Rehearsing both sides

Today: rehearsing the other side of a hard conversation, and what we hear when we sit, for a few minutes, where the other person sits.

The situation

A man in his early thirties has worked in his father's small hardware store since he was a teenager. He knows every shelf, every supplier, every regular customer. And for about two years, he has known something else: he wants to leave. He has a plan for a business of his own, some savings, and a friend ready to be his partner. What he doesn't have is the conversation with his father.

He has rehearsed it more times than he can count. In the car on the way to work. In the shower. Lying awake at night. And in almost every rehearsal, it goes the same way. He says, "Dad, I've decided to leave the store." His father's face closes. His father says something about loyalty, about everything he built for him, about how young people today want everything handed to them. The son raises his voice. The rehearsal ends with a slammed door.

So he doesn't have the conversation. Another month goes by, and then another.

Notice something about those rehearsals. In every one of them, his own lines get better. He refines the argument, the tone, the timing. But his father's lines never change. His father is always angry, always saying the same three things, always the villain of the scene. The son has rehearsed his own side a hundred times, and the other side never.

This happens in almost every conversation we put off. We rehearse what we will say, and we rehearse the other person's reaction as the thing we are afraid of. The other person becomes a character in our story, doing exactly what we fear, reacting exactly the way we expect. And then, when the real conversation finally happens, we are only prepared for the version of the other person that lives in our fear.

This episode is about rehearsing the other person, for real.

What the research says

Let's start with honesty about the tool. The technique we'll look at today comes from a therapy tradition, and it was developed and used by therapists, with a therapist guiding it. The sources we check do not include a trial of the lighter, everyday version we'll describe, and this episode won't claim that it has been proven to make conversations go better.

What the research does describe well is the cost of arriving at a conversation already defended. When John Gottman and Robert Levenson studied couples in conflict, the ones at higher risk of separating showed more defensiveness, more stubbornness and more withdrawal. Those were couples, not fathers and sons. But anyone who has walked into a conversation expecting an attack knows what happens next: we hear the first sentence as the attack we were waiting for, even when it isn't one.

And the relationships at stake matter, for a long time. The Harvard study that has followed the same people since 1938 found that the people who were most satisfied with their relationships at 50 were the healthiest at 80. A father and a son who can still talk at 50 and 80 are not a small thing.

So the reason to rehearse the other side is not that a technique guarantees a result. It is that arriving with only one side rehearsed almost guarantees that you will hear the other person as the villain of your rehearsals, instead of as the person they actually are.

The tool

The technique is called the two chairs, and it comes from Gestalt therapy, the approach created by Fritz Perls and colleagues and described in a book called Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality, published in 1951.

In a therapist's office, it works like this. The person speaks to an empty chair, as if the other person were sitting in it. Then they switch chairs, sit where the other person would sit, and answer as that person. And then they switch back. The effect is often surprising, even to people who don't expect anything from it. Sitting in the other person's place, we say things we didn't know we knew. We give voice to reasons we had never considered, to fears we had never imagined the other person having.

Here, we'll use it in a lighter way, outside the therapy room, with a single goal: to arrive at the conversation having listened, at least once, to what the other person might feel. It is not therapy, and it doesn't replace therapy. If the conversation you are rehearsing stirs up something that knocks you off balance, that is a sign it deserves more support than an exercise at home, and we'll come back to that.

Why it works

When we rehearse only our own side, the other person is not really a person in the rehearsal. They are a wall that our arguments bounce off. Switching chairs forces you to do the one thing fear prevents: imagine what is happening on the other side. What the other person wants. What they are afraid of. What they hear when you say your sentence.

Three things tend to come up when people do this.

The first is a reason you hadn't considered. The father who reacts badly to his son leaving may not be thinking about loyalty at all. He may be thinking about what happens to the store, and to him, when he's alone in it.

The second is the sentence that hurts without meaning to. Heard from the other chair, "I've decided to leave" doesn't sound like news. It sounds like a verdict that was reached without him. Heard from the other side, even "we need to talk" can sound like a threat.

And the third is what the other person would need to hear in order to be able to listen to the rest. Sometimes it's one sentence. Sometimes it's an acknowledgment of something they did, or something they're afraid of. Without that sentence, they can't hear anything else.

How to do it

You'll need two chairs, or two spots in a room, and about twenty minutes when nobody will interrupt you. If speaking out loud feels too strange, you can do it in writing, in two columns on a page. It works too, just a little less vividly.

First, your side. Sit in your chair and say, out loud, the opening sentence you would actually use. Say it the way you really would, not the way you'd like to.

