576 - In Praise of Indirect Communication: Is Directness Actually Superior?

Communication across the world

Communication comes in different styles, as we all know, and sometimes those differences in styles cause communication chaos. We’re going to dive into different communication models and the pros and cons of each, as well as what to do when you’re trying to understand each other and falling short.

E.T. Hall’s Beyond Culture outlines two distinct foundational frameworks (low-context and high-context communication) in its effort to explore how unconscious cultural patterns shape our behavior, perception, and communication:

Low-context communication does not require the listener to do any “reading between the lines.” Meaning lives primarily in the words themselves, and messages are explicit and direct. This communication style is more associated with individualistic, heterogenous cultures like the United States, Germany, Scandinavia, and Australia.

High-context communication refers to when meaning is embedded in relationship, history, tone, gesture, silence, and shared cultural knowledge. Often, the main goal is maintaining harmony and saving face, and indirect communicators seek to avoid conflict, tension, and uncomfortable situations. It is more often associated with homogenous cultures like Japan, China, and Korea.

It’s important to make the distinction that these categories aren’t completely separate. Both styles often take aspects of the other’s cultural communication abilities and strengths into account, and cultural contexts are not absolutely “high” or “low.”

There’s also Ask versus Guess culture, which isn’t the same thing as high- and low-context frameworks. Ask vs. Guess refers to individual communication personalities and high- and low-context refers to cultures and systems, though they are deeply correlated.

Ask Culture is a very direct communication style. People who use this style aren’t shy to ask for what they want or need, and they’re also used to receiving direct answers (yes means yes, no means no).

Guess Culture is more nuanced, and it seeks to minimize the chance of potentially damaging a relationship due to rejection. Guess Culture people may try to nudge a person towards the outcome they want instead of directly requesting.

Tell Culture is a third framework from LessWrong, and is characterized by proactively sharing what’s on one’s mind whenever you suspect both parties would benefit. This is relevant for polyamorous relationships in particular.

Why are we biased towards directness?

Particularly in the United States, direct communication is often hailed as better than being indirect. It’s common to see criticism of indirect communication, and many Americans find directness to be logical and aligned with power, whereas indirectness is associated with dishonesty and reflects subservience. Often, direct communicators can experience indirect ones as passive aggressive, manipulative, weak, deceptive, and vague.

BUT, what does indirect communication do well?

1. It preserves relationships.

2. It protects dignity. Indirect communication has an overriding goal to maintain harmony and save face. In high-context cultures, people develop deep and often unconscious understandings of what is expected.

3. It builds trust over time. Since high-context communication is relational at its core, it prioritizes the health of the long-term relationship over the efficacy of the immediate communicative exchange.

4. It allows plausible deniability as a social lubricant. A cooperative listener can accept, but an uncooperative one cannot react in an adversarial way. It’s not manipulation, it’s social grace.

5. Indirectness is universal. Linguist Deborah Tannen says “indirectness is a fundamental element in human communication.” We all sometimes communicate indirectly in certain circumstances, meaning more than what we say and gathering meaning from others beyond the words they use.

Cons to Ask/Direct communication culture

1. Ask Culture has drawbacks; it leaves the possibility for people to become obnoxious by just asking for everything all the time. Some people may use it as a free pass to never have to help another person because they’re free to say no.

2. The strong emphasis on communication can unintentionally marginalize partners who are less articulate.

Colliding styles and bridging the gap

Sometimes different perspectives clash; it doesn’t mean one is better than the other, they’re just different. For example, to a Guesser, Askers may seem rude or invasive because Guessers would never put someone in a position of having to say no. To an Asker, Guessers may seem passive aggressive or incomprehensible.

Remember:

• Self-awareness is vital. Know where you fall on the spectrum of direct versus indirect.

• Talk about HOW you communicate before hard conversations (meta-communication).

• Curiosity over judgment. Treat clashes as cross-cultural encounters, not character flaws.

• Try to be sensitive but also clear. Strive to be assertive and gentle, not avoidant or rigid.

Autism and indirect communication

Cultural context shapes even how autism symptoms manifest. In western contexts, a lack of eye contact is a common symptom of autism, but in Chinese culture, for example, making direct eye contact with adults is considered impolite for children, which leads the same behavior to be read very differently.

Many autistic people are natural Askers who thrive in explicit, direct communication, but they are often embedded in high-context, guess-culture families, workplaces, or romantic relationships. This mismatch of styles can be exhausting and even painful.

Traditionally, autistic communication has been labeled as a deficit, with communication breakdowns attributed to shortcomings within the autistic individual. However, emerging perspectives are starting to recognize autism as a difference rather than a deficit. Research from Neurodivergent Insights has shown that communication breakdowns happen more frequently in mixed neurotype groups than in groups comprised solely of autistic or non-autistic people.

Crucially, the breakdown isn’t one-sided. Neurotypical people are also bad at reading autistic communication, they just aren’t the ones blamed for it.

Non-monogamy and communication styles

The non-monogamous community has heavily internalized Ask Culture as a virtue, and the reasons for doing so are good; since there isn’t a standard model for polyamorous relationships and because reliance on common expectations might not be realistic, ENM people advocate explicitly negotiating with everyone involved to establish terms of relationships, with an ongoing process of honest and respectful communication.

The problem: This strong emphasis on communication can unintentionally marginalize those who are less articulate. In a nutshell: If your relationship culture requires radical verbal directness to function, you may be implicitly excluding people who are introverted, from high-context cultures, neurodivergent, or who process emotions more slowly.

Some questions/ideas to explore as a polyamorous communicator:

• What happens when someone from a high-context culture enters the ENM community and finds the communication norms alienating or aggressive?

• Can indirect communication work in non-monogamous relationships? Or does the complexity of multiple relationships make implicitness too risky?

• People who are polyamorous have reported developing the skill to stay with a difficult conversation, even if it’s uncomfortable, and that a combination of introspection and candid communication is the route to managing potentially challenging feelings. BUT, candid doesn’t have to mean blunt.

Practical tools

1. Identify your default style. Be honest about where it comes from, whether that’s family, culture, neurology, or trauma.

2. Meta-communicate your style to partners and loved ones before hard conversations, particularly across stylistic differences.

3. Resist the hierarchy and realize that neither direct nor indirect is universally superior. The goal is fit and mutual understanding, not conformity to one mode.

4. In ENM relationships, consider explicitly discussing your communication styles as part of the relationship architecture conversation, not just boundaries and agreements.

5. For those in cross-style relationships: curiosity is the antidote to judgment. “What are they trying to protect or offer me with this style?” is a better question than “why won’t they just say it?”

“Is directness superior?” Only if you believe the goal of communication is information transfer. If you believe the goal is connection, then the right style is the one that honors both people in the room, and that may look different every time.

