and research and therapy tips and stuff like that if they're trying to ask for change.
Dedeker: That was a surprising roadblock that I ran into. That's why I thought that maybe we can look at what the research says are the building blocks of an effective change request. Then looking at it through the lens of being the change target, the idea that you can maybe use this as a rubric as you're processing a request for change that came from your partner. Again, because of what I talked about earlier, that sometimes just a request for change itself can trigger all kinds of surprising stuff and surprising emotions. I thought that maybe having a rubric might help for you to be able to sort out, does this feel like a reasonable request, and I'm just having a big reaction to it or not? My intention with this is not to give you an exercise to catch your partner or grade your partner.
Jase: On how good did they ask me?
Dedeker: Did they ask me in the correct way? It's not to give you an excuse to completely disregard your partner because they didn't do it 100% correctly.
Jase: I like that. That's good. It's like, "I would change, but you didn't actually ask me correctly, so tough."
Emily: So never mind.
Dedeker: The point of this is to just help offer some guidelines, Jase would call them some buoys, to help you through some of these difficult emotions that could come up. This list that I made was just four aspects that you might look for in a request for change. This list was informed by two research studies. One is from 2009, The Differential Association Between Change Request Qualities and Resistance, Problem Resolution, and Relationship Satisfaction in the journal of Family Psychology, and a 2020 study, The Distinct Effects of Empathic Accuracy for Romantic Partners, Appeasement, and Dominance Emotions published in Psychological Science. I promise that my list is sexier and easier to parse.
Jase: I'm sorry. I need to give a note to some of these researchers. It is possible to come up with cuter, more fun titles. We've definitely had them on the show before.
Dedeker: This is known as cuter plays.
Jase: Cuter plays.
Emily: We've had a couple of cute ones.
Dedeker: It's true.
Jase: I'm asking you to change.
Emily: How much does it mean to you that they do this?
Jase: You're right. Maybe I'm asking how much this affects me. I don't know. Gosh, I need to really do some introspection on this now.
Dedeker: Here's the four things that I put on this rubric was, was the request for change collaborative? As in, when your partner came to you, were they able to incorporate we language versus you language, as in, "Hey, we need to stop giving into them," versus saying, "You just need to say no." Now in my mind-
Jase: through the kids, I'm assuming.
Dedeker: -I imagine the kids could be, I don't know, your former mafia crew that are threatening you. I don't know. That was pulled from one of these studies showed that then of course, they're looking at hetero couples again, that both husbands and wives change requests framed as you, "You need to do this or that," resulted in an increased likelihood of immediate partner resistance.
Emily: That makes sense.
Jase: That seems obvious when you say it. That makes so much sense. It's like, "You need to do this." "Back off. I do what I want."
Dedeker: That could be a clue that if you're noticing immediate partner resistance in yourself, it could be that. Again, to just really beat the dead horse a lot, it doesn't mean you get to throw this back into your partner's
face and say, "Well, you messed up on the language, therefore, I don't have to listen to you." It could be an opportunity to reframe and come back to the conversation and saying, "Hey, I think that there are things that we can both do to help make this easier, and this is a thing that I'm committed to doing," for instance.
Jase: Yes. No, that's beautiful. It's like the most Zen comeback.
Dedeker: Hopefully, not passive-aggressive. I'm not intending if I do passive-aggressive.
Jase: Hopefully not. I'm thinking about like, when I feel like I've been at my best, I feel like I could have that moment of, I get a request that's me, and you take it in, and then what if we find a way to do whatever, to enact some change together? Like that you can change the 'you' into 'we', but that takes a lot of resistance to not, or not resistance. It takes a lot of introspection and awareness to not just go to defensive right away, right?
Emily: We, we are, that's a severance.
Dedeker: Yes, the we, we are.
Emily: Good.
Dedeker: That is a severance. It makes me think of an example. I think I was reading this in an advice column where a woman is-- I think a pretty typical situation. A woman was expressing frustration that she felt like her husband was not helping enough around the house, and that what would really set her off is her husband would say things like, "Oh, did we empty the trash last night?"
Jase: He meant, did you?
Dedeker: Did we ever figure out what we need to put on the grocery list, right? Where, of course, she wanted to clap back with like, "What we, what do you mean? It's you or me, we got to figure that out," and that the advice was, yes, just return it. Like, no, you're right. We didn't take out the trash and-
Emily: Why would you do that?
Dedeker: -let's talk about how we need to manage this together. Like follow that into a conversation.
Emily: That's good about that.
Jase: Right.
