Before You Fix It, Help Me Feel Understood

Recently, a relatively ordinary change of plan affected me more than I expected.

The practical issue was manageable. Plans change, people misunderstand one another, and life rarely follows the neat arrangements we make for it. Yet I had rearranged part of my day and made space to be there for someone I love. When things shifted without a conversation with me, I was left with a feeling I could not immediately explain.

It took me a little while to recognise that the change itself was not really the heart of it. What hurt was the experience of disappearing from something I thought I was part of. Beneath my reaction was a much more tender question: Had I been held in mind?

Many of our most emotionally charged conversations begin this way. We talk about the changed plan, the forgotten message, the dishes, the late arrival or the decision made without us. From the outside, the issue may look minor. Even we may wonder why it has affected us so strongly.

But sometimes what looks like a disagreement about what happened is really a longing to know that we mattered while it was happening.

The conversation underneath the conversation

Human beings rarely communicate on only one level. There is the visible conversation—the information, the practical problem and the details of what occurred—and then there is often another conversation taking place underneath it.

Do you understand why this mattered to me?

Did you notice what I was trying to contribute?

Was I important enough to be considered?

Is there room for my experience alongside yours?

Relationship researchers use the term perceived responsiveness to describe the experience of another person as understanding us, valuing us and caring about our wellbeing. The important word is perceived. Care may exist within a relationship, but it still needs to be expressed in ways the other person can recognise and receive.

There can be a meaningful distance between being loved and experiencing ourselves as loved.

Someone may care about us deeply and still fail to communicate a change that affects us. They may appreciate everything we have done but forget to say so. They may be so occupied by their own experience that they temporarily lose sight of ours. Their care has not necessarily disappeared, but in that moment it may no longer be reaching us.

This helps explain why small relational moments can carry so much weight. Being consulted, remembered or acknowledged tells us that we occupy a place in another person’s mental and emotional world. We have been held in mind. When that does not happen, the pain may be about more than thoughtlessness. It can touch our sense of significance and belonging.

Why we rush to fix things

When someone tells us they are upset, many of us move quickly towards a solution.

We offer advice, explain what they could do next, reassure them that it will be fine or point out why the situation is not as bad as it seems. When the hurt involves us, we may respond by clarifying what we intended or correcting the parts of the story we believe the other person has misunderstood.

Most of these responses come from understandable places. We want to help. We may feel uncomfortable watching someone we love struggle. We may believe that finding the answer is the clearest way to demonstrate care. If we feel blamed, explaining ourselves can also become a way of protecting our sense of who we are.

Yet a solution offered before understanding can feel like another form of distance.

The person may hear our advice while still wondering whether we have grasped what the experience meant to them. They may repeat themselves, add more detail or speak with greater intensity—not because they want to argue, but because they are still searching for some sign that their inner experience has reached us.

We can become so efficient at solving the problem that we accidentally lose sight of the person living through it.

There is a subtle difference between listening for the problem and listening for the person. Listening for the problem asks, What should we do about this? Listening for the person asks, What has this been like for you?

Healthy communication needs both. The order often matters.

Once somebody feels emotionally met, there is usually more room for practical thinking. Advice becomes easier to hear. Explanations feel less like deflection. Two people can begin looking at the problem together instead of defending themselves from opposite sides of it.

The small ways we reach for one another

John and Julie Gottman’s relationship work describes bids for connection: the everyday ways we reach towards another person for attention, interest, affection or support.

A bid may be obvious, but often it is hidden inside ordinary life. Someone begins telling us about their day. They point out something through the window. They sigh from the other side of the room. They ask a question they could probably answer themselves. They show us a photograph, touch our arm or mention something that has been worrying them.

The visible content may be small, but the relational question beneath it is often larger: Are you interested in my world?

Turning towards a bid does not require a long conversation every time. Sometimes it is eye contact, a smile, a question or a few moments of genuine attention. It is the response that lets the other person know their reach has landed somewhere.

Gottman’s work helps us understand that trust is not created only through major promises or dramatic gestures. It accumulates through repeated moments of responsiveness. We notice the reach. We answer it. We allow what matters to another person to matter, at least for a moment, to us.

This belongs far beyond romantic relationships. Parents and adult children make bids for connection. So do siblings, friends, colleagues and neighbours. We are continually offering small pieces of our inner world to one another and discovering, through the response, whether there is room for us.

Understanding is not the same as agreeing

One of the greatest barriers to feeling understood is our tendency to confuse another person’s emotional experience with an accusation about our intentions.

“I felt left out” can sound like “You deliberately excluded me.”

“I didn’t feel considered” can sound like “You never care about me.”

“That hurt me” can sound like “You are a hurtful person.”

Once we hear the conversation that way, defensiveness makes sense. We begin explaining, correcting and presenting evidence that proves we are not the person we believe we are being accused of being.

Our intentions do matter. So does our experience of what happened. Understanding another person does not require us to abandon either of those things.

It asks us to make room for an additional truth.

I did not intend to hurt you, and I can understand why that hurt.