Transcript

If you find any transcription errors, please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.

Emily: We just have to look at the broader cultural context of where we grew up, what our situation was at home, the people around us, all of those things. And that's something to be aware of regardless of if you are neurotypical or neurodivergent. It's just a great thing to remind ourselves that regardless of who you are, we do things differently. All of us do. And so there should be more kindness and understanding towards that as opposed to just thinking that one way is right in any cultural context or in any microculture of non-monogamy, for example.

Jase: Welcome to the Multiamory Podcast. I'm Jase.

Emily: I'm Emily.

Dedeker: And I'm Dedeker.

Emily: We believe in looking to the future of relationships, not maintaining the status quo of the past.

Dedeker: Whether you're monogamous, polyamorous, swinging, casually dating, or if you just do relationships differently, we see you and we're here for you.

Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we're talking about direct and indirect communication. In the non-monogamy community especially, Direct Communication is lauded as a virtue, yet the actual story isn't that simple. So what does the research say on these two types of communicators and how different cultures might shape the way in which we communicate? Is Indirect Communication actually superior, or is it always the best option to say exactly what you mean? Stick around to the end as we're going to get into all of that in this episode. And if you're interested in learning about our fundamental communication tools that we reference on this show all the time, check out our book Multiamory: Essential Tools for Modern Relationships, which covers our most used communication tools for all types of relationships. You can find links to buy it at multiamory.com/book or wherever fine books are sold.

Emily: So I wanna start off with a little story just to set the stage here from way back in 2007. Do you two remember or know about this thing called MetaFilter?

Jase: That name sounds familiar.

Dedeker: Is this a piece of technology? Is this something that goes in cigarettes? Is this—

Emily: It was like Reddit before Reddit. Yeah, I guess before Instagram. Yeah, 2007 was when the first iPhone came out.

Dedeker: I thought that was 2009.

Emily: No, 2007. I promise. I had one and I know exactly where I was when I got it. Yes. Presumably in an Apple Store. Yes. Anyways. Okay. So this sort of proto-Reddit thing out there where people could post questions and talk about what is it that I should be doing here essentially and get feedback on it. And so a person posted that they were really frustrated that their friend kept hinting that they wanted to stay over, and they kept talking about wanting to stay over, talking about, can I come over and stay at your house for the weekend kind of thing, but essentially saying that they wanted to stay over. And the person who was the poster couldn't figure out how to say no to this person. And their wife also really wanted to save face. And so a lot of the commentary out there was like, just say no. Just tell them, I don't want you to stay. But the other half said that that person was being rude by even asking or even implying that they wanted to stay over. And so it was—

Jase: Oh, I see that the friend is being rude.

Emily: Yeah, exactly. So it was kind of this back and forth between these two camps of you do need to save face. You need to basically say things like, oh, I'm busy that weekend, or drop some of your own hints also. Exactly. Little hints out to indicate that you do not want them to stay, right? Versus this camp that just says, let's be direct and let's absolutely say no, I'm sorry, like I'm not available, or I would prefer it if you stopped asking, essentially. So there is this thing of people are out there, they're acting in good faith, presumably, but they end up in this sort of communication chaos of I don't know how to tell you no. I think on this show, and I think generally when it comes to non-monogamy, many people are really big proponents of Direct Communication. And I think much of what we have discussed on this show and many of our tools are about directly communicating with the people around us. When you talk about the Triforce of Communication, for example, That's an example of meta-communication and sort of preempting your discussion, for example, with what is it that you want me to do in my communication with you when you are telling me about a thing that is challenging, for instance, how do you want me to respond? And so I think that often that is an example of Direct Communication and that it can be helpful in many ways to directly communicate when there are multiple people involved, multiple partners. But the reality of this situation is some people just don't like to communicate that way. And there are a lot of reasons for this. There are cultural reasons, there are potentially neurodivergent or just maybe families tend to be not direct and everything is kind of said softly and with context clues, but you sort of have to infer a meaning as opposed to actually knowing. And so I guess just to start off with, Do the two of you know where you fall on that spectrum? I think I know where I fall, and I think I probably know where the two of you fall. But I'd like to know, from your family of origin, for instance, what was the situation that you had growing up in terms of the communication that you had with your family and your peers? And has that evolved and continued in your lives today?

Jase: Mine's— mine's changed drastically. I think I grew up in more of a, yeah, more of that you kind of hint or suggest with the hope that then the person offers that, but then if they don't, then everyone's kind of saved face by no one having to say no to anyone and no one having to have had no said to them. Right. That I think that was more the culture that I grew up in. I don't think it was an extreme. I think some people are on a farther extreme of that end. But that's, I'd say, more where I started. And then I think later, especially again, getting into the whole non-monogamy thing and this idea of being much more direct in our communication, I think also tied a little bit to trying to get over some of the shame that comes from asking for what you want in romantic relationships. But also, I think just in general, kind of that trying to get over some of the fear of someone saying no to you, whether that's a friend or a coworker or whatever. So I found that doing that, I was like, okay, yeah, this makes it much more sense. It's much more honest. It's much more direct. But I did find there were certain situations where after the fact, realizing that that directly stating what you want can feel like now that person's in a position where they can't say no or they're put in a more uncomfortable place of trying to say no. And so I feel like where I've come to now is more often I still prefer more direct, but it's like in the direct asking or stating what it is you want, trying to find ways to make it really easy for the other person to say no if they want to, and that both of you can save face, like almost pre-giving them excuses so that they can just go, yeah, that one, right? And be like, oh, you're right, I am busy tomorrow. Like, I have to get up early, like you said. Like, you're kind of providing them with excuses with this sort of, I guess we're back to a little bit implicit of like, because I gave you that one, if you choose to use it, I know that I will accept it. I've kind of agreed. I accept that that's a valid excuse I expect you might have. And so anyway, so I've kind of come from this like less direct to more direct to now some version of direct, but with this sort of implication of I want to make it really easy for you to say no. So that when you say yes, it's clear that you actually wanted to say yes, that I haven't now, like, forced you into a weird situation.

Dedeker: I have a hard time thinking about my family of origin. I feel like I grew up in a real, like, Tower of Babel when it comes to communication practices.

Emily: How so?

Dedeker: Well, something I'm reflecting on is that I think we tend to flatten direct and indirect communication into certain stereotypes, right? So it's like when I think about indirect communicators, I think about families where we don't talk about emotions, we're very polite, like we keep things very surface level, we're not comfortable going to more personal, deeper topics, right? And then the assumption that then Direct Communicators, maybe they come from a family of origin where, yeah, we speak what we mean and we're not afraid to speak our mind and share what's really going on underneath and what we really want. And I do think that those trends can be true, but when I think about the family I grew up in, is I'm like, no, I think I grew up in a family of very loud, very emotional Indirect Communicators.