Dedeker: The next thing on this rubric was the request for change positive, or the way that I tend to frame this to my clients, especially when I'm working with couples is, is the request for change affirmative rather than negative. I don't mean positive like sunshine and rainbows but as in expressing what it is that you do want as opposed to just expressing what it is that you don't want. The researchers call this an increasing request rather than a decreasing request. The way this looks in practice would be something like saying to your partner, "I would love for us to have more non-screen time together," as opposed to saying to your partner, "You have to turn off your phone or else you're not allowed to come over to my place anymore."
Jase: I have laid down an ultimatum similar to that before where it's, "If you're going to sleep over at my place, you can only hit your snooze button once and then you have to get up."
Dedeker: Oh, wow.
Jase: It's like, "I will not tolerate your alarm going off."
Emily: Wow.
Dedeker: How could you have framed them affirmatively?
Emily: That's almost a decreasing request, though.
Jase: No, it was. It was decreasing for sure. No, I definitely did not phrase that in a positive way, but it did land, and I think it was an easy enough request.
Dedeker: How can we help you get out to bed after the first snooze alarm in the morning?
Jase: I would love for us to only experience the alarm going off once in the morning or so.
Emily: Very far.
Dedeker: I feel like now we're self-targeting.
Emily: Both of us experiencing this, that's fascinating.
Jase: This is something that I remember years ago when I worked at a hair salon, we had someone come in who was a consultant who maybe worked at another salon, and was talking about how they'd tried to develop a better culture and like a better feeling with their clients, with their customers as well as with their staff. One of their things was trying to learn to phrase everything in terms of what you want rather than what you don't want. Or to phrase things in terms of what you want to move toward instead of what you want to move away from.
An example they gave was, if you're walking a client from getting their hair shampooed back over to the chair that if there was like a cord on the ground, instead of saying, "Be careful not to trip on that," they would say something like, "Mind your step over this cord," of just kind of trying to rephrase things into a more, I guess, increasing request than a decreasing requesting.
Dedeker: Interesting.
Emily: Having a positive spin on everything.
Jase: Right. I think there is some stuff that makes sense to it, or like, focusing on the positive outcome instead of the negative one even if the result's the same, but some people can go really hard on this and that's how the salon was.
Emily: Sure.
Dedeker: Well, sure. I don't want this to get confused with, you can never say no, or you can never have a decreasing request. I think especially if it's a situation where I need to enact some kind of boundary where I can be like, "I'm not going to respond to text messages after ten o'clock that are work-related." That doesn't really involve me necessarily telling someone, "Hey, you need to stop sending me text messages after ten o'clock." I'm just stating this is how I'm going to deal with it, and it's not framed in a positive affirmative way. It just kind of is what it is.
Jase: I think it makes a lot of sense though when requesting something of the other person of focusing on why you want it as well. I know that in general, requests for anything land better when you also give a reason why you want the thing. In this example of, "I would love for us to have more non-screen time together," is not just, "I don't want you to look at your phone," it's that, "I want you to look at me." It's focusing on why I even want this thing at all?
Emily: It's a bid for attention.
Jase: Yes, a bid for connection and attention.
Dedeker: I think that's a good segue into this next part of the rubric, which is was the request for change specific? This research that I looked at found that requests for change that are specific, as in as a request that explicitly state the action that the person should take to change, specific requests will elicit less resistance than requests that are vague, as in requests where you just simply complain about a situation without specifying what action should be taken. I feel like, Jase, you call me out on this one a lot of just complaining about something without making requests or giving suggestions .
Jase: That's why I was nodding so hard when you were reading this.
Dedeker: Like a little bobble head.
Jase: Like, an example that Dedeker that you wrote down here, I really like is the vague version of a request is something like, "I'm tired of our plans always being put on the back burner and rescheduled. I want you to make me a priority." Versus the specific version of saying, "When we make plans together for the next time we'll see each other, can we sit down and look at both of our calendars to double and triple check there aren't any forgotten commitments and that we're both actually available."
I think that's a good example of moving to it a more clear request, because I think so often something like that statement of, "I want to feel more X. I want to feel more appreciated by you," seems like you want me to change everything about myself versus when you notice that I've taken out the trash, "I'd like you to thank me for that and appreciate me for that." It feels like, "Oh, yes, I can do that, that makes sense." Like, "Yes, you deserve that. I'm sorry I haven't done that." It feels doable. I think that makes a lot of sense on the receiving side to get to what does that really mean? What does that look like?