Those truths do not cancel each other out. Holding them together is one of the most mature things we can learn to do in a relationship.

Validation is sometimes misunderstood as agreement, surrender or an admission of wrongdoing. It is none of those things. Validation means recognising that another person’s response makes sense from where they are standing, even if we experienced the same event differently.

We might say:

“I hadn’t realised how much you rearranged to make that happen.”

“I can understand why you felt left out of the decision.”

“I was concentrating so much on what I meant that I missed what it felt like for you.”

“I see now that this was about more than the change itself.”

Responses like these do not erase our perspective. They make the conversation large enough to hold more than one perspective.

Intent, impact and the possibility of repair

Many relationships become stuck because one person keeps talking about impact while the other keeps defending intent.

One says, “This is what happened inside me.”

The other replies, “But that is not what I meant.”

Both may be telling the truth, yet neither feels met.

Intent helps us understand the person who acted. Impact helps us understand the person who received the action. Repair becomes possible when the relationship has room for both.

Repair does not always require a perfect apology or a complete agreement about every detail. Sometimes it begins with returning to a conversation after we have had time to think.

“I’ve been considering what you said.”

“I don’t think I really heard you earlier.”

“Can you help me understand what mattered most about that?”

“I can see something now that I couldn’t see when I was busy defending myself.”

There is humility in returning like this. It communicates that the relationship matters more than our need to have handled everything correctly the first time.

Healthy relationships are not relationships in which nobody ever misses a cue, makes an assumption or hurts another person’s feelings. We are human. We become tired and distracted. We misunderstand one another. We sometimes discover much later that an apparently insignificant moment carried enormous meaning for someone we love.

The strength of a relationship is not found in perfect attunement. It is often found in the willingness to notice when we have lost one another and to find our way back.

The ordinary experience of being valued

In The Beautiful Ways We Reach for One Another, I wrote about the gestures, touch, conversations and small acts through which we communicate connection. The more I have thought about it, the more I have realised that reaching is only one half of that experience. The other half is discovering that our reach has been received.

Much of feeling valued is created through actions that would look almost insignificant to somebody outside the relationship.

We remember to ask how the appointment went. We tell someone when plans change because we know their time is involved too. We notice the meal that appeared, the lift that was offered or the day that was rearranged. We put down the phone because we hear something different in a person’s voice. We ask what they think before making a decision that affects them.

These moments say something larger than the action itself:

I remembered that you were part of this.

Emotionally Focused Therapy, developed by Dr Sue Johnson, places particular importance on emotional accessibility, responsiveness and engagement. Beneath many relationship struggles is a deeply human need to know that the people who matter to us are emotionally available—that when we reach towards them, there is a reasonable chance they will notice and respond.

This does not mean expecting one person to anticipate every need or remain constantly available. Love is not mind-reading, and healthy closeness still allows room for boundaries, independence and differing perspectives. It means creating enough responsiveness within the relationship that people do not repeatedly have to fight for evidence that they matter.

Before you fix it

The next time somebody brings you a disappointment, frustration or hurt, notice what happens within you.

Do you begin searching for a solution? Do you prepare your defence? Do you reassure them before you fully understand what they are worried about? Do you listen for the details you can correct, rather than the meaning you might have missed?

Then allow the conversation to slow down.

Let them finish. Ask the extra question. Find out what the experience meant to them, rather than assuming that the visible problem tells you everything you need to know.

You might ask:

“What was the hardest part of that for you?”

“What did you need from me in that moment?”

“Have I understood what you are trying to tell me?”

“Would you like my thoughts, or would it help if I listened for a little longer?”

And if there is a recent conversation that has stayed with you because you suspect someone left it feeling unheard, there is still time to return. A simple sentence can reopen the door:

“I’ve been thinking about what you said, and I would like to understand it better.”

Sometimes the most healing part of a conversation is not the answer we receive. It is the experience of discovering that another person is willing to enter our world for long enough to see why something mattered.

We may still need to solve the problem, change the plan, clarify a boundary or take responsibility. Understanding does not remove those conversations. It gives us a more connected place from which to have them.

If somebody came to mind while you were reading this, perhaps begin there. Ask the question, send the message or return to the conversation. If this article expresses something you have struggled to put into words, you may also want to share it with them.

Sometimes a better conversation begins when one person decides to listen differently.

If recurring conversations in your life keep leaving you or someone you love feeling unseen, relationship and wellbeing coaching offers a calm space to understand what is happening beneath the words and develop a healthier way forward.

Research & Further Reading

• The Gottman Institute — An Introduction to Emotional Bids and Trust — an accessible introduction to bids for connection and the importance of turning towards everyday attempts to connect.

• Tasfiliz et al. — Patterns of Perceived Partner Responsiveness and Well-Being in Japan and the United States — research exploring the relationship between experiencing a partner as understanding, caring and responsive, and personal wellbeing.

• International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy — EFT Research — research and resources relating to attachment, emotional accessibility, responsiveness and engagement in close relationships.