Jase: Wow.

Emily: So that's like a whole other kind of on the spectrum of communication and indirect versus direct. Yeah. Like you said, one doesn't necessarily equal the other. You can be emotional but also indirect and unemotional and direct.

Dedeker: Yeah. Yeah. My dad's side of the family is the very classic, you know, New England roots. We don't talk about very deep, intense personal topics. We stray away from anything that might be vulnerable or embarrassing. We, we try to soften a lot and be more circuitous when asking for a favor and things like that. Like, that's very much my dad's side of the family. And my mom's side of the family is the more confusing one of like very loud, emotional people who will stamp their feet. But then you might still be left being like, what do you want? What do you actually want? I don't know what you want.

Jase: Right.

Dedeker: Yeah. And I, and I think that thinking about how that influenced my communication, especially when I was a kid, is I think there was like this rising spectrum of the more risky a topic feels, the more indirect I have to go. Because of being afraid of like emotional blowback or the reaction or things like that. Like Jase was saying, for me this has changed a lot as well as I've gotten older, and I've learned to bring down some of my defenses around certain things, and I've learned, I guess, I don't know, maybe simpler ways of communicating or be more compassionate. Or maybe if I'm finding myself having a hard time expressing something or expressing what I want, like maybe I think I have more of an instinct to start to explore What's going on there for me? Am I ashamed of something? Am I embarrassed? Am I worried about something? Am I anxious? Right? And kind of trying to tend to that first. But I don't know, it's still like, I think the softening still sneaks in there sometimes. And then I'm sure we'll get to this later in the episode, but then like also spending a good chunk of the year in Japan, the most indirect, like the biggest collection of Indirect Communicators in one country in the world also really has baked my noodle as far as changing the ways that I have to communicate. With people around me.

Jase: Yeah, but, but that's, I think that's actually relevant, although we probably shouldn't get too far into just talking about Japanese communication because that's a little too niche for this topic. But I do think it's, it's really interesting that over the last, whatever, 10, 11 years of learning Japanese and trying to understand this better, of thinking it was a lot more subtle than it actually is. And it's just that the social scripts are different. And so to us, they may seem subtle, but to a Japanese person, it's clear as day.

Emily: Very explicit. Yeah.

Jase: Right. And so I think there's also that interesting piece to this. And I think this especially comes up with people who are more neurodivergent, where it's less about, oh, I can just feel it out. And instead it's like, I need to learn what are the patterns? Like, what are the expectations? What are the scripts that are followed? What are the kind of rules to this communication? And that that's not always consistent. Right? For us, the Japan one seems really confusing and has taken a long time to try to learn, and it's still a work in progress. But to think about all the different sub-communities like you were talking about, Emily, that's extra hard there too, of like, what are the rules in this context? That it is a complicated thing to figure out. And I honestly think in a way, the people who feel like they're just really good at understanding that, it may just be because they're in one particular communication style and are oblivious to when they're outside of that, but they just plow ahead with their way of doing things and don't realize that. So I do think there's an interesting thing where, like, a certain amount of kind of humility or willingness to accept that maybe I'm not always communicating as well as I think I am can be actually really helpful if your goal is to communicate well.

Emily: Yeah, that's a really good point. I have dealt with this recently with my partner, who— his dad is Latin from El Salvador, and then they're also from New England. They're from New York. So yeah, hearing you say that, Dedeker, I think is very interesting because I didn't realize, but Latin American culture is very high context, which means that meaning is really embedded in relationships, in history, in tone, in gesture, and like shared cultural knowledge and also in silence. And this overriding goal is maintaining harmony and saving face. And indirect communicators seek to avoid conflict. They don't want tension or uncomfortable situations. And so this is associated with a lot of homogenous cultures like Japan or China or Korea. So places that, you know, all three of us have been in a lot, but also Latin America, which surprised me. I didn't realize that even though my father is Mexican, I just didn't get to hang out with them much or know him very much. And so I wasn't around that But when I talked about this with my partner, he was like, oh yeah, absolutely. Like, Latin American culture is super indirect. And I didn't realize that because I think in my head I thought that it would be more direct, but it's not. So that's what High Context Communication is versus Low Context Communication, where the meaning is primarily in words themselves and messages are much more explicit and direct. And don't require the listener to read between the lines as much. And this is more associated with like individualistic cultures, heterogeneous cultures like the US or Germany or any like Scandinavian cultures or Australia.

Dedeker: Well, I've heard, yeah, a lot of cultures that have been subject to a lot of immigration patterns, right? And a lot of cultural mixing. And that makes sense that then you can't just assume that everyone's coming in with the same cultural values, with the same turns of phrase even, right? That you have to start to be more explicit and rely on specifically a verbalized shared language in order to get your meaning across.

Emily: Yeah, definitely. And I think it must be really interesting and something that we can talk about a little bit more when you are part of multiple cultures, when at home, for instance, all of your family and siblings and parents only speak one language and therefore you are very immersed in that culture. But then when you go out into the rest of your life and into the world, you might have to take different context clues and deal with a culture that is very different than the one in which you grew up.

Dedeker: It's kind of like a code-switching thing also.

Emily: Totally. Exactly. Code-switching very much. And it's important to note that these categories aren't totally separate. They might take aspects of other cultural communication abilities and strengths into account. And cultural contexts aren't absolutely high or low. You know, a comparison between cultures may find communication differences to a greater or a lesser degree depending on where you live, what your upbringing was like, etc.

Jase: Right. Like if you grew up in a family that was particularly direct, even if your sort of immediate culture in your city or something was less direct, that could also bias it a little bit.

Dedeker: Well, I actually have a relevant story to this because I was working with a client of mine who was Japanese, actually. And because of like spending a good chunk of time in Japan and learning the language, right, it's like I try as much as possible to bring as much cultural competency as I can when I'm working with Japanese clients specifically. And it is around the Direct Communication thing, right? You know, the way that I might advise an American client to have a difficult conversation is very different than the way I might advise a Japanese client. And even this particular client who was from a different part of Japan, even when I was still trying to kind of soften my advice and kind of take a different approach, he was even like, I don't know. I think that might be an Osaka thing. You Osaka people are much more like open and direct with these things. And I was like, yeah, even within Japan, these like little subtle nuances of like what's more acceptable as far as how you communicate.

Jase: Something that's kind of funny, a little bit like that is, do y'all remember the craze that was the show Terrace House a few years ago? It was, it was on Netflix, I think, but it was a Japanese reality show, kind of like a Not like Big Brother, like almost like The Real World. The Real World.

Dedeker: Yeah. There's a bunch of like young, hot people living in a house, but like they still leave and go to their normal jobs. Right. And like sometimes date either inside the house or outside the house, but yeah, it was just like that slice of lifestyle reality show.

