by Jancee Dunn
I ask Real if we can hash out any differences in front of our daughter. He shakes his head, telling me that for the time being, it must take place behind closed doors. “She’s only six,” he says. “She’s too in the middle. She’s seen you fight enough to last for a while.”
Then he lays out a plan. The next time my temper engulfs me, I must immediately take a time-out and move to another room. “If you stand there and open your mouth, all kinds of crap may come out, and you may not be able to control that,” he says. “But you can turn on your heel and leave—that, you can control. You don’t even need to talk—just make the T sign and go. Anything you need to do to stop your temper, you do it. It’s the number one priority.”
He considers for a moment and then holds up his hand. “Here is exactly what I want you to do during your time-out,” he says. “Go to another part of the house, shut the door, and take out a picture of Sylvie that you’re going to keep nearby. I want you to say this to her picture. Ready?” I nod humbly. “I know that what I’m about to do is going to cause you harm, but right now, my anger is more important to me than you are.”
The soothing blues and browns of his office waver as I am again overcome with tears. “Oh!” I sob. “Oh, this is awful.”
I hear a loud sniff and look over at Tom. He is crying, too.
Then Real takes out a tissue, removes his glasses, and gingerly dabs his eyes.
As we drive back to the hotel, Sylvie is chattering happily; we are silent and shell-shocked. Tom quickly orders room service (“Right, what kinds of bourbon do you have?”), then we talk quietly as Sylvie snores on a nearby cot. We are being solicitous and tender with each other, holding hands as we hash out the day.
Real has told us the truth. We agree that having a third party forensically examine our problems with brutal candor is strangely exhilarating. Freeing, even. We promise each other that we will try hard to do what he recommends.
“Things are going to be different,” I say. “I really feel like—” I sit up. “Tom?”
He has fallen into a deep sleep. It is 8:20.
I know that holding Sylvie’s picture and repeating Real’s terrible mantra will go a long way toward dousing the flames of my temper. But what if I need extra help—an additional behavioral Taser that would quickly get me back to baseline?
For days after we return from Boston, I ruminate. Then one morning, as I am halfheartedly doing the elliptical at the gym, the television cuts from a morning talk show to an unfolding hostage crisis at a Texas bank. The gunman is distraught, but within a few tense minutes, a negotiator has quickly calmed him down and persuaded him to surrender his gun. This sparks an idea: would it be possible to use the same methods to swiftly pacify a livid spouse? Do negotiators follow a formula? If Tom had those sorts of skills in his back pocket, they might be handy to pull out when my face starts to turn dark purple.
Back at the apartment, I research hostage negotiators. Soon I come across Gary Noesner, a thirty-year veteran of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and chief of the FBI’s Crisis Negotiation Unit for a decade. Noesner spent his career reasoning with highly agitated people in life-or-death hostage situations, kidnappings, prison riots, and right-wing militia standoffs.
I promptly phone him up. Noesner, a father of three married for over forty years, is as affable and even-keeled as you would expect. Crisis intervention, he tells me, generally involves an intense effort within a relatively short period of time to lower physiological arousal and restore a person’s ability to think more rationally—and its strategies, he tells me, could definitely apply to marriages. Noesner designed the FBI’s conflict-resolving Behavioral Change Stairway Model, five steps that include active listening, showing empathy, building rapport, and gaining influence—which leads, finally, to the fifth step: behavioral change.
Noesner tells me that the harder we push—our usual impulse in a disagreement—the more likely we are to be met with resistance. “I always tell police officers, when you get a barricaded subject, if we do things like make loud noises or try to agitate him to get compliance, it typically creates the opposite effect,” he says. “It’s a universal human trait that people want to be shown respect, so negotiators must avoid intimidating, demeaning, lecturing, criticizing, and evaluating subjects.” (All the things, ironically, I tend to do in my marriage.)