Emily: I do think that these changes, these requests for change, that they're a little bit more tied up in a neat little bow, a little package that is not as scary as just, I'm going to throw a bone at you and say, "Hey, pick this up and please do something about it." It's like a nice little neat --
Jase: You've really changed some metaphors midstream.
Dedeker: I'm going to literally throw like a chicken bone at you and tell you, "Hey, pick that up and clean it up now."
Emily: Yes. I would like you to change and pick up this chicken bone versus--
Dedeker: I'm tired of you picking up my chicken bones.
Emily: -versus I'm going to give you some nice vegan chicken in a package and say, "Here you go." .
Dedeker: It's really we're bone inspired.
Emily: Exactly.
Jase: I get what you say.
Emily: The point is that, it's a softened request. It's still a request, but it doesn't feel as scary as a change request saying, "Hey, you need to do this, you need to change something about yourself." It's more like, "I'm seeing something that's happening" or, "We need to maybe be more proactive about this thing together." You're still asking for a change and you may be pointing it in their direction, but you're softening the language about it in order to make it more digestible and palatable to that person, and therefore, hopefully, that'll create, I think, the necessary ingredients for the change to happen.
Dedeker: That leads perfectly to the last one on this list, which is, was the request for change empathetic? Does your partner who's asking you to change, recognize if you have a feeling of shame or guilt or embarrassment or remorse that comes up, does your partner recognize that? Do they recognize that there could be a potential for those feelings when being asked to change? I have another direct quote. The study results indicate that a greater ability to read a partner's appeasement emotions predicts higher relationship quality. As we theorized because of the socially constructive function of appeasement emotions, e.g., showing concern for a partner, acknowledging a personal shortcoming, accuracy for such emotions was associated with more satisfying relationships.
To translate that into layman's terms, if you are appeasing with your partner, or you feel embarrassed or bashful, and your partner accurately picks up on this, it can signal to your partner that you care about their feelings and recognize that a change request could be hurtful or awkward, or uncomfortable. I think this falls into this weird delicate dance of, if you're too hyper attuned to not wanting to ruffle your partner's feathers when you make a change request that could lead to you suppressing your own emotions and feeling like, I can't really indicate how upset I am about this because then that's going to upset them, and I can't have that. We could go too far with this, but then there's also going way too far in the other direction, which is having zero empathy for how my request might land on my partner.
Jase: I think we often get there when we hit that point where we're so fed up that then our request comes with no empathy, with no compassion for how it might be received, because we're just sick and tired of this shit by the time we get to that. This is interesting. I want to go back for just a second to the specific one. Again, focusing on being the one getting asked this of, noticing if this feels overwhelming, something you could do is to go into being specific of saying, "What does that look like? I want to do this for you. It feels overwhelming. What does that actually look like? What does that mean could be helpful?"
Then, with this empathetic thing, it's almost that as the receiving one, maybe not needing to hide your emotions or shield them behind defensiveness, and instead being willing to show that you feel a little bit ashamed or embarrassed. That there is a deeper, more vulnerable emotion going on. I know that can be hard for some people to let that show, but this seems to indicate that that might then also help the person asking for change to ask it better.
By showing that you feel those things, or even just saying with your words, "I'm having a hard time, not just feeling really ashamed or embarrassed about the fact that I've done that." Then maybe work your way backward from there, of "Can you help me understand what that would look like specifically? Maybe could we start small?" That you using the we language and asking for specifics and looking at what would the good version look like, focusing on the positive, it's almost like you can work your way back through these four.
Emily: Interesting.
Jase: To bring the question asker along with you.
Dedeker: 100%. I think that's a great way to use this rubric of, "How can I make this collaborative? How can I make it positive? How can I make it specific? How can I make it empathetic?" Even if you are the change target. I also think it's helpful to think about these things because it's totally possible that there could be a situation where you come to the conclusion that the request that your partner has made for change is totally valid, but your negative feelings are coming from the way that your partner asked it of you. This is just I think the perfect formula for switchtracking.
Emily: I kept thinking of that over and over again while we were doing this episode.
Jase: Can you recap switchtracking for us?
Emily: Switchtracking is when, for instance, in the example of taking out the trash, when somebody says, "Hey, have we taken out the trash today?" The other person says, "I took out the trash yesterday. I hate the fact that you don't acknowledge all of my times that I have taken out the trash or done other things around the house. Whatever." Then the first person says, "Okay, but the trash hasn't been taken out yet, and it's starting to smell. Can you please take it out?" They're like, "Oh gosh, yet again, you're not acknowledging me. You're not seeing all of the work that I do around this house. How dare you?"
