Make the Thinking Obvious

Making the thinking obvious was a lesson I learned after my last big break up. Here's the gist of it:

The ideas we share with other people, especially those with whom we are trying to have a relationship with, tend to be the end product of a very long and sometimes twisted train of thought. It tends to be that only after wrestling with things internally, imagining how the eventual conversation would go, that we involve the other person, forgetting how little they know of the processing that had been done. Making the thinking obvious by retracing the path traveled to reach wherever that processing had lead helps prevent blindsiding the other person.

Of course, in conjunction with that is the misguided idea that we have to find the solution by ourselves, with either no input from the other person or with only our imagining of the other person's input.

It can feel scary to have ideas that would change the relationship we are in, but change isn't always a bad thing. It's easier, and I think ultimately better, to share such thoughts early, before they get too far down the processing road. For that to really work, though, both parties need to be open to discussing ideas.