The Conversation Beneath the Conversation

Monthly Theme: When Good Intentions Land Badly

A few years ago, my husband, Christin, and I travelled to Nashville with another couple. We had only recently started working together, but we were quickly becoming friends, and it was one of those trips filled with good food, great music and the kind of conversation that moves easily from one topic to another because everyone is still getting to know each other and there is lots to ask, lots to learn and, at least at the beginning, a feeling that almost anything is fair game.

One evening, the four of us were sitting in a restaurant when a group came through the door, and several of the women had noticeable cosmetic fillers, particularly in their lips.

Now, if you know me, you know I love an interesting conversation, and I am genuinely curious about what people think, particularly when I suspect there may be different perspectives around the table. We had already covered several spicy topics that evening and everyone seemed fairly comfortable, so I quietly asked something along the lines of:

“I feel like we’re seeing more and more cosmetic procedures. What do people think about that?”  

It was not my finest conversation opener.

And then it got personal

I didn’t intend to judge the women who had just walked into the restaurant, and I certainly wasn’t trying to create an argument between our friends, but when I look back on it now, I can see that I dropped a fairly loaded question into the middle of the table and then waited to see what would happen.

And, well, something happened.

A couple of us offered fairly neutral responses. People should be able to make their own choices. It wasn’t necessarily something we would choose for ourselves. That kind of thing.

But the husband sitting with us had a much stronger reaction.

“I think it’s ridiculous,” he said. “People don’t even look like themselves anymore.” His wife shifted in her seat, and almost immediately I could feel something change.

“So, you think people who do it are ridiculous?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“It’s exactly what you said. You know I’ve had Botox.”

“I’m not talking about you.”

“You are talking about me.”

And within moments, we were no longer having a light conversation about cosmetic procedures. We were sitting in the middle of a deeply personal argument that had clearly started long before that evening and had likely played itself out between them, in one form or another, many times before.

His comments became sharper, her responses became more defensive, and the rest of us sat there trying to work out whether we should step in, change the subject, pretend this wasn’t happening or perhaps crawl quietly under the table.

Eventually, he got up and left.

What happened next was mostly invisible.

In the awkwardness that followed, his wife told us that she knew what she would have to do. She would go after him, make herself vulnerable first, apologize and say whatever needed to be said so they could move on with the evening.

But even as she said it, I could hear the frustration underneath. This wasn’t going to be an apology that came from understanding or from seeing the situation differently. It was going to be the price she paid to make the conflict stop.

And I found myself wondering what he was saying to himself at that exact same moment, because he was almost certainly somewhere nearby trying to make sense of what had just happened too. Maybe he was thinking that she had made his comment personal when he hadn’t meant it that way. Maybe he thought she had twisted his words, or that he couldn’t express an opinion without it turning into an argument.

But I don’t actually know what he was thinking.

And that is part of the point.

I didn’t know everything that was happening inside her either. I could see that his words had an impact on her, and I could hear enough in what she said to know that she experienced his comments personally, but I couldn’t actually know all the feelings, previous experiences or interpretations that were sitting underneath her response.

This is the gap we fill in.

None of us at that table had access to anyone else’s internal conversation.

We could see the actions and hear the words, but everything else—the intentions, interpretations, emotions and meaning being assigned to those words—was happening privately.

And that gap between what we can observe and what we think we know is where attribution theory becomes really useful.

Attribution theory is, at its heart, about how we explain other people’s behaviour. Human beings are meaning-making creatures, and when somebody says or does something, particularly something that affects us emotionally, we naturally want to understand why.

• Why did they say that?

• Why did they use that tone?

• Why didn’t they call me back?

• Why did they interrupt me?

• Why would they do that when they know how I feel?

Those are really normal questions, but the problem is that we rarely have all the information we would need to answer them accurately. So we fill in the missing pieces. We take the action we can observe and run it through everything we already know—or believe we know—about that person, the relationship, the situation and ourselves. We mix in previous experiences, expectations, fears and whatever else might already be sitting just below the surface, and somewhere along the way we arrive at a conclusion about what the other person intended.

Sometimes that conclusion is accurate. Sometimes it is partly accurate. And sometimes it is not even close.

But once we have created the story, it usually doesn’t feel like a story anymore. It feels like the truth. And I think that is what was happening at the table in Nashville.

This is where intention, action and impact collide.

To make sense of moments like this, I often separate three things that become incredibly tangled in difficult conversations: intention, action and impact.

Intention is private. It is what I hope, mean or intend when I speak or act.

Action is public. It is what I actually say or do—the words I choose, my behaviour and the tone another person can observe.

Impact is private. It is how my words or actions are experienced and interpreted by the other person.

The challenge is that we often behave as though all three are public.