It's like, they're going on a different track, a different thing that they're seeing is incorrect about the situation, instead of staying on the task at hand, staying on the initial request of, "Please take out the trash." They're totally switching to something else. Yes.
Jase: It's like the two people are having two different conversations and getting frustrated that the other one isn't responding to their conversation.
Emily: Totally.
Dedeker: Both of those tracks are valid things to look at, right?
Emily: Sure.
Dedeker: If you've identified, actually, maybe there's a pattern where my partner is not very specific when they have a complaint, or they're not very empathetic when they have a complaint.
Jase: You're requesting a change about them requesting changes.
Dedeker: I know. Then it just becomes fractals all the way down. No. The important thing to remember is I think in the moment when you're being asked to change, is not the moment to then immediately throw back, "I didn't like the way that you asked that." This is a good opportunity to hold steady. Maybe it's something that feels relatively small, where you feel like what your partner's asking is valid. You didn't like that they used you language more than we language. That could be an opportunity if you feel like you're holding steady and you're not just spitting out emotionally, where you could try on some cognitive reappraisal for yourself.
Like rethinking this sense of, "Okay, I get that. Maybe I didn't like the way they use this you language, but I totally get where they're coming from. I think that maybe making this change could help strengthen our relationship. That was difficult to hear. I can understand where my partner was coming from, though. I'm glad they at least said something rather than kept it to themselves." If that's a situation where you feel like you can hold steady, then I think that's a great tactic to take. If it's not, this could be a cue to set aside another time with your partner, like in a radar, a check-in to talk about how you want to handle these requests for change from each other.
It could be something like, "Hey, I just want to let you know we had that hard conversation a few weeks ago. Because of that conversation, like you requested, I went ahead. I've set up a few appointments with a therapist to talk through this thing, but I wanted you and I to process that particular talk because it was really hard. Honestly, I felt a little hurt at the time. Can we talk more about how to have these sorts of conversations?"
Jase: Maybe coming up with some microscripts to break some patterns that you have. I love that.
Dedeker: I want to spend this last portion of our episode talking about the ethics of being asked to change. We teased this a little bit at the top. Do the two of you think that there are changes that it's acceptable to ask a partner to make versus completely unacceptable to ask?
Emily: Oof.
Dedeker: You don't sound very convicted.
Jase: That's weird. Just thinking off the top of my head, it's hard for me to come up with something that I would say is objectively in this category of unacceptable to ask, but for that person might be unacceptable.
Dedeker: Do you think it's more subjective?
Jase: I feel like it just depends on how tied is it to an intrinsic value of that person, versus how much is this just a behavior.
Emily: That's the thing. It's like, is it a value system? Is it a way in which you live your life? Is it a way that you just have acted for so long that it is a part of you and you can't expect that person to change who they are at this very fundamental core level, even if it is doing something to harm you or the relationship? I think that that's the question. That's what I've run into in the past, in both being somebody who's requesting change and somebody who has requested change of me, that it's like when those two things are at odds with one another, I think that's when you really are at an impasse in a relationship.
Dedeker: I think that we can stray into this area. Whatever, anybody can ask you anything. You don't have to say yes or no, right?
Emily: Sure.
Dedeker: Ultimately-- there's certain things where people may ask you to change and they're probably going to be harder for you to accept that request for change. Things related to fundamental identity. That's also squishy because there are some things, like somebody's sexuality, for instance, where you feel like you can't ask somebody to change that for your sake.
Jase: "I'd like you to stop being attracted to men. That would be great. Can you just do that for me?"
Dedeker: "Just stop. Just stop."
Jase: "I would like for us to stop being attracted to men."
Dedeker: When it gets into things like non-monogamy, for some people, that may feel like that's a part of their identity, close to the way that their sexuality might feel like part of their identity. For other people, like people who are more multiamorist, it may not feel like that deep and intrinsic.
Jase: That's a great example.
Emily: The example that I'm thinking of is I really hoped that my personal work ethic would help a partner change the ways in which they viewed work, and trying to find work, and trying to be motivated in their life in general. I realized that I just hoped that my example would be enough to move a person in a certain direction of wanting to do that more, wanting to be more interested in lifting themselves up out of the situation that they were in and had been in, quite frankly, for a long time.
I think that the moral of that story is again, even if you give a great example, even if you show like, "I'm hustling all the time, I'm moving all the time, and trying to better my life," it doesn't mean that somebody else is going to be led by that example and want to change themselves.