Noesner gamely sketches out a plan, based on FBI protocols, for Tom to de-escalate a crisis when his wife becomes a highly agitated individual.
First, he says, contain the situation. “When we show up in law enforcement to a dangerous, evolving situation, we know we have to contain it so it doesn’t get worse or spread beyond its current confines,” Noesner tells me. In a relationship, he says, don’t allow the specific issue that’s prompted the conflict to overflow into digging up dirt from ten years ago.
Next up: employ the seven active listening skills taught by the FBI. Do you want your mate to change? Then pay genuine attention to what he or she is saying. “Despite the popular notion that listening is a passive behavior, abundant clinical evidence suggests that active listening is an effective way to induce behavioral change in others,” says Noesner. And when you actively listen to your partner, he adds, they tend to listen to themselves more carefully, and clarify their own scattered thoughts and feelings. They also grow less defensive and oppositional, and more open to solving problems.
As you’re actively listening, put your own swirling thoughts on hold, adds Christopher Voss, the FBI’s former lead international hostage negotiator and now the chief executive of the advisory firm Black Swan Group. “No one can listen and think about what they want to say at the same time,” Voss tells me. “It truly is an either/or. Hearing the other side out is the only way you can quiet the voice in the other person’s mind. A full two-thirds of people in negotiations are more interested in being heard than in making the deal.” He thinks for a minute. “Also, just as an aside, if you let them go first, it gives them the illusion of control.”
Active listening consists of the following seven techniques:
Paraphrasing
This is simply restating the person’s message in your own words. “In law enforcement, I’ll hear, ‘You damn cops, you no-good sons of bitches,’” says Noesner. “And I’ll say, ‘It sounds like you really are suspect about why we’re here and what we’re doing.’ ‘You’re damn right—you just want to kill me.’ ‘You’re concerned we’re going to hurt you, is that what I’m hearing?’ I don’t tell them they’re right or wrong, I just paraphrase the way they feel. It’s a way to say, ‘I get it. I understand.’”
This technique quickly communicates that you comprehend the person’s perspective, which is immediately disarming. “It’s powerful stuff,” Noesner says. “And tone is everything. You want your voice to convey sincerity and genuineness and come across as nonthreatening. I tell officers, do not do the military cop voice.” (Which probably doesn’t fly in relationships, either.)
Emotion Labeling
This technique helps a keyed-up person identify their emotions, some of which they may not even be aware they’re experiencing. Don’t use definitive language in case you miss your mark; use phrases such as “You sound as though” and “You seem as if.” (A husband could say, for example, “You sound as though you are angry that I have no idea who our child’s pediatrician is.”) Naming and validating the person’s feelings instead of minimizing them—or, worse, ignoring them—can take the person from a purely emotional, reactive frame of mind to a more rational state.
A brain imaging study at UCLA’s Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory appears to back this idea. Scientists found that the act of identifying our feelings makes anger or sadness less intense. In one experiment, they showed people a photo of an angry or fearful face and then measured their brain activity with an fMRI. They found heightened activity in the amygdala, which acts as the body’s alarm system to trigger the “fight or flight” response if it senses danger. But when they had
people say it was an angry face, rather than simply seeing it, the mere act of putting feelings into words caused their amygdala to calm down.
People want to be understood, Noesner says, “particularly when we’re dealing with agitated individuals. When you say, ‘I can see you’re very, very angry over what happened,’ they say, ‘Yes! I am!’” This exchange takes the wind out of their sails, he says, because “it reduces their need to continue to demonstrate what you have already acknowledged clearly.”
Concentrating on the other person’s emotions also keeps your own blood pressure from soaring, adds Voss. “We have research that says the more you’re focused on the other person’s emotions, the more you’re away from your own. It automatically makes you rational.”
Offering Minimal Encouragements
As the person is talking, use short phrases to convey interest and concern: Yes. Okay. I see. “You’re not really interrupting, you’re just saying, ‘Okay, I’m still tracking with you,’” says Noesner. “It’s a little thing that lets them know you’re along for the ride. And it’s also hard to argue with somebody who is saying, ‘Mm-hm. Yep. Yep.’”