Jase: Right. Like there's not a competition. They're just there living, right? It's just their lives. And this was kind of this sensation within the US at the time. And this would have been 2016, 2017, something like that. Close to 10 years ago now, I guess. But it was this big deal because watching it, everyone's so nice to each other. No one comes in and is like, "I'm not here to make friends." Like, none of that stuff that we're used to on our reality shows. And instead, they're all, like, really polite. They're all really kind. Like, their conflicts are over things that seem so minor, like putting your towel up nicely on the rack. Like, that kind of stuff.

Emily: That sounds lovely.

Jase: It was lovely, yeah. Yeah, well, what's funny is I was talking to a Japanese person about that show and about how I find it really interesting because it's also really good language practice because it's very like everyday conversations that are happening as opposed to action drama, whatever. But I mentioned about how everyone's, you know, just so nice and polite. And she was like, right, but like all the drama underneath that. Wow. Right. Like to her watching the show, like, what? Fuf. There's a lot of drama on that show, a lot of subtle stuff. And I was like, I missed all of that. And it was this big eye-opening moment for me of, like, I just don't know this language, meaning, like, the cultural language, that it is clear. They're not even being subtle, really. They're being clear, just not in a way that I understand right now. And to think that we experience that to a lesser extent within our own more adjacent cultures too is a, I guess, an eye-opening thing to realize.

Emily: Yeah. When I was researching this, the concept of, and I'm gonna butcher this, Dedeker Winston, it's reading the air.

Jase: Oh yeah. Kuuki wo Yomu.

Dedeker: Yeah.

Emily: There it is.

Dedeker: Kuuki wo Yomu. Yes.

Emily: And the Korean Nunchi. So it's this concept of situational communication and that people can read nonverbal and situational cues and are aware of the thoughts, feelings, and needs of the people around them. So that kind of sounds like exactly what you're speaking about, Jase.

Dedeker: Yeah.

Emily: Yeah.

Jase: Yeah.

Dedeker: Although let me tell you, okay, like, cause I don't want to set up a false dichotomy and I slip into this sometimes too, is that it's very easy for me to think that like, oh yeah, Japan is the indirect ones. And as an American, I'm the direct one. Right. When, if you've ever been an American and hung out with a Dutch person, you're going to learn actually how indirect you are as an American.

Emily: 100%.

Dedeker: Because I've worked with a lot of Dutch people and almost every time I feel like I'm like slapped across the head. Like, wow, right?

Jase: I find working with Germans the same thing. We're just like, gosh, okay, wow, you just really tell me how it is, huh?

Emily: Totally. My partner lived in the Netherlands for 4 years, and his friend just came from the Netherlands to hang out with us for a couple days. And yeah, they're super, super direct, and it's kind of funny but also like refreshing to me because I find that I'm a pretty direct person as well. And so I think again, that's one of those things where you can't take it personally because you realize like, okay, this is normal And I didn't realize this, but in China, they communicate no through a range of phrases and facial expressions and gestures and silence and deferral. And so that goal is to remain polite and save face for everyone. And again, I've spent a lot of time in China and a lot of time in Hong Kong, and I had no idea that that was going on. Of course. And I don't speak the language, but that's very interesting.

Jase: Well, I think that's an interesting segue kind of back to your question before, right? Of if you are subtly implying that you want something, and I guess the hope there from that person would be, I'm communicating this subtly in such a way that it's still clear enough to the person receiving my message that like, this is what I want. And I guess the thing that may be breaking down in this communication that seems like it's going on is they want to say no, but they don't know how. And to say directly no to a question that wasn't asked is hard.

Emily: Yeah.

Jase: So there's a little bit of this, like, I don't know how to say no in that language is what's going on in that situation. Really what's going on is, is like not understanding each other's language. And I'm actually curious, I don't know what the answer would be there, but I'm curious if you have known people who do communicate more indirectly where there was kind of a way to say no without saying it. Like, I feel like for me, if I'm trying to think of anything analogous to this, I can think of a particular friend who we had to kind of learn this communication with each other over several years of knowing each other, but was where if he would imply a thing that I could answer with something about my busyness or like what I had going on the next day or something I had to do later that night, and then he would understand that meant "Sorry, I can't go out," or "I can't hang out," or something like that. But it kind of took us a while to get there at first.

Dedeker: When you say it took us a while, like, was there any metacommunication happening?

Jase: No, we never directly talked about that.

Dedeker: It was just like— We've had to figure out our dance.

Jase: We just had to figure out the dance. Yeah. And I think that's kind of weird now that I'm thinking back on it. I'm like, yeah, why didn't we just have a metacommunication about that? But I think that's the thing is if someone's doing Indirect Communication, they're not setting you up to think they're welcome to meta-communicating and talking about, "How do I subtly say no to you?" Yeah. Like, that feels weird in that case. But your thing about Chinese makes a lot of sense. And in Japanese, it's the same thing, right? Like, the simple version is if someone asks you if you want to do something, like, "Oh, do you want to go get lunch?" and they say, "That's a little..." That means no.

Dedeker: It's very literal.

Jase: To a Japanese person, it's not vague at all. It is just saying, "Absolutely not." Like, it's so good.

Emily: Couldn't think of a worse thing to do. That's interesting.

Jase: And I found that's actually backfired for me, cuz I'll sometimes be like, ah, hmm, that's a little tricky, but I might be able to do that. But as soon as I've said that, that might be a little tricky, they're like, oh, oh, so, so sorry. Sorry, nevermind.

Emily: So then you're like, whoops.

Dedeker: Wow.

Jase: So with these friends in, in the, I keep wanting to call it Metasploit, but that's not it. Filterbomb? What's the site?

Dedeker: MetaFilter?

Emily: You almost were there.

Jase: But yeah, I think it's a little bit of that. It's like, what's the way to say no to this person? And it's hard to know without knowing how that person communicates. Like, how would they say no to you if you implied you wanted something?

Dedeker: See, I think that at least the example that's coming to mind most recently for me was it was in a past romantic relationship, and where I feel like someone was dancing around like a particular escalation they were hoping for, as kind of like the next step of escalation. They were like really dancing around it a lot, you know, a lot of implication there wasn't any of the, hey, let's sit down and like talk about where we see this heading or what we want, or I just want to tell you I'm interested in this, right? Which I get is risky. I totally get that's emotionally risky.

Emily: Yeah.

Dedeker: So like, no fault to this person for dancing around it. But the way that I responded was I had to reach a point of finally just being like, okay, I'm just gonna say, listen, I think I'm picking up on this hint that you're dropping that this is something that you would like. And if that is the case, that that's something that you would like, here's my response to that. And so—

Jase: And how did that go down? Like, how was that received?

