My Only Romantic Superpower

It works and you can have it too

I once wondered if romantic relationships were as shitty from the inside as they seemed from the outside.

As a teenager, they appeared that way: resentment bubbling under the surface, unmet needs, and bickering. My god the bickering.

There was no physical abuse, and the couples sometimes seemed happy, but everything was unnecessarily fraught. Was celibacy the only escape from this romantic hell?

When I got to college I started reading to see if I could find a better way. Textbooks. Studies. Pop psychology. Most of it wasn’t helpful. Then I stumbled on Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication.

I’ve forgotten 80% of it, but its most useful strategy is lodged in my personal operating system and worth its weight in gold. It’s a superpower everyone should know about.

The result is this: I’ve never had a bad romantic relationship. I’ve never bickered with a girlfriend (beyond some playful teasing). I can have copacetic conversations with any woman I’ve dated since 2003; I’m pretty sure I could ask each for a character reference and they’d give it. They might say we had differences and were incompatible in some domains but that I was a good man who treated them well and with kindness; they’re fond of me.

This is only possible because when emotions are high I’m particular about why I’m communicating and how I do it. The strategy I use is a simple template you can learn and deploy quickly.

It’s not coincidental that this strategy slots perfectly into the Stoic philosophy that’s improved my internal and external life. It might be the only Stoic romantic superpower, and it’s wholly grounded in reality rather than the illusions humans are prone to.

Communicating Nonviolently:

“All violence is the result of people tricking themselves into believing that their pain derives from other people and that consequently, those people deserve to be punished.”
— Marshall Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication

Most relationship conflict stems from reactions to what partners say, do, or don’t do. We have “needs” we want met, our partners fail to oblige us, and we decide to punish them. Angry outbursts and criticisms are attempts to manipulate someone’s behavior into matching our desires.

But a bit of introspection shows how this backfires. If we decide we need to change someone’s behavior at any cost, then sure, punishment and criticism can be effective short-term tools. Punitive measures produce results in many domains.

But two critical questions demonstrate the shortsightedness of this approach:

• Why do I want the person to change?

• What reason do I want the person to have to change?

Why We Want Them to Change:

We often want someone to change because we’re anxious or fearful. We want to control what may be uncontrollable. Maybe we’re hung up about money, change, or the way the outside world perceives our relationship. So we coerce partners into contorted parodies of themselves to make us feel safer.

We’re not safer, of course. We’re building an illusionary life atop an increasingly fragile house of cards, dependent on someone enslaved through browbeating being what they’re not. We’re building fragility and conflict into the relationship’s foundation; we’re becoming a romantic tyrant.

Their Reasons For Changing:

“…all criticism, attack, insults, and judgments vanish when we focus attention on hearing the feelings and needs behind a message…behind all those messages we’ve allowed ourselves to be intimidated by are just individuals with unmet needs appealing to us to contribute to their well-being.” — Marshall Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication

Do we want shame and fight avoidance to drive change? There’s something low-key brutish and dark about this approach, but it’s shockingly common. Why are we in a relationship dependent on bullying?

There’s only one good reason for a romantic partner to meet our needs: because they want the best for us, and because they want to be better themselves. Anything else degrades both partners.

In other words, we want a partner who embraces virtue as an operating system and means of achieving happiness, particularly the virtue of justice.

A few months ago my girlfriend plopped next to me on the couch, where I was working. “Pay attention to me?” she asked.

She hadn’t mentioned being worn down from her caseload as a clinical psychologist, but she was, and connecting with me would help her feel better. I’d been focused on work and perhaps not at my most perceptive; I had a deadline, but what’s a deadline next to her?

Note what she didn’t do:

• Infer I was a horrible person for ignoring her and should be ashamed.

• Passive-aggressively get angry about unrelated things, muddying the waters.

• Use her anger to browbeat me into what she wanted.

All she did was ask me to meet a need, because she was struggling and attention could help. She’d essentially used an extremely abbreviated form of nonviolent communication to let me know what her needs were, and I responded in line with virtue as I perceived it.

I put aside my work and talked to her for forty minutes because I want to be good to her, and I want the best for her.

Let’s examine what happened under the hood.

Nonviolent Communication in Practice:

“The best corrective of anger lies in delay.” — Seneca, On Anger, 2.29.1

Nonviolent communication is like a spoken version of the ancient philosophical journaling practice of illeism.

It benefits the speaker and receiver, leading to clarity and better outcomes.

The Template:

This is the “maximalist template” suitable for very fraught conversations. I usually strip this down. The only essentials are removing judgments, stating things objectively, and kindly and clearly asking for what we need.

“When I observe/hear _______, I feel __________. I think this might be because I have a desire for _______ which isn’t being met. Would you be willing to tell me what you heard me say?”

If they can repeat back what you said accurately, without inferred motivations/criticisms/insecurities, ask for what you need:

“Would you be willing to _____?”

What’s Not Included:

“When I observe ____” is always specific and never includes assumptions or judgments.

• It’s not, “when I observe you being mean to me,” it’s “when I hear you say that my opinions are stupid.”

• It’s not, “When you value work more than our relationship,” but “When I observe you working 14-hour days and canceling our dates.”

If you’re afraid your partner will abandon you, cataloging their flaws doesn’t communicate this effectively. It just muddies the water. Say what you’re afraid of. Say what you need.

The Primary Features of NVC:

1. It forces us to slow down and examine why we’re speaking and what we hope to achieve, preventing many mistakes.

2. It strips judgments and coercion from our words and presents reality in a value-neutral, fact-based fashion.

Simply stating things objectively can shock us out of mental ruts. Hearing it from our own lips — as if said by a neutral third-party observer — might make us blanch at how far our emotions have driven us from our values. This can make us reevaluate what we’re requesting and what we’re feeling.

But the empathetic responses are where the magic is. When we stop threatening people to get what we want and vulnerably open up about what we feel and need, partners are much more likely to respond positively. It disarms people and paves the way to harmony.

When Nonviolent Communication Doesn’t Work

In a sense, nonviolent communication always works, but that doesn’t mean it’ll get your romantic partner to bend to your will. The objective is for you to communicate in a kind and effective manner. That’s virtue. The response is outside your control.

But perceiving a partner’s unwillingness to accommodate your needs is the best relationship feedback you could possibly hope for. There are two possibilities:

• Your requests are deluded or unreasonable (not virtuous), and you should examine them to see if this is the case. Your partner may be right to deny your request.

• Your partner isn’t the right person to meet this need. You should decide if the relationship has enough value to maintain despite this. Consider what virtue demands. It may be time to move toward the exits and find someone who’s a better match. If exiting the relationship isn’t the right move, browbeating and arguments aren’t going to help. They’ll only make things worse. Instead, figure out how to adapt yourself to reality, remain a good person, and concentrate on what you control.

The Big Picture:

My experience is that it’s not worth being in romantic relationships with those who can’t communicate kindly and without manipulative intentions.

I’d rather be single than chained to a petulant bully.

We can set a good example and explain this model, but partners may be unwilling to reciprocate. But this approach builds trust and intimacy. You might well have disagreements and hard conversations, but they will be kind and effective hard conversations.

There are few things of greater value in any relationship.

I Lied:

I forgot that I have a second romantic/happiness superpower that lines up with Stoicism: Reanchoring. Check that one out too!

Why I Almost Lost My Girlfriend & How to Reanchor for Happiness

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