Mirroring
Repeating the last few words of the other person’s message builds rapport and allows them to vent. If a hijacker concludes a rant by saying, “and I’m angry,” a negotiator will simply say, “And you’re angry.”
Asking Open-Ended Questions
The goal is to avoid “yes or no” questions, advises Noesner. “Instead, just say, ‘Can you tell me more about that?’ Or, ‘I didn’t understand what you just said and I’d like to; could you help me by explaining that further?’” Open-ended questions convey that you’re sincerely interested and de-escalate violence by helping people collect themselves.
Using “I” Messages
The use of “I” statements personalizes the negotiator or, in law enforcement phraseology, lets you “drop the cop.” An “I” message is also a way to express how you feel in a nonprovocative way without being pulled into an argument. For instance, a negotiator might say to a hostage taker, “I’m trying to understand what you’re saying, but when you scream at me, it’s hard for me to comprehend.”
“So instead of saying, ‘Don’t scream at me,’” says Noesner, “you’re kind of putting it notionally on your shoulders, like, ‘I’m having trouble understanding—my bad.’ But you’re still telling the person why, so it’s sort of a roundabout way to get them to quit behaving in a certain way.”
Allowing Effective Pauses
Remaining silent at the right times and deliberately using pauses is hard to do, but it’s particularly helpful during highly charged emotional outbursts, says Noesner. Why? Because when the person fails to get a response, they often calm down to verify that the negotiators are still listening. Eventually, even the most overwrought people will find it difficult to sustain a one-sided argument.
After the person has been calmed through active listening, it’s time to move through the FBI behavioral staircase: showing empathy, building rapport, and establishing influence (in which you work collaboratively to develop “nonviolent problem-solving alternatives”). Your subject is then primed for the final step: behavioral change (hostage taker surrenders his assault rifle, wife stops yelling).
Two weeks after I consult the crisis negotiators and school Tom on their techniques, he creates a prime opportunity to try them out.
Sylvie has just started a new after-school art class, and because I am meeting with my Vogue editor for a rare drink in Manhattan, we arrange for Tom to pick up Sylvie from class at 5 p.m.
I have just settled into a booth with my editor when my phone rings. It is the proprietor of the art class. “Um, your daughter is still here,” she tells me, “and we are closing soon.” She had called our backup contact—a mom friend from Sylvie’s preschool—but as it happened, the mother was at an urgent care facility dealing with her daughter’s sudden heart palpitations.
I text Tom: WHERE THE F R U? No reply. Usually he gets back to me quickly, so I am certain that he is on his bike somewhere. The beauty of cycling at high speed and for long hours is that you can’t text (one cycling buddy of his, a father of two, learned that the party was over when he returned from an epic ride to find that his wife had pointedly left her wedding ring on the kitchen table).
I text another mom and don’t hear back. I flash my editor what I hope is a reassuring smile, but I know it’s more like a demented grimace that shows all my molars. I reach a third mom, who tells me she can’t help because she’s at her son’s soccer practice. However, her babysitter is in our neighborhood park with her daughter, and she will ask her to pick up Sylvie. As my editor waits, I send a fourth text to Tom, who does not respond. Then I call the art class and convince them to allow Sylvie to leave with the babysitter, who isn’t on their emergency contact list. After that, I burble apologies, postpone our meeting, and race home to relieve the babysitter before she leaves work at 6 (stopping first to pick up some chocolate as a thank-you).
At 6:30, Tom bursts into our apartment, his bike uniform soaked. “The park was empty today—it was so great!” he says with a grin. Then he stops, suddenly wary.
I stand motionless, chest heaving, eyes unnaturally bright.
“What?” he says guardedly.
