On Saying No

"Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses." - Proverbs 27:6

"Whoever says to the wicked, 'You are in the right,' will be cursed by peoples, abhorred by nations, but those who rebuke the wicked will have delight, and a good blessing will come upon them. Whoever gives an honest answer kisses the lips." - Proverbs 24:24-26

My summary: speaking up for the truth is better and more loving than staying silent or lying to spare someone's feelings. I remind myself because a few nights ago I delivered some honest and direct feedback to a near-stranger (I'll call her M) about her behavior. For this post, I mingle all the following kinds of things: speaking up for the truth, boundary-setting, criticism, saying, "no" to a request, and honestly saying, "here's how your behavior (negatively) affected me."

I know what it feels like to have someone level with you when you're not used to it. It hurts. It can feel embarrassing and/or make you angry. (I certainly think that turned out to be the case for M. She also told me I had been rude.) Yet I'm glad to have pushed (or to have been pushed) through by being spoken to honestly, because it's made my life more productive and more pleasant. There's freedom and safety when people are respectfully straight-up with you. In my younger and more insecure days, I feared corrective criticism, thinking it meant a loss of love. Turns out the opposite is true. Where criticism is offered in love, it is safe to keep risking failure and become your best self, which is the business of living. When someone thinks you can do better, you're motivated to improve. I may not have been close to M, but my response was a blend of love for both of us: making sure her irritating behavior didn't continue around me (caring for myself) and letting her know how she was being received (seeking the best for her). I won't go into much more detail, but my intentions were all good. I knew there was a risk she'd be hurt, but my desire was to help her, not to harm her, and given the available information, I thought the potential benefit outweighed the risk. I acted knowing that in the course of my life I once hated negative feedback and later felt grateful for it.

Times I've set a boundary or said no to someone despite temptation to say what they wanted to hear created a short time of pain followed by an endless time of relief. Times I said what the other person wanted to hear when it wasn't true or didn't reflect what I wanted created a moment of relief followed by an extended time of feeling trapped in a worsening problem. In retrospect, it's extremely easy to see the better choice, yet in the moment it's still tempting to tell a white lie. But lying to spare feelings creates a second problem. The original one, serious enough you lied, hasn't disappeared, and now that you've lied, you'll either die without having come clean or face the music at some point and have to deal with it in an exaggerated form.

This article pointed me to some romantically-inspired statistics that support this idea. Dr. Hannah Fry of University College London delved into the "mathematics of love," and was surprised to find that, "couples who have a ‘low negativity threshold’ – or in other words complain about things that annoy them readily... are less likely to trouble the divorce courts. Dr. Fry said: ‘I thought that a high threshold of negativity, where you let things go on and let your partner 'be themselves', would be more successful. But the exact opposite is true. The couples who end up doing best have a really low negativity threshold. When things bother them they speak up immediately and don’t let small things spill out of control.’"

She learned about the negativity threshold from the work of Dr. John Gottman, a marriage and family therapist who has conducted extensive research. This particular study lasted for years. "Looking at the negativity threshold helped the researchers predict which couples would get divorced with an impressive 90 per cent accuracy. The researchers compared 'repairing' problems in a marriage to treating a small scratch early, which is better for your health than dealing with it when it has become badly infected."

TV show characters lie to spare feelings every couple of minutes (at least on the shows I watch)! This is probably because such behavior inevitably creates tension and drama, which advances a plot, but in real life it's not funny to have massive relational and professional problems, so I try to use them as cautionary tales instead of models.

The "bring it up when it's small" approach has been effective for me when I manage to use it. I tell myself, "if they're mad, they'll get over it, and if they don't, they might not be in a place to have a healthy relationship right now: good to know." M chose to end contact with me, and when she did I literally said "hallelujah" aloud (don't worry, it was over text, so she didn't hear me). In other words, that outcome was a gain, not a loss. The good options were change or parting ways. Change seemed unlikely but possible. The only negative outcome would be no change and no parting of the ways. Other recent "no"s have protected me from a pushy Facebook friendship and from giving time and money to a cause I couldn't support. These little situations were awkward, but now register as small blips in my memory. I doubt if I'd caved and said "yes" I'd feel the same now.

In case my celebration of saying no sounds negative, I want to emphasize that the reason for saying no is to serve the big yeses in life: yes to living authentically, yes to healthy relationships, yes to free time and rest, yes to self-esteem and self-trust. You can't get to these yeses without some serious no action!