Do you speak up about issues in your sex life with your romantic partner? Or about political issues with close friends and family who disagree with you? Or about fundamental philosophical differences with friends from work or school?

Many people are afraid to discuss important disagreements with those they care about. They fear that talking about the disagreements will drive them apart, so they put controversial topics off-limits to preserve the relationship. Unfortunately, that is counterproductive. Pussy-footing around forbidden topics adds pressure to every interaction, undercuts camaraderie, and makes the relationship more fragile. Putting topics off-limits makes it more likely — not less — that the topic will blow up.

It also doesn’t work to stifle the fear and plunge into the topic. Stifling the fear is not a surgical process. That action cuts off your awareness of many subtle emotional signals that are necessary to read the other person’s reactions and navigate a tricky conversation. Girding your loins to raise the topic is more likely to lead to an acrimonious argument and hurt feelings than a meeting of minds.

Listening is not enough

What is the third alternative? The common-sense view is that you should to learn to listen better. Draw out the other person. Don’t be in such a hurry to express your point of view. Giving the other person a full hearing will make them more willing to listen to you.

There is merit in this. Your willingness to listen can increase goodwill and pave the way for a conversation. Sometimes active listening is all you need to get over the hump to have a productive conversation. This is especially true when there is no fundamental disagreement, just a superficial one. It’s especially true at work, when the goals of the project create a common standard for resolving conflict.

But listening isn’t enough when you have a deep disagreement (say, in politics) or it’s a particularly sensitive subject (say, sex). In those cases, hearing what the other person thinks can put you into intense emotional conflict. You might feel both desperate for closeness and mad as hell at the same time. If you don’t have know how to intervene mentally to handle this intensity, a defensive action will be triggered automatically. Some forms a knee-jerk, defensive reaction could take are:

• Attacking the other person verbally
• “Acting out,” i.e., screaming or hitting something
• Running away
• Shutting down emotionally — putting up an emotional barrier between you

All of these are counterproductive in any relationship of personal importance. And if one person has one of these defensive reactions, it’s very common to trigger a follow up defensive reaction in the other person. These kinds of destructive escalations are what tear relationships apart.

The terrifying alternative that can bring you closer

What’s needed to handle the intensity in a constructive way is vulnerable emotional presence. That is the antidote to defensiveness. That is what will bring you closer together.

If you can talk about the love and the frustration you feel at the same time, without attacking or withdrawing, without blaming or excusing, without demanding or denying, you change the dynamic. Likely, you won’t appear as a threat to the other person. Instead, you appear as the person they love, in trouble, wanting to be closer. This often opens up a heart-to heart conversation.

And it can do that even if you intervene to grab control and become emotionally present only after you have already reacted defensively. If you’ve just been defensive, guilt or hopelessness with your own knee-jerk reaction gets added to the emotional mix. Being vulnerable with it all can make the difference.

But not always.

And that is what makes being emotionally vulnerable terrifying.

You cannot count on the other person to respond with care to your vulnerability. They could say something or do something that causes intense emotional pain. If you can’t handle it, the situation can spiral out of control.

What’s needed: skill at empathy

What you need is skill at taking care of yourself emotionally in the moment, despite provocation from another person.

Vulnerable emotional presence in front of another person is more difficult than just being emotionally present with yourself. You need skill at empathy. I learned this through Marshall Rosenberg’s work on “nonviolent communication,” or as I have somewhat reconceived it, “rationally connected conversations.” You need to learn to hear what the other person is saying in terms of deep rational values at stake.

For example, if you and your romantic partner are talking about sex, and your partner says something like, “Well, that’s not what I want,” you need to learn to hear it, not as a rejection of what you said, but as an expression of his fear that his own needs won’t be respected or met; then you can say something that calms that fear. Because the truth is, in a close relationship, the solution to every joint problem is mutually agreeable. But figuring out that solution can take a lot of creativity and heart-to-heart discussion.

How you develop skill at empathy

The first step in learning how to be empathic toward another person is to learn how to be empathic toward yourself. You need to learn to be okay with whatever you feel, and be able to use any and all emotional information to identify the top values at stake for yourself. This is the primary skill you need to develop emotional resilience. It is the foundation for handling difficult conversations.

Self-empathy is something you can learn in the Thinking Lab. It is featured in probably half of the self-study courses. It is something you can learn on your own with self-study  and/or with the help of a coach.

But to be able to handle those important conversations with those you love, you also need to learn how to be empathic in real time, when another person is in front of you, and the emotions run high. You need to hold both your value contexts in mind, and to interpret whatever the other person is saying in terms of values, without losing your place or getting pulled off emotionally. This is a learnable skill. I have gotten much better at it. But the only way to get good is to practice in a test environment with other people who role-play the other person. That’s how you get the courage to speak up in a real situation.

This is why I run in-person Better Relationships intensives, which are specifically for Objectivists (those who share Ayn Rand’s philosophy). Because of some philosophic differences with Marshall Rosenberg, Objectivists definitely need my approach to the method. I explain why, and give advice for getting real-time training elsewhere on the sales page.

I cannot recommend this methodology highly enough. It enabled me to recreate a close relationship with a sibling who is religious after we had been estranged. It has brought my husband and me much closer. It has enabled me to maintain important relationships despite significant philosophic differences.

Perhaps you will join me at my next intensive.