I know my intentions, so I assume they must somehow be obvious to you. But I don’t know your intentions, so I use your actions—and very often the impact those actions had on me—to decide what you must have meant.

And then something else happens, because impact isn’t actually the end of the interaction.

The impact I experience shapes the meaning I make, and the meaning I make shapes what I do next.

So, back at that table, he made a comment about cosmetic procedures. She heard his words and connected them to a choice she had made about her own body. Whatever else may have been happening privately for her, the meaning she expressed publicly was pretty clear:

“You are talking about me.”

Her response then became a new action for him to experience. And now he had to make sense of her.

Maybe he interpreted her response as defensive. Maybe he thought she was being unreasonable. Maybe he felt misunderstood himself. I don’t know.

But whatever meaning he made would have influenced what he said next, which would have another impact on her, which would create another interpretation of him, which would influence her next response.

Around and around they went.

And this is how the loop takes over.

Intention. Action. Impact. Interpretation. Action. Impact. Interpretation.

And suddenly two people aren’t only responding to what the other person has actually said. They are responding to a growing collection of private conclusions about what those words mean.

This is where so many difficult conversations get stuck, because when someone tells us that we hurt them, we tend to defend ourselves using our intention:

“That isn’t what I meant.”

But when we are the person who has been hurt, we often use the impact as evidence of the other person’s intention:

“You wanted to embarrass me.”

Most of us have done both. I certainly have.

And there is something almost unfair about that when you really think about it.

We defend ourselves by pointing to information that only we possess, while judging the other person using information we have created ourselves.

That doesn’t mean intention is irrelevant, because it matters. Understanding someone’s intention can help us understand what they hoped to communicate and whether an impact was deliberate. But good intentions do not erase impact, just as painful impact does not automatically prove harmful intent.

Both belong in the conversation, and neither tells the whole story on its own.

So what do we do with that?

Make more of the private stuff public.

For me, this is where the idea becomes really practical, because if part of the problem is that we are filling gaps with information we don’t actually have, then one of the things we can do is make more of the private information public.

Not all of it, obviously. We don’t need to narrate every thought in our heads. But when a relationship matters, or when a conversation starts going sideways, we can slow down enough to notice what we have observed and what we have added.

Looking back at that dinner, I wonder what might have happened if either of them had been able to do that.

She might have said:

“When you described people who get those procedures as ridiculous, I immediately connected that to choices I’ve made, and I heard it as a judgment of me. Is that what you intended?”

Notice what that does. She isn’t pretending the impact didn’t happen, but she also isn’t presenting her interpretation of his intention as fact. She is making her private interpretation public and giving him an opportunity to respond to it.

And perhaps he could have said:

“I can understand why it landed that way. I was reacting strongly to what I saw, but I can hear that the words I chose also included you. I don’t think you’re ridiculous, and I’m sorry I made you feel judged.”

His intention matters, but it doesn’t become a defence against her experience.

He might also have asked:

“What did you hear me saying about you?”

And she might have become curious about him:

“What is it about cosmetic procedures that brings up such a strong response for you?”

Would that have magically fixed everything? Probably not.

They may still have disagreed about Botox and fillers, and there may have been years of previous conversations, sensitivities and unresolved hurt sitting underneath this one. One beautifully worded question does not erase all of that, and I think sometimes we do people a disservice when we pretend there is a perfect phrase that will suddenly make a complicated relationship uncomplicated.

But it might have changed the conversation.

Maybe that’s enough.

It might have helped them distinguish between what had actually been said and what each person had added. It might have allowed them to talk about the judgment, acceptance or autonomy underneath the argument instead of continuing to debate the surface issue.

And that, for me, is the practical opportunity in attribution theory.

The goal isn’t to stop interpreting other people because I don’t think we can. Our brains are constantly trying to make sense of the people and the world around us, and most of the time that ability serves us pretty well.

The opportunity is to notice when we have moved from observing an action to assigning an intention, and to become a little more curious about what we think we know.

• What did I actually see or hear?

• What meaning did I add?

• What else could be true?

And, when the relationship matters, how can I bring some of that private information into the conversation without presenting my interpretation as fact?

I have thought about that dinner many times, including my own role in opening a conversation that I didn’t fully understand. I asked what I believed was an interesting question, but I didn’t know the history sitting at the table, and I certainly didn’t know the private meaning each person would attach to the answers.

The argument wasn’t really about cosmetic procedures, or at least it wasn’t only about cosmetic procedures. Somewhere underneath it were questions about how each person saw the other, whether they felt accepted and what they believed their partner’s words revealed about them.

There was the conversation we could all hear. And then there was the conversation happening beneath it.

And until some of that private information became public, they were going to keep arguing with the intentions they had assigned to one another rather than speaking with the person sitting across the table.