Dedeker: There's so many different ways to look at that, because I imagine that-- let's say you were with this partner and you were sharing some type of financial reas-- Maybe we're living together and then it gets a little bit trickier around, "Can I ask this person to get a job or get a career or something?" It's like, "Hey, we're both financially contributing to something. You not having a job or not having a career does affect me in that way." Versus asking someone, "I need you to develop more hustle or more motivation," that's hard.
Emily: When it affects the way in which you look at them in general, then you go back to your own value system as well. It's like, "Do I want to be with a person who doesn't really want to hustle in their life and have a lot of self-motivation, that that's a lot harder for them?" Versus, "Does this person feel like they want to change?" It's, again, those two competing value systems that I think can be challenging. That ultimately, one has to decide or two people have to decide, "Do we want to stay in a relationship where those things are at odds?"
Dedeker: I want to share a real pickle that I've had around this.
Jase: Please.
Dedeker: Okay, I think that something that falls in the realm of maybe unacceptable to ask a partner to change could include things about their body that they should be able to autonomously make decisions about. Right?
Emily: Yes.
Dedeker: Like their appearance, medical decisions that they have to make. What I've really had a hard time with, especially with particular partners, especially male partners, is I don't think it's ethical for me to put pressure on a partner to get a vasectomy, for instance. I don't know. I've never directly asked anybody to get a vasectomy, but I really wanted to. I've really heavily suggested it.
Jase: Now that's interesting.
Emily: Can you ask? There's an ask versus saying, "You need to make this change." Those are two very different things. One is a request and one is a-- They're both requests, I guess, but one feels a little bit more dire. I don't know.
Dedeker: Totally. Sure. Of course, I can ask whatever, as long as people feel like they're free and autonomous to be able to say no. Right?
Emily: Yes.
Jase: Yes. No, I think that's interesting. Because it could be easy to come to this and try to make these clear hard line distinctions of like if it's something about their health or their body, you can't ask them that. That falls into the category of unacceptable. I think if we think about real life and real connections, there's a context where telling someone, "You should lose weight," is a really shitty thing to say to them. There's other contexts where, "Hey, you generally are a lot happier when you're exercising. I know you've stopped doing that this last year. I really think it'd be good for you to do that again. Let's do that together." That to me doesn't feel weird.
It's just like there's-- there's a whole world in between those two. There's all sorts of different nuance based on why they're feeling the way they are, how they're feeling. I'm hesitant for us to put anything into this category of never or always okay.
Dedeker: That's what people want, Jase. They want clear answers.
Jase: I know. They want the clear answers. I know. They won't get them here, so sorry, everybody. I do think that it's worth when you're approaching things that have to do with somebody else's body or someone else's medical decisions to, at least, give it that extra thought of like, "Am I crossing a line? Am I going outside of trying to take away their own bodily autonomy or something?" I think like the vasectomy thing, I don't--
Dedeker: To be clear, I would never ask somebody who was very clear about how they never ever wanted to get a vasectomy.
Jase: I think that's the key. It's like, for some people, they might not even think that a partner would think that was good trait or a thing that they would want. That maybe for them it would be like, "Wow, okay. I hadn't really thought about it. I guess I'll start thinking about that."
Dedeker: Oh, I'm ready for the vasectomy-only dating app, obviously.
Emily: For sure. Amazing. Now, while my ex never asked me to stop having a relationship with the two of you, he did definitely imply that he would prefer if I never spoke to both of you again. I do think that it is interesting thinking about other relationships in a non-monogamous context or just in a situation like the three of us have very entwined partnership that includes a company, as well as just a huge amount of history between the three of us.
I do think that I have known people who have metamours and they say to me like, "I really want my partner to break up with that person. I really think that they should break up with that person." I'm like, "Well, I don't know if that's an okay thing for you to say to them."
Dedeker: Well, yes, so much of non-monogamy drama can fall into that weird gray area of how much can we ask someone to change the nature of their relationship with somebody else or change the amount of time that they've spent with somebody else. Honestly, that's not a non-monogamy only issue. Even monogamous folks struggle with that of, "Can I ask my partner to not spend as much time with their friends that I hate or they get under my skin?"
Jase: Sure. "Every time you are with that friend, you do something stupid or you get too drunk or whatever, I wish you wouldn't do that." Yes. That is tricky. I was just thinking about this recently because there is that weird thing when you're non-monogamous and your partners have other partners. It's like, if you think about comparing that to a friend who is dating other people, it's a certain amount that they'll tell you about that, and a certain amount you might weigh in on your opinions of it. When you're both dating that person, we can often fall into this area where it feels weirder to give advice or process that with your other partners.