Emily: Yeah, that's really interesting because that's something that I didn't even get that much into. But when it comes to, like, very specific relationship— relationship stuff, and then also the fear of being told no and the fear on the other person's side of having to maybe say no, and then those two things potentially in conflict is very scary.

Dedeker: Thinking back on it, I think that if I was firing on all cylinders and being the best communicator possible, I probably would have paused and been like, hey, I think that I'm noticing this, and I— and you've said this thing, and you said this thing, and you said this thing, and I think I'm interpreting that to mean that this is what you want. Is that correct? And then I would have shut my mouth and let them—

Emily: and let them speak whether or not that was correct or not.

Dedeker: Now, I will say I did get it right. I was correct in my assumption, but I sort of delivered it like, I think this is what you want, and if this is what want. This is my response to it. I don't think I can offer that, or whatever it was that I said, right? So yeah.

Jase: So this whole thing about whether being indirect or direct is easier to say no to is making me think about, again, this, this story that you shared, Emily, is this person is implying it. And I think I get the sense that the question asker was also saying they were implying, I'm busy, I've got stuff tomorrow, I But the person who was subtly implying they want to stay over wasn't taking no for an answer. Whether they didn't understand it or they didn't want to accept that answer is a different thing. And that's where I think we can also conflate the two because some people direct feels like if I'm direct, that also means I'm going to bully them into doing what I want. And then I think this person is indirectly bullying perhaps, and that we don't often talk about that as much. But an example of direct bullying I've found is there was a person who wanted to do a collaboration with Multiamory. This was years ago. I'm not going to name names, but, you know, he had a conversation about what he wanted.

Dedeker: Like during the pandemic, right?

Jase: Yeah, it was during the pandemic. It was, you know, sort of a swinging related thing. And I was like, okay, it seems sort of interesting. But when I talked to him, it was very clearly—

Dedeker: as in they were a swinging content creator. Like they wanted to collaborate with us to create something.

Emily: They did. It's not like they wanted to swing with us.

Dedeker: Right.

Jase: You're right. That's a good clarification.

Dedeker: That could have been a different negotiation.

Jase: Right. Maybe they did. I, we didn't get there, but no, this was like a collaboration on like events and promotion and stuff like that. And I got the sense of, I don't think this is right for our audience. This doesn't, this doesn't fit with our vibe, not because it's swinging, but just the way they were going about it. And I was kind of like, yeah, I don't think that's going to work. And he pushed back and kind of doubled down on like, no, I think that you know, this would be a good fit and here's why. And I was like, no, I really don't think that's, that's right for our audience. And here's why. And then he doubled down again. And then more directly, I was like, no, sorry, this isn't, this isn't a good fit for us. And he kept doubling down.

Emily: Wow.

Jase: And what's funny is after that fact, I was like, huh, is this how you are at swinging parties when a woman says no, she doesn't want to sleep with you? Yeah, I have a feeling you are. Yeah, I think that's an example of a direct pushiness.

Emily: Yeah.

Jase: But I think this question is about an indirect pushiness, and I think that's also possible. So I think you could be polite or rude in both these situations as the asker here.

Emily: I want to clarify because I'm looking back at the actual post. The friend continuously self-invited themselves to stay with them, and then the poster was constantly vague or just making up vague excuses and trying to be pretty indirect. But that wasn't really working. And so they need a better solution.

Dedeker: Hmm.

Jase: Okay. So it's a little different.

Emily: Yeah, it's a little different. But like some of the respondents said things like, say you're fostering a ferret in the spare bedroom and the door has to remain shut, stuff like that. And then of course, like the more straightforward, why don't you just say no? But I do think that that could have happened in a different scenario, that both people are being indirect.

Jase: I've experienced that kind of indirect bullying, and I've probably been an indirect bully in the past too. Again, before I, because I started more indirect, became more direct, and realized that neither was quite the answer I was looking for in terms of how to be not only a good communicator, that's good meaning accurate communicator, but also good as in polite and kind and a good team player in communication. And that's a different category there too.

Emily: Jase, I did want to ask, because you also spent a lot of time in a different place, which was Russia. How was that being over there and dealing with that type of communication?

Jase: I think that there's other cultures that do a similar thing, is just there's not a lot of warmth that a person will give you until they really mean it versus us in the US, especially on the West Coast, are really smiley and inviting and welcoming. Like if we work in customer service or even just a normal person, you're going to smile, you know, you'll be friendly.

Emily: Not in New York.

Jase: Even if you're sort of ultimately like, eh, no. But in Russia is like an extreme of that. It's like a shopkeeper is just like, what? That kind of very direct. But then they're actually helpful. They do actually help you. They just don't give that friendly vibe, which was really off-putting to me at first. But eventually, once I got used to it, it was this like, oh no, actually, you're on average more helpful than a lot of these very friendly customer support people and like shopkeepers and stuff in the US were really friendly, but then basically say no to everything you ask. And so it was this weird difference there.

Emily: Yeah. When I used to be in the service industry and then waited on anyone who was Slavic or from Russia or Ukraine or anywhere along those lines, I would walk up to a table and be smiling and they would not smile at all and just be like, very stone-faced, I guess. But they generally were pretty polite and fine and good customers. It just was that that sort of, I'm smiling at you, you smile back at me, didn't happen.

Jase: Isn't part of the equation. Yeah.

Emily: Correct. Which was surprising at first.

Jase: There were situations where Americans would get themselves into trouble in Russia because of that.

Emily: Yes. Yes.

Jase: And one of those was like, if we would go out to clubs and stuff like that, like with the other students who were doing the foreign exchange thing that I was doing at the time, or just friends that I knew when I went back afterward to do nonprofit work that they would be smiling at the men around who wanted to dance with them or whatever, just as being polite, normal, civil people. And that meant in that culture, I'm interested in you, I'm very interested in you.

Dedeker: Yeah, I ran into that when I was in Turkey. Yeah, yeah, again, just in like service situations, right? Like going up to the freaking like simit seller on the street and I'm just like gonna smile at him because I'm just like, that's what I'm used to. Like, hey, how's it going? Like, one simit please.

Jase: And he was like, oh, hello, hello, hey, I'm off my shift in 2 hours. Yeah, go out. Like, yeah. And so I had to be the bad guy in a few situations.

Emily: Oh goodness.

Jase: At clubs where like, then this guy won't leave these women alone, and they're clearly uncomfortable with this, but they're still smiling because they're being polite American women. And I had to be the one to pull the guy aside and be like, look, man, they're not interested in you. And he's like, no, no, they are. I'm like, trust me, like, they're not. And trying to communicate that was hard because he's like, every other sign is telling me yes. So it's hard for me to believe you just on the fact that you're part of their friend group. And so it was this tricky situation there. And anyway, so just, yeah, just another example of it's not that one was communicating well and the other wasn't. They were just speaking different nonverbal languages.

