Seriously, every time I’ve encountered someone using that formula or any of its variants, it’s been the alleged-adult equivalent of a small child saying, “Pleeeeease can I have a cookie? Please please pleeeeease???? See, I’m asking nicely, so now you gotta give me the cookie! Now please give me what I want or I’ll throw a temper tantrum!”

For a lot of people, myself and my spouse included, “I feel” statements in a scripted format are akin to waving a red flag in front of an angry bull. I don’t see them as a way of taking responsibility for one’s feelings. I see them as a way of pretending to do so while blaming the other person for not phrasing requests properly.

I’m not buying it for a minute. Unless the wife in your example is *totally* clueless or you bring this up completely out of the blue, she’s gonna know that it is *her behaviour* that being discussed and that might well make her defensive.

“Owning your own feelings is very important for this to work.”

If you own those distant and unloved feelings then you can deal with them without getting the wife involved; the fact you *are* getting her involved means she contributed somehow.

Someone who wants to reconnect when I’m half-asleep may get it, if they’re okay with mumbles and cuddling while falling asleep. But if they want a real conversation after 11pm and they want me to be awake for it, well … while I can do that (I’m a night owl by inclination) it will also temporarily UN-do my efforts to be on an office worker schedule and leave me feeling jet-lagged the next day. Needless to say I would not be amenable to this idea.

Now, breakfast or dinner the next day could be great. Or if date nights are never on a work night, then staying up wouldn’t be an issue. But that takes negotiation.

Er. No. It means you might have an easier time discussing something with some give and take, without verbally pushing buttons, sounding accusatory or making it all about the other person. And like you point out, they get to say “no.” and the assertive communicator does NOT get to pout.

“B..b..b..but you did not fall into the steps of this dance that I have just set up with my Magical Assertiveness Training. I feel betrayed because I did not get my way!” and that always makes me want to start snarling. As I do when people start using the techniques to passive aggressively be blaming and manipulative anyway but then are all “Whaaaat? /innocent>” about it.

Otoh, when it works and all parties are committed to really stepping up to that level of communication, it’s a beautiful thing.

As ever, well done.

That deserves an article, to be frank.

If someone is defensive no matter what, I’d question whether or not that relationship is gonna work in the long run.

Also I’ve found that some people will misuse the format and that also leads some listeners to look for hidden meanings in the most straightforward of messages. It’s very frustrating.