Then switch places. Sit in the other chair, and before answering, give yourself a few seconds to become the other person. Their age. The day they had. What they know and what they don't know. What they have been through. Then answer the way they would. Not the way you fear they will, but the way they, being who they are, would probably answer.

Go back to your own chair, and respond to their response. Then switch again. Do this three or four times. Let the conversation go wherever it goes.

Almost everyone feels silly the first time. Talking to an empty chair, and then answering yourself in someone else's voice, is not something adults usually do on a Sunday afternoon. That feeling tends to pass after the first round. If it doesn't, lower the stakes: start with a small conversation, one that doesn't matter much, just to get used to the switch. Or keep your eyes closed while you answer from the other chair. What matters is not doing it gracefully. What matters is giving the other person, for a few minutes, a voice that is not the one your fear gave them.

Finally, get out of both chairs, and write down four things. What the other person said that you didn't expect. What was hardest to hear, on your side. What you would change in your opening sentence. And what you want the other person to know, even if the conversation goes badly.

Doing it in writing

Not everyone can speak out loud to an empty chair, especially at home, with family nearby. The written version works on the same principle, and some people find it easier to be honest on paper.

Take a page and draw a line down the middle. At the top of the left column, write your name. At the top of the right column, write the other person's name. Write your opening sentence on the left. Then, before writing anything on the right, stop and think about the other person for a moment: where they are in their life, what they have been dealing with lately, what they care about. Write their answer on the right, in their words, the way they actually talk.

Then go back to the left and answer them. Keep going, line by line, for at least three exchanges. Don't edit. Don't make either side sound better than it would. If a line on the right comes out surprising, don't cross it out. That line is usually the reason for doing the exercise.

When you're done, read the whole page from the top, as if it were a conversation between two other people. It is often easier to see what each person needs when you read it from outside.

When nothing comes from the other chair

Some people sit in the other chair and find it empty. They try to become the other person, and nothing comes, or only a vague "I don't know what he'd say." That can happen when you haven't really talked to this person in a long time, or when you're still very angry.

When that happens, don't force a speech. Ask three small questions from the other chair, and answer each one in a single sentence. What do I want from this conversation? What am I afraid of? And what would I need to hear first, to be able to listen to the rest?

If even that is hard, start with facts. Where was this person last week? What worried them the last time you spoke? What have they lost, or gained, this past year? You're not trying to read their mind. You're gathering what you already know about their life, which may be more than it seemed when you sat down.

And if, after all that, the chair is still empty, that's worth noticing too. It may mean you know less about this person's life right now than you thought. In that case, the best first step may not be the hard conversation. It may be a smaller one, where you mostly ask, and mostly listen.

The example

Let's go back to the hardware store.

The son decides to try the two chairs one Sunday afternoon, alone at home. He sits in his chair and says the sentence he always rehearses: "Dad, I've decided to leave the store. I'm opening my own business with a friend."

Then he switches chairs. He sits there for a while, feeling a little silly. And then he tries to become his father. Sixty-four years old. Opened the store with a loan he paid off for fifteen years. Widowed four years ago. Comes in every day at seven, including Saturdays.

What comes out of his mouth, in his father's chair, is not what he expected. It's not "after everything I built for you." It's something quieter: "So I'm going to be alone in here. Who's going to help me when I can't lift the boxes anymore? I thought this was ours."

He goes back to his own chair, and he doesn't know what to answer. He had rehearsed against anger. He had never rehearsed against fear.

On the third round, his opening sentence changes. It becomes something like: "Dad, there's something important I want to talk about, and I want to do it in a way that works for both of us. I've been planning to start my own business. Before I decide anything about timing, I want to think with you about the store. I'm not going to leave you alone with it."

The real conversation, a week later, doesn't go exactly like the rehearsal. His father is angry for the first few minutes. But when the son says "I'm not going to leave you alone with it," something shifts. His father admits that he's been thinking about retiring for a year and didn't know how to say it. They end up talking about hiring someone, about a transition over six months, about the son's new business. It's the longest conversation they've had since the funeral.

Maybe the real father would never have said anything close to what came out in the chair. The chair doesn't read minds. But the son's second opening sentence had a much better chance of being heard than the first, and it only existed because of the switch.

Another example, between sisters

The technique works in very different situations. Two sisters share the care of their father, who has fallen ill. One of them does almost everything: the appointments, the medications, the nights at the hospital. The other lives far away and rarely calls. The first one has wanted to have this conversation for months.

In her own chair, the sentence comes out like this: "I'm tired of doing everything alone, and you don't even care."

In her sister's chair, after a few seconds, something else comes out: "I feel guilty every day for not being there. Every time I call, I hear how tired you are, and I don't know what to do from here. So I call less."