I make the time-out sign and run, a move I will soon call Exit the Dragon (when smoke starts curling out of my nose, I retreat to the bedroom to roll a stone over the door). I take Sylvie’s picture out of the bedside table and tell it, I know that what I’m about to do is going to cause you harm, but right now, my anger is more important to me than you are. My pulse slows. Slightly.
Tom follows me into the bedroom and closes the door. “Unreal,” I whisper furiously, so Sylvie can’t hear me from her room, where she is singing and drawing pictures. “What did I tell you this morning? Please pick her up at 5. Then I followed up with an email! Do you know how long it took me to pick out an outfit before this meeting so that I wouldn’t look like I was trying too hard?” One of my eyelids starts twitching. I can see him watching it with fascination, which makes me angrier, which prompts it to spasm more crazily. My shoulders sag. “I can’t count on you.”
He runs over and stands next to me. “You think I’m unreliable,” he paraphrases. “You don’t like… uh, you don’t like feeling panicky in a business meeting. You feel overwhelmed, like you have to do everything.”
I nod, and tell him it’s especially annoying to take the extra step—no, steps—of reminding him. “I’m not your mother,” I hiss.
“Mm-hm,” he says mechanically, looking into my eyes. “Go on.” I know full well he is “offering minimal encouragement,” but it is still sort of endearing, mostly because he’s never uttered the phrase “go on” to me in our entire married life.
“And,” I remind him, “you still didn’t show!”
He nods gravely. “Still didn’t show,” he mirrors. I can sense him trying to remember the next step, which works inadvertently as an effective pause. I deflate just a bit.
“I know how you feel,” he says. “I’d be frustrated, too.” A double “I message,” I think. Well played.
“I normally am good about picking her up, so why don’t we figure out ways that I’ll absolutely remember?” he asks, open-endedly and collaboratively. And stiltedly, but I don’t care too much: his patter may be scripted, but like the wives in Shiri Cohen’s study, I appreciate any sort of effort. He is absentminded, not evil (although his absentmindedness is rather chronic—he has walked halfway to the subway carrying the morning’s garbage, and daubed his toothbrush with Preparation H). I tell him later that if I hadn’t been so mad, I would have laughed at his baffled, what-did-I-do expression when he burst through the door.
We construct a plan for his phone to issue a spate of reminders before all school pickups.
A week later, Tom’s crisis negotiation skills are required yet again. It is a school morning, and he is sleeping in after a late night
of binge-watching a Swedish crime series. I am up at 6 a.m. with our daughter, making her breakfast and lunch, supervising her homework, ordering a replacement water bottle after she somehow lost hers at school, filling out a form for a class trip, and baking carrot muffins for Tom.
Tom rouses himself fifteen minutes before she is due at school. As I am helping Sylvie get dressed and brush her teeth, he waits by the door to take her, absorbed in his phone. As she pulls on her coat, she reminds me that she must take in a dozen paper towel tubes we have been saving for a school art project.
“Where did I put them?” I say as she and I ransack her closet. “Oh, Lord, you can’t get marked down as late again.” Because I am often scrambling as we leave the house, one of the first phrases that Sylvie learned as a toddler was Oh, Lord, which she pronounced as Oh, Yord.
Tom is still standing in the front hallway, tapping on his phone. “Why wasn’t this done earlier?” he calls.
Yord, give me strength.
When Tom returns from school, he steps into the swirling eddies of a tropical low-pressure system massing toward Category 5.
“You didn’t lift a finger this morning!” I seethe.
I explain, as calmly as I can, that mothers have a particular pet peeve about feeling judged and inadequate, especially when the hundred things they do with smooth efficiency pass without comment. Tom is genuinely surprised and aggrieved that I am upset. He explains that he was just figuring out how we could have done something better—or, as he nerdishly terms it, “counterfactual troubleshooting.” He thinks for a minute. “You were frustrated that I didn’t help,” he paraphrases. “You feel like… you feel like you are doing everything by yourself.”