Emily: Absolutely.

Jase: Before we keep going with this, we're going to take a quick break to talk about our sponsors for this show. Thank you to all of them for sponsoring us. They're the ones that allow us to keep doing this show and put this out into the world for free every week. So thank you to our sponsors. Please take a moment to listen and use the promo codes and links in our show description. That does help our show. And then of course, if you'd like to join our community directly, get access to ad-free episodes, as well as our amazing community on Discord and our video processing groups, things like that, you can go to Multiamory. Multiamory.com/join to check that out. We would love to see you there.

Emily: All right. I want to talk about this bias towards directness and maybe why that's not necessarily the right thing all the time. We talked about this bias a little bit in terms of like non-monogamy, but there's also, of course, this Western slash kind of American bias that we have where we think that Indirect Communication is not as good. In many ways as direct communication. And there's sort of this pervasive distrust of indirectness at times. And maybe, you know, some people saying that directness is more logical and it's more aligned with people in situations of power, because if you are a powerful individual, then you can be direct and explicit in your communication. And I think that sometimes direct people also will see those who are indirect as maybe passive-aggressive. Or weak even, or manipulative, or vague, deceptive, all of those things, which all feel to me like kind of negative terms.

Dedeker: Huh. Well, I think, I think it's interesting that, yeah, it makes sense that there would be this trend towards if you are more powerful, and I imagine that we could make the argument that this could go whether you're powerful politically or financially or just within your little microcosm of your household, if you're like a decision maker or something like that, that you are in a position where if you ask for something directly, the conditions are more favorable for you to be able to get it, perhaps without consequence.

Emily: Yeah.

Dedeker: And therefore maybe being direct is less of an emotional risk for you personally. Again, I don't want to put any moral implication on it that that means that that person is bad, but I guess trying to zoom out and see the big picture about how certain conditions could just make it more favorable for you to be direct instead of needing to soften. Hedge the indirect.

Emily: Yeah.

Jase: Yeah. It also makes me go back to the whole, when you say direct in this context, and I don't know how people interpret that, but when you say direct, you also mean kind of like, I'm telling you what I want with the expectation you're just going to do it. You're going to say yes. Or is it direct, but leaving it open for you to say no? And I think that also varies with the power level too, right?

Emily: Totally.

Jase: Ironically, I think that the more power you have, the more easy you should make it to say no to you.

Emily: I agree.

Jase: That's not usually how that goes.

Emily: Well, exactly. I mean, in my head, this goes to this sort of like American ideal CEO in power that has absolute power over everyone and everything within a company, for instance, and that everyone else involved just sort of has to be subservient towards them and doesn't necessarily get to say no because they're fearful of their job or they're fearful of any other number of things happening to them. Within that community and context. So while I think many Americans and many Western people say that that's like a great thing to aspire to become, I think also there's a lot of challenges with that for the reasons that you just said. And again, not to say that this is bad if this is the way in which you communicate, but there are some challenges with that for sure. So I want to talk about indirectness and what it can actually do really well. In many cases, indirectness can preserve relationships.

Jase: I think that's usually the goal, right? It's like, I want to avoid conflict and preserve our closeness, whether you say yes or not to the thing I'm asking, I guess.

Emily: Absolutely. I think it can protect dignity, which it seems like in Japanese culture and probably Chinese culture, that's very much a thing as well, that it is trying to do, you know, trying to maintain harmony, trying to save face. And in higher context culture, people develop deep and often unconscious understandings of what is expected, which is exactly what you were talking about. There's also a sense of kind of building trust over a long period of time because you're getting to know sort of what's underneath the surface within an individual, as opposed to just like being super direct, like, I say what I mean, which is great, but it's not necessarily allowing for as much like nuance and all of those things that, that we've talked about in terms of the subtleties of Indirectness that can happen and that can kind of build understanding a person at sort of their core and all of the nuances of their communication as opposed to just like they say what they mean, that's it. I know that that's always what I'm going to get with this person.

Jase: Yeah, it's interesting to think about that too in terms of if you start with stating really clearly what it is you want, or maybe what it is you think about something. Yeah, you've stated that, and then it's almost like a secondary step would be elaborating on why you want that thing and how you feel about it and kind of the other context, versus the indirect route usually starts with, here's my feelings and my thoughts about this, and then kind of indirectly builds up to implying that I would then want this, or I think this because of it. And so it is interesting that they're kind of starting from different pieces of information, maybe prioritizing the importance of one over the other. Like, is the reason and the feeling more important, or is the result of this is what I think or what I want more important?

Dedeker: Hmm.

Emily: There is a Canadian cognitive psychologist and psycholinguist named Steven Pinker who has done some work on—

Dedeker: Oh yeah, Pinker. We've referenced Pinker before on this show.

Emily: Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. He's done work on indirect speech, and he talks about the plausible deniability as social lubricant.

Jase: Yeah. Oh, yeah. So true.

Emily: Yeah. His argument is that indirect requests allow for plausible deniability. So a cooperative listener can accept, but an uncooperative one cannot react adversarially. So I guess like exactly what you were talking about, Jase, there. It's not manipulation. It's social grace, right?

Jase: Like both parties can save face. You can just be like, oh, well, I'm going to take off. And it's like, okay, cool. And it's like, I never asked you to hang out later. You never said no.

Emily: We're all good. Nobody is upset in any way.

Jase: Yeah.

Emily: Another linguist named Deborah Tannen said that indirectness is universal. Indirectness is a fundamental element in human communication. We all use indirect communication strategies at times and in certain circumstances, and we may mean more than we say, and we gather meaning from others beyond the words that they use. So even if we are direct in most of our communication, there's always going to be indirect things that we have to look at and think about. And hope that, did I get this correctly here? Am I inferring correctly? I mean, even Dedeker Winston, what you were talking about, that somebody in your life who you were dating was being fairly subtle, not straight out saying what it is that they wanted, and you over time were inferring, okay, I think that this is what you mean, and you had to address it at some point. But, you know, picking up on context clues from that standpoint.

Dedeker: Well, what makes it so tricky, I think, especially in the context of a romantic relationship, is the— I think the line gets blurred between I'm trying to communicate something about my wants to you indirectly. That's like one end of the spectrum, but that's on the same spectrum with just— I'm just doing a temperature check. Yeah, right. Like, I'm just kind of like dropping in an idea or dropping in something in a very circuitous way, not to jump straight to, oh, I hope that they pick up on the hint and give me what I want, but literally just to be like, I just want to see how they respond to this. Idea of, I don't know, like getting married someday, or respond to this idea of like cohabiting, or that— that was not what the situation was. But yeah, I think this is something that we do all the time, even in work situations too, right? Of like, that it may not be straight at this point of I'm dropping in all these hints and hoping that you pick up on them so that I can get what I want. It's like I'm starting way back at like step -50 just to try to start doing some of that reading of the room and temperature checking.