On the third round, the opening changes: "I'm really tired, and I need to share this with you. I know it's hard from far away. Can we think together about what you could do from there?" Maybe the sister can handle the paperwork, the calls to the insurance, the online appointments. The conversation moves from blame to a division of tasks, which is something two tired people can actually agree on.

What changes in the real conversation

The rehearsal doesn't give you a script. What it gives you is a different way of listening.

When the son finally sits down with his father, he still hears the anger in the first few minutes. But he hears it differently. Instead of "here comes the loyalty speech," something in him thinks: "maybe this is the fear." And that changes what he answers. Instead of defending himself, he can say, "I know this is hard to hear. I'm not leaving you alone with it." That sentence only came to him because he had heard, in the other chair, what his father might be afraid of.

There is one important care here. What came out in the chair is your guess, not a fact. So don't use it as an accusation, and don't use it as a diagnosis. "I know you're just afraid of being alone" is a sentence that tells the other person what they feel, and almost nobody likes to be told that. It's better to offer your guess as a question, and let them correct it: "I've been wondering if part of this is about the store, and about you. Is that fair?"

If they say no, believe them, and ask what it is about. The rehearsal did its job anyway: it got you into the conversation curious instead of defended.

When the other side really is harsh

Sometimes, the other chair doesn't soften anything. You try to become the other person, and what comes out is still contempt, still cruelty, still the same hurtful sentences you have heard for years. And sometimes that's not your fear speaking. Sometimes that's just who they are with you.

The rehearsal can't change that, and it shouldn't pretend to. If a relationship is consistently harsh, the question is not how to find the perfect sentence, but what you need to protect yourself: a boundary, a shorter conversation, a conversation with someone else in the room, or no conversation at all for now. And if there is any fear of violence, or if the other person has hurt you before, your safety comes before any conversation. That is a moment to reach out for help, to someone you trust, to a specialized service, or to the emergency number where you live.

The traps

The first trap is rehearsing the other person as the villain. If, in the other chair, the answers only confirm what you already thought, you didn't switch places. You just changed seats. Try again, and before you answer, remember a time when this person was generous with you, or kind, or funny. Then answer from that person.

The second trap is using the rehearsal to predict. The chair gives you hypotheses, not certainties. In the real conversation, the other person will say other things, and that's fine. The rehearsal is there to make you more open to hearing them, not to make you wait for the lines you imagined. If you catch yourself thinking "but in the chair he said," let it go.

The third trap is getting stuck in rehearsal. Rehearsing is for having the conversation, not for replacing it. If you have rehearsed three times and you are still putting it off, the next step is not a fourth rehearsal. It is choosing a day, which is exactly what next week's episode is about.

And there is one more thing, which isn't a trap but a limit. Sometimes the other chair brings up something heavier than expected: an old hurt, a grief, a memory that shakes you. If that happens, stop. That is a conversation that deserves support, from someone you trust or from a professional, and not just an exercise alone in a living room.

Your exercise this week

Do the two-chair rehearsal for a conversation you have been putting off, for at least three rounds. If you can, do it out loud. If you can't, do it in two columns on a page.

Then write four answers. What the other person said that you didn't expect. What was hardest to hear on your side. What you would change in your opening sentence. And what you want the other person to know, even if the conversation goes badly.

Finally, rewrite your opening sentence with what you learned, and read the old one and the new one side by side.

One more suggestion for this week: after the rehearsal, spend a minute thinking about when this person was last listened to, really listened to, by you. Not agreed with, just heard. If you can't remember, that may be the most useful thing the exercise shows you, and it may change how you start.

What to do with what you find

If the other chair surprised you, if something came out that you had never considered, that's the technique working. Take that surprise seriously, but lightly: it's a possibility worth checking, not a fact about the other person. A good way to check it in the real conversation is with a question: "I've been wondering if you're worried about being alone with the store. Is that part of it?"

If the other chair didn't surprise you at all, try once more, on a different day, starting from a good memory of this person. Sometimes the first round is still the fear talking.

And if the rehearsal left you more anxious than before, that's information too. It may mean this conversation carries more than it seems, and that it's worth talking it through with someone before having it.

Before you go

If you would like company for this, Confidey has two ways. On the paid plans, you can rehearse with a character: you describe the person, and Confidey plays the other side, by text or by voice, so you can practice the conversation before having it. And the exercise called Both sides of the conversation does the chair switch in writing. You can find them at confidey dot com.

Next week: setting the when. Because a conversation that's been prepared and rehearsed can still wait forever, unless it has a day and an hour.

Thank you for listening. Take care of the conversations that matter.