We've talked about that a lot. How, generally, that's crossing a weird line into processing one relationship with another relationship. It's weird. I was thinking about this because I have a friend who, she had this partner, and there'd been a number of times where she'd been upset about things that had happened in that relationship. Nothing huge or major, but just, I noticed this repeating pattern.
I found myself falling into this like, "Should I express any of this to her?" Like, "How can I do that in a way that's not trying to pit me against this partner of hers?" She and I don't have a sexual relationship. We just have a nice affectionate friendship. I found myself still struggling a little bit with that dynamic, and eventually did end up saying like, "Hey, you guys have your own thing. I just feel like sometimes I get the impression that he may not treat you as well as someone should."
For her, that was a big turning point. A big positive turning point, where she was like, "Oh my gosh. Yes, that's so true." Then I thought like, "If I'd done the same thing and she was a partner, would I have felt like I'd made a mistake, even if she felt like that was positive?" I do think that's an interesting area too, to look at of like there is a lot of nuance there.
Emily: Yes. Someone totally did that with me and it did make me start thinking about, "Oh, God, maybe I shouldn't be in this relationship anymore." Then I got out of it. It was a partner who said that to me about my other partner. That's so tough.
Dedeker: It's really sticky. Yes.
Jase: Most of us would go, "Yuck, yuck, yuck. No, no, no."
Dedeker: Yes.
Jase: Even if for you it was positive.
Emily: Well, in the moment it was yuck. It was like, "Whoa, I don't know if you should have said that." Then it does. It is that question of like, "Am I feeling this because I'm worried about what that partner thinks of me, or are they planting the seed in my head? Has it been there all along and it's giving me more of the impetus to, say, okay, maybe there is something that I need to explore further? Maybe this isn't as positive in my life as I'm pretending that it is." It is that question. It's really challenging.
Dedeker: It's all gray areas all the way down. Gray areas and fractals. Can I give the people something concrete?
Emily: Yes, sure.
Jase: Please.
Dedeker: Can I throw a bone directly into their mouth for them to chew on?
Emily: A vegan chicken bone, yes.
Jase: I'm confused. Are we throwing these vegan chicken bones on the floor and telling them to pick them up or are we throwing them into their mouth to eat?
Dedeker: No. They're all my little puppies and I'm going to give them little vegan milk bones to chew on. I just want to plant my milk bone in the ground here to give people, at the very least, some red flags to consider around a request to change.
Jase: Buoys. I love it.
Dedeker: Buoys, yes. Just be careful of any request for change that creates distance rather than creating closeness, if closeness is what you want in the relationship. Be careful of any request for change that enforces control rather than promoting your growth together in the relationship.
Emily: Yes, that's a big one.
Dedeker: Be careful of any requests for change that are accompanied with direct threats as well. Again, that also contains the gray area of like if someone is honest with you about how like, "I don't know if I can be in this relationship much longer if things don't change." If you're upset and activated, that can probably feel like a threat. Yes, if someone's threatening you, especially if they're threatening you with some kind of harm if you don't change, major red flag.
If a partner makes a request for change that's demanded just immediately without any discussion, or understanding, or negotiation, be on the lookout for that. Any requests for change that directly isolate you from your support systems or that are requiring you to give up your autonomy fully. If something is triggered in you where you feel like this feels unacceptable, this is another little rubric to go through, does it hit on any of these? It could be that whatever the request is, it truly does stray into some kind of sacred territory for you that feels too close to home. That's okay.
It could be a reasonable request, but there's something about it or something about the way it was asked that strikes a nerve and is making it feel like this is a survival threat level issue. Which is a great thing to explore in therapy and get an outside perspective on that.
Jase: Yes. I think a key thing that I've taken away from this discussion is how important it is to recognize all the stuff we've said about how to ask for a change well, as well as how to receive that request for a change well, while acknowledging that also saying, "No, I'm not willing to change that," is an answer. That's also okay. That may be the case that just the answer is, "No, I'm not willing to do that." Even if it doesn't hit these red flags, you could still do that. The consequence might be losing that relationship, but that also could be okay. That might just be a sign that there's some incompatibility there.
I do want to say with all of this, it's like there's not some perfect formula where people will always accept your change requests, or that you always have to accept theirs as long as they don't fall into these categories. It's also important for us to realize we need to find the people that we are compatible with, and that we're willing to change in the right similar ways that feel good for us.