Jase: Yeah. And I think that's interesting too, that I think in asking these questions, when we ask people about direct or indirect, is it that I'm directly or indirectly asking for something? Or is it I'm directly or indirectly asking for a temperature check? Or is it I'm actively or indirectly trying to convince you of something? I think that's also another angle that we haven't even really looked at of, yeah, by being indirect, maybe I feel like I can nudge you closer to something that you might say no to if I just asked you directly.

Emily: Yeah, I mean, there are pros and cons and potentially like nefarious situations that you can get in on either end. And I do think we should examine briefly when these two styles collide and then how to deal with it and how to bridge that gap. Because I do think that there are times when maybe you're a very Direct Communicator, your partner is not, and those two things come to a head. And objectively, like, neither is wrong necessarily. But I do think that they can create a clash in perspectives. I know, for instance, a couple of weeks ago this came up in my relationship where I was going to a conference and my partner was going to the same conference and my partner wanted to stay with this friend and I was trying to weigh, well, can I stay with that person too, or do I need to figure out my own accommodations? And I'd never met this friend, but I was like, I'm your girlfriend. It's probably chill. And he was like, I don't really want to ask because I feel like if I ask, he's going to feel as though, yeah, I have to let her stay even though he doesn't know who you are. We don't know, like, where are we going to be at all times? Are you going to be alone with them? Is that going to be weird? And he's like, I don't even want to ask them because if I do, I feel like they're going to feel as though they need to say yes.

Dedeker: So even the act of asking is going to be putting too much pressure on them, correct? To say yes.

Jase: I've now forced them.

Emily: Which to me was like, just ask, you know, I was like, come on. And I remember talking to—

Dedeker: Just ask, give him an out.

Emily: Exactly. Like, I remember speaking to the two of you about this and you brought this up, Dedeker Winston, about, well, this feels classic Ask Culture versus Guess Culture, that to him it is rude to ask because then he's going to feel as though he can't say no. Whereas to me, I'm like, say no, it's fine. You know, let's just put it out there and hear whether or not it's okay. And if you say no, that's fine with me. But some people don't operate that way.

Jase: Well, it also raises all these interesting questions of is this how the friend communicates or is that just how—

Emily: Yes.

Jase: Your boyfriend communicates, right? It's like hard to know there. And then the other one is now that we're having this conversation today, maybe traveling back in time, I would have been like, what if you indirectly implied that that might be nice?

Emily: Right?

Jase: Like, bring up in conversation. My girlfriend's coming next week.

Emily: I'm really bad at that. My girlfriend's coming next week.

Dedeker: I don't think Emily can do that.

Jase: I'm trying to figure out where she's staying. No, not you, him.

Emily: He'd have to say, yeah, maybe you're right. You tell him, man.

Dedeker: We're playing some 4D chess.

Jase: Right, exactly. If that's the language you're gonna speak, then that's the language we'll speak, right? Of like, just mention the fact that I'm coming and that I'm trying to figure out where to stay. I might be staying with a friend of mine in his hotel room. Implying that they'd be like, "Oh, why doesn't she stay with us? That's silly for her to do that." Maybe that could have been an option.

Dedeker: Okay, but no, that would drive me nuts. Like, if— yeah, if I was in the waiting room—

Jase: But you're not this person.

Dedeker: I know. No, but I mean, like, if I was in Emily's position—

Jase: Mm, sure.

Dedeker: I know that would drive me nuts.

Emily: It did drive me nuts.

Dedeker: Yes. And I saw it driving you nuts. As you know! Because I— like, the whole time I'd be like, "Okay, yes, but I just know in my pocket we have a more effective medicine that we could use here." I guess.

Emily: I know!

Dedeker: Why don't we just use it?

Jase: But what if it's not, right? What if that person does communicate the same way, and to ask that directly would be to put them in a bind where they can't say no? Poisoned with the medicine. That's— they're allergic to that medicine, Dedeker Winston.

Emily: See, that's the thing, though. I did hang out with this person, this friend of my boyfriend's, and I felt like if I had stayed there, it would have been super chill.

Jase: Right, right.

Emily: But I get it, you know, and the point is that I am a direct communicator and my partner is less of that. And this has come up from time to time, especially when dealing with other people in his life. And I'm also there. There is like a clash. And now again, nobody is wrong, even though I felt like I was right.

Dedeker: Nobody's wrong, but they feel wrong. Yeah.

Emily: But, but I am seeing like this other way in which people kind of deal with the potential of, I need to save face here, or I need to give my friend an out. And by just like saying nothing or not even putting that question on the table, like, that's the out that I'm giving my friend. I just, I don't even want to go there. So I think it, it would have been helpful for me if I'm looking back at the situation again, like you said, Dedeker Winston, if I can go back in time and, and know what I know now, what I would have liked to have done is have a little bit of self-awareness around the entire situation, know where I I fall on the spectrum of Indirect versus Direct and where my partner falls on that spectrum and then try to meta-communicate better. So talk about our communication styles, talk about, I sense here that you don't want to ask him about this and that you would prefer me to have my own accommodations. Am I correct here? And then not take that necessarily personally. In other instances, we've talked about the Triforce of Communication, of course. And that might be a really good thing for you to do when you're dealing with Direct versus Indirect Communication, because your partner may very much just want you to know what it is that they're thinking or what it is that they want. And you might not be that clued in on it. And so if you are direct with them, just like, what kind of communication do you want from me here? Do you want to just share a story? Do you want me to cuddle you and love you and say, poor baby? Or do you want advice and help? That's really helpful in some of these scenarios. And always have some curiosity instead of judgment. So this is just like a cross-cultural encounter potentially. And I'm talking about not cultures across, you know, the world, but even just cultures in our own microcultures of the ways in which we grow up. It's not necessarily a character flaw, even though I felt like I was right.

Dedeker: Right.

Emily: It's not necessarily that I was right. It's just a difference.

Jase: Well, I think that's a key there is I do think when it comes to this, because our ways of communicating feel so ingrained and we've had to work so hard to figure out what works for us, that it feels like I've figured out the right answer now. And when someone is so different, it's like, you couldn't possibly be right. I could tolerate a little difference.

Emily: Yeah.

Jase: But that's so different.

Dedeker: Do you know how many hours of a podcast I've recorded about communication?

Jase: But for anyone, right? Like how many years I've spent figuring this out. I focus my whole freaking life on this.

