"It'll go badly"

You've had this conversation dozens of times in your head, and it has never gone well. In the rehearsal you make your point reasonably, and the other person interrupts, gets defensive, brings up something from three years ago, and says the thing you most dread hearing. You lie there composing your reply to it. By the time you fall asleep you're angry with them for things they haven't said.

That's the forecast, and the forecast is the main reason you're waiting. So it matters whether forecasts of this kind are any good.

Emma Levine and Taya Cohen tested this directly. In one set of studies they asked people to be completely honest in every conversation for three days, and asked others to predict what that would be like. In two further experiments, which they registered in advance, people had a specific honest conversation of a kind they'd been avoiding. One involved sharing personal information. The other involved giving someone negative feedback. In each case the researchers compared what people expected with what happened.

People consistently got it wrong in one direction. Being honest turned out to be more pleasant than they'd predicted. It did less harm to their relationships than they'd predicted, and it left them feeling more connected. The researchers traced the error to a single misjudgment. People overestimated how badly the other person would react.

These were volunteers in studies, mostly in the United States, and nobody can promise that your particular conversation will go the way the average did. Some go badly. But the direction of the error is worth taking in, because it's the same one your rehearsals make. You expect more anger, more hurt and more damage than, on average, arrives.

I think there are understandable reasons why the rehearsal runs dark, and this is my interpretation. The rehearsal is written by the part of you that's anxious, and an anxious mind prepares for the worst case because that's what it's for. It casts the other person at their most defensive because that's the version you'd need to be ready for. It also leaves out everything the real person brings, such as their fondness for you and their wish to get on with you. It leaves out their ability to be surprised and then to think. The Sam of your rehearsals is a debating opponent. The real Sam, asked calmly on a Thursday evening whether Saturdays could be shared out differently, is a man who loves you and hadn't realised.

The rehearsal also stops at the wrong place. It plays the first five difficult minutes over and over, and almost never runs on to minute twenty, where the other person has got past their first reaction and started to engage. Many hard conversations do have a rough opening. The other person is caught off guard, feels accused and defends themselves. If you've braced only for that, you may take it for the whole of their answer. It usually isn't. Chapter 13 says more about getting through the first reaction to the second.

I don't want to overstate this. Some people do react badly, and you may know from experience that the person you need to talk to is one of them. If so, you're not mispredicting, and chapter 15 is for you. But check whether you know it from experience or from rehearsal. You can test it. Think of the last three times you raised something awkward with this person and ask what happened. If you can't think of three times, then your picture of how they react is based largely on imagination.

One last point about forecasts. When you predict how the conversation will go, you compare it with the pleasant evening you'd have if you said nothing. It ought to be compared with the blow-up, since that's where saying nothing leads. Set beside a row in a car park, an awkward half hour on a Thursday evening looks like a good deal.