Many of us tend to avoid confrontations with our partners. This understandable reluctance to deal with negative issues can result in an accumulation of unspoken complaints. Consequently, when we finally reach the point where we need to say something, it may be difficult to avoid unleashing a barrage of complaints that includes everything on our current list of grievances. Such a response, although understandable, only serves to magnify rather than resolve conflicts between lovers, as reflected in the following account:
My wife lets things eat on her without letting me know when I do something that she disapproves of. She remembers every imagined shortcoming and blows it way out of proportion. But I never learn about it until she has accumulated a long list of complaints. Then she hits me with all of them at once, dredging them up like weapons in her arsenal, all designed to make me feel like an insensitive creep. I sometimes hear about things that happened years ago. She wonders why I don’t have anything to say when she is done haranguing me. But what do you say when somebody has just given you 10 or 20 reasons why your relationship with her is lousy? Which one do you respond to? and how can you avoid being angry when somebody rubs your face in all your shortcomings, real or imagined? (authors’ files)
You can reduce the likelihood of creating such a counterproductive situation in your own relationships by limiting your complaints to one per discussion. Even if you have half a dozen complaints you want to talk about, it will probably serve your relationship better to pick one and relegate the rest to later conversations.
Most of us find a complaint that goes on and on hard to listen to, even when it is about just one thing. When delivering a complaint, be concise. Just briefly describe the concern, limit examples to one or two, and then stop.