just who *are* you talking to, really?
[edit: the part that didn't carry forward from the original conversation is the explicit understanding that all parties involved were/are engaged with positive intent in the improvement of the communications process; they entered the process of improvement with goodwill. that is the same underlying presupposition i had putting this post together.]
i'm having a conversation with another friend in his LJ. he is having problems getting feedback and input from his partner:
The other thing that struck me is that she's filtering her response to what I do. What I mean is that instead of letting herself be expressive and unrestrained in that, instead of simply feeling and reacting, she's running her response through a dozen filters of "how does he want me to respond?", "how should I be responding?", "am I supposed to feel like this?", "is it OK for me to respond like this?", "is this what he needs?", "is this what I need?" As a result, I'm not getting pure feedback, and in many cases I'm not getting feedback at all. This makes it very difficult for me to gauge where I'm at and where I need to move next.
my [now appropriately edited for a general audience] reply (which hit the LJ comment limit, thus suggesting there's meat here for a post of its own :) :
As a result, I'm not getting pure feedback, and in many cases I'm not getting feedback at all.
we have a term to describe this: non-engagement. not on your part - on hers. presumably she's not asking you those questions; she's making up your answers herself, and trying to anticipate/guesstimate and respond to what *she thinks* your needs and wants are. in short, this is robbing you both of a chance for intimacy and vulnerability, because she (for whatever reasons) is not asking you those questions directly, verbally, and you're not getting a chance to have your say.
this is a common passive-aggressive tactic for people who really don't want to, or know how to, trust a partner and share control. by denying you direct input, she is in control of the dialog, in control of "your" answers (as she anticipates them), and in control of her response to "your" wants & needs. it's tremendously ineffective overall - it subverts intimacy and vulnerability, it denies you input and her a chance to validate her guesstimates of your needs, to adjust her expectations accordingly and manage yours effectively.
both matthew and i have gone around this issue ourselves, because we both came from previous relationships where we or our partners did exactly that - internally converse with us, generate our responses in absentia, and then act on the responses assigned to us without ever actually checking with the external source to validate those responses. ergo, we often encountered... discrepancies... between what the internal conversation generated in terms of expectations, and what we or our partner would have done, had there been an explicit invitation to share the conversation.
now that you are aware of this process (or suspect it), validate it with your partner explicitly. and if it's true that she's freezing internally because of the overwhelming need to anticipate you without actually asking *you* what you want, you have the right? perogative? requirement? of changing that process for both of you to something that is more effective, more explicit, less internally-focussed, more vulnerable.... and overall, more *accurate*.
for example, don't let her have those conversations without you. when you think she's filtering, ask her to verbalize the internal dialogue. stop everything until she does; accept the risk that (*gasp*) conversation might ensue - odds are good you'll discover some amazing things about each other when you take the time for vulnerable exchange, and oft-times, that discovery will far outweigh in the long term, any short-term intentions you both may have had. in order to ensure you can both trust the vulnerable space required for someone to voice those internal conversations, declare a five minute or ten minute "time out" and just let her talk about what's going on in her head. don't judge, don't interrupt, just listen until she's done, then explore, explicitly and jointly. she has to trust that she can externalize those internal dialogues, and that means you have to learn how to *hear* them.
matthew and i have ritualized this process to some extent; when necessary, he asks me explicitly, "Tell me what I need to know about you." that's my cue to uncork everything from my physical state to the dialogues i might be having in my head, to ask questions, raise concerns, whatever. and if i seem more engaged with myself than with him at any point in our interactions, he stops and asks me to verbalize whatever's going on in my head. he listens, we talk. it's a shared process of being explicit in the moment, of learning not to make, then form expectations and act on, blind, implicit, unvalidated assumptions. that way lies only grief and tears.
it works for us; YMMV. but the important part for you right now, from the sound of things, is to make her externalize the internal dialog and explicitly seek *from you* your wants and needs in the moment, instead of assigning to you *her interpretation and anticipation* of unvalidated data.
we all do this, to some extent. we all have conversations with other people in our heads. we do this for a variety of reasons: sometimes to map out our own arguments, sometimes to get a handle on another person's *likely* responses to our approach. the problem for many is in assuming that the outcome of those internalized conversations is validated fact, when it is not. it is our assumption of an outcome, our interpretation of an as-yet "unoccurred event". yet people insist on investing in those internalized assumptions, without taking the time to validate them against the actual source - the other person we chose NOT to involve in the dialogue.
in my own experience with people, this manifests most commonly as other people making decisions on another's behalf without consulting the individual for explicit input: "Oh, we didn't invite you because we didn't think you'd want to come/be available/[insert assumption here]." in short, you had an internal dialogue, drew a conclusion, acted on the conclusion - all as if you'd had a conversation with an individual, but without ever explicitly engaging the other person.
this denial of opportunity happens for a myriad of reasons, but there are two very common ones. one is a control issue: "We didn't invite you because, really, we didn't want you to come, but couldn't have controlled or guaranteed your response if we'd actually asked you." the other is a vulnerability issue: "I didn't ask you what you wanted, because I was afraid you might not want what I wanted, or I wouldn't want what you wanted, and I didn't want to risk feeling hurt or disappointed." in both cases, someone finds it a short-term safer route to simply not engage someone else in conversation, because incoming data might run contrary to what the speaker may internally want or expect. "Don't invalidate my assumptions, because I might have to *work* then to come up with new ones, and I don't want to do the work/deal with your wants & needs/find out I was wrong/etc."
the only effective way to work around this kind of denial of opportunity is to make sure there is time and space for the explicit engagements to happen. in the cliche, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink; likewise, you cannot force another person to share those vulnerable conversations with you, especially if the dialogues are internalized out of a fear of vulnerability. the best you can do, if you perceive them occurring, is be present in the moment and invite the explicit dialogue. as i wrote in the comment above, stay engaged and present and listen until your counterpart has expressed everything that had been going on internally; then and only then, would i recommend you gently investigate the nature of the internalized conversation: what drove it, what fears kept it hidden, what internalized questions pertain to you directly that you can answer explicitly? how can you validate or correct another person's assumptions and expectations based on such internalized conversations, and how do you deal with discrepancies between those internalized assumptions/expectations, and your *actual* responses, once they're all explicitly out in the open?
intimacy is about being vulnerable. and being vulnerable means finding ways of expressing the internal, externally. create a space of trust and patience; learn to *hear*, as well as listen. luring internalized dialogues out into the open - preferably before the one doing the internalizing can form assumptions and expectations without another's direct and explicit input - is much like luring a frightened rabbit to your hand. it requires a willing intent to be available without judging, without putting your own agenda ahead of the act of listening. like most evolution in communications processes, it takes time and practice, and sometimes taking your own agenda and assumptions and expectations offline to listen to your partner will be difficult, but the gains in the long term are incredibly rewarding.