Emily: Yeah, no, totally. That comes from—

Jase: I love that idea though of like staying, staying curious and maybe trying to figure out how to stay collaborative. I feel like that would be my advice to you and your boyfriend, Emily, is like maybe there is a way to collaborate on that, to be like, okay, you— I think I've identified now here's something about how you communicate. How can we make that work for both of us? Of how can I make sure to to help you save face in the way you want to, but also still communicate to you what it is that I want, or get you to communicate with your friends on my behalf, or whatever it is, right? I do think that's interesting to kind of get curious about it and explore, hey, how can we make this work for us rather than just trying to decide who's right?

Emily: Totally. And I think being sensitive but clear and then also gentle but assertive and not avoidant or rigid, all of those things are really good. In that specific scenario or any scenarios that may happen, dear listener.

Jase: Before we move on to some interesting insights, we're going to take a quick break to talk about our sponsors again for this show. Thank you to all of them for supporting us. Please do use our promo codes and our links in the show description. That does really help us out a lot. And then of course, if you want to join our community and get ad-free episodes, you can do that by going to multiamory.com/join. We would love to have you as part of that.

Emily: I did want to discuss non-monogamy regarding all of this, because again, I think that a lot of people in the non-monogamous community will generally try to be very explicit in their communication. But I do think that there can be a challenge sometimes where partners who do not communicate in this very explicit way can be marginalized. And there can be this sense that the relationship requires this very, like, radical verbal directness to function well. But that might be marginalizing people who are more introverted or who have these sort of High Context cultures, or again, who are neurodivergent or who process emotions slowly or differently than those who just go out and, like, say what they feel and what they think at all times. And so I do think that in in terms of non-monogamy, especially when you're getting into more relationships. This is really something to think about and to try not to alienate people who just communicate differently than you do. Like we were talking about in the last section, to be curious about rather than angry or upset because a person is not doing something exactly the way that you are.

Dedeker: Right.

Emily: I did want to touch briefly on neurodivergent insights a bit in terms of this Ask versus Guess Culture, because again, this intersects a lot with our non-monogamous culture as well. There was a study done in March of 2023 called A Conceptual Framework for Understanding the Cultural and Contextual Factors on Autism Across the Globe. And this got into discussing autism around the world and how these cultural cues are very different for people not in Western societies. So again— Mm-hmm.

Dedeker: Mm.

Jase: We can still fall victim to this, assuming, oh, this is how it works everywhere. It's the same. Yeah.

Emily: Yeah. They found in China, a delay in speech is often interpreted as a good sign. There is a saying that a child that speaks late will be more intelligent than its peers in the future. And so even if speech delay is recognized, cultural beliefs may affect the interpretation of this delay and may affect if and when help is sought.

Jase: Oh yeah, that is interesting.

Emily: And then in Western culture, like, lack of eye contact is a common symptom of deficits in nonverbal communication. But again, in Chinese culture, making direct eye contact with adults is considered impolite, especially for kids. And so this, like, nonverbal communication is very different for people in, in these cultures than, you know, our Western cultures where that's seen as a bad thing.

Dedeker: Yeah, it's— and it's the same in Japan. I don't know about the kids thing, but I know it's a meme online that Japanese people get freaked out by how much Western people want to make eye contact.

Jase: Oh wow.

Dedeker: Yeah, they're like, oh my God, please stop.

Emily: Wow, that's really interesting.

Jase: Yeah, I love it because I don't love making eye contact except for—

Emily: yeah, I'm not always great at it either. I'm not always great.

Jase: It's no one expects that from me.

Dedeker: So it's like the ways that we look at neurodivergent from our particular Western American lens, the things that we look at and say like, oh, that's like maybe not very functional communication, or this is a way these people communicate differently that we need to adjust to. That's just like one particular set of adapting to communicating with someone who's neurodivergent that may look like a very different set of strategies in different cultures. It doesn't look the same around the world.

Emily: Totally. And, you know, many autistic people, especially in our Western cultures, are like more natural, explicit communicators, and they prefer Direct Communication. But sometimes they have these more Low Context cultures around them. And so that is also in many ways learned behavior. And I think that, yeah, we just have to look at the broader cultural context of where we grew up, what our situation was at home, the people around us, all of those things. And that's something to be aware of regardless of like if you are neurotypical or neurodivergent. And so I think it, it's just a, a great thing to remind ourselves of that regardless of who you are, we do things differently. All of us do. And so there should be more like kindness and understanding towards that, as opposed to just thinking that one way is right in any cultural context or in any microculture of, you know, non-monogamy, for example.

Jase: I think this is so fascinating. I was, I was recently unrelated to this, looking at dyslexia and what that looks like in other languages and how it shows up very differently. And there are actually multiple types of dyslexia depending on how that language functions, like a kanji-based language like Chinese or Japanese. It's just such a cool example of how the world is a lot bigger than we can think sometimes. And that—

Emily: and our brains are all just different.

Jase: Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly.

Emily: I love that. I just have 5 quick practical tools for you. We talked about some of these already, but try to identify your default style and then also be honest about where it comes from. Is this your family? Is this your culture? Is this, you know, your neurology? Is it trauma perhaps? Is it that you learned from a past relationship that you have to act a certain way and now that's the way that you are in most relationships? Are there things that can move and change and shift, or is that the way that feels best for you? And if that is, then meta-communicate that style to your partners and your loved ones before hard conversations happen, especially across style differences. Try to resist this idea that direct or indirect is superior. The goal is understanding, not conformity to just one way of thinking. And then in non-monogamous relationships, be very explicit in discussing your communication style as part of the relationship conversation, not just about like your boundaries and your agreements, but how is it that you would like to be communicated with across most things, across the ways in which you discuss your emotions and and what it is that you want to do on a weekly or daily basis with this person. Try to see how these types of communication patterns fit within that as well. And then if you are in cross-style relationships where one person is direct and one person is indirect, try to be curious. What are they trying to protect or offer me with their communication? Is a much better question than like, why won't they just say what they mean? And try to get underneath the surface there. What is their goal rather than just why won't they do the thing that I want them to do? And finally, we have a question for you all that's going to be on our Instagram stories, and that's just, are you a Direct Communicator or an Indirect Communicator? How about your partners? How does this show up in your relationships? And the best place to share your thoughts with other listeners is in the episode discussion channel in our Discord server. Or you can post in our private Facebook group. You can get access to these groups and join our exclusive community by going to Multiamory.com/join. In addition, you can share with us publicly on Instagram @Multiamory_podcast.

Emily: Multiamory is created and produced by Jase Lindgren, Dedeker Winston, and me, Emily Matlack. Our production assistant is Carson Collins. Our theme song is "Forms I Know I Did" by Josh and Anand from the Fractal Cave EP. The full transcript is available on this episode's page on Multiamory.com.