When Good Intentions Are Not Enough

What's more important, tension or impact when it comes to our actions? Because one of the statements that I commonly hear that gets people stuck in their relationships is when one person says, but that wasn't my intention. Why can't you see my intention? Hi, I'm Dr. Tracy. I'm a psychologist specializing in relationships building healthy communication and navigating those tricky boundaries with your in laws. So when it comes to actions in our relationships, should we be looking at intention or should we be looking at the impact? I'm actually going to ask you a hard question. I want you to consider this. What if your good intentions are actually hurting your relationship or they're actually hurting your partner? When it comes to communication and decision making in relationships, there's often this gap between what one person intends and then how the other person experiences it. And because I love storytelling, I'm going to share a story of what happened between me and my husband recently around intention and impact. And I think this makes it really clear when we're looking at these two different pieces. We were outside kicking the ball with my son, we're playing soccer, and Greg, my husband, kicks the ball and it just so happens to hit me right square on the butt and I let out ouch. And his immediate reply is, it wasn't that hard. Now it's important for us to first understand what it actually means to be in a relationship with another person. And one of those core foundational skills that I teach people is that practice of positive, generous interpretation of the other person's behavior. I think when we start from this position, it really brings in a sense of compassion, empathy and understanding for the other person. And oftentimes we get stuck not viewing our partner that way. And if we think back to what the purpose of our brains is, of course it makes sense that we don't do that because our brains are trained to scan for threat in our environment. And as soon as we become activated, we're going to see what our partner does as a threat. However, research has shown us something really important and that is that while intention is important, the impact of our words and actions carries far more weight in determining the overall health of our relationship. Even the most well meaning actions can cause hurt if the impact is not what was intended. Studies show that understanding and valuing the impact over our intention is crucial for keeping us connected and building strong partnerships. So in an effort to not spiral into your negative cycle, I'm going to give you three things to consider here when it comes to the intention versus the impact debate and hopefully this will help you not spiral in your cycle and also find a way to move forward. The first point is around prioritizing validation. When Greg hit me with the ball, all I needed to hear was, ooh, that looks like it hurt. That is a validation of my experience. It's important to remember that validation is not necessarily that you agree with the other person or that you feel all of the same things. We're not saying, you're right, I'm wrong, but instead what we say is, I see that you are having this experience. Validation goes a long way in relationships, and it's tricky because often what we want to do is we want to problem solve or move through the hard moment rather than actually being able to see what's happening in front of us. When we spend time seeing what's happening right in front of us, it is actually quite healing for the other person. It's those times where we don't validate them that we end up getting stuck. And these old events get repeated in those conversations or those heated moments when your partner says, don't you remember that one time when you. That's usually a good cue that you haven't spent time validating and understanding your partner's experience from that difficult time. When the ball hit me, a validation would have simply been, oh, my goodness, that hit you, and it must have hurt, as anyone would feel when a ball hits them. When we validate the impact of our behaviors or our actions or our words, we create space for understanding and empathy. And it also helps to strengthen the connection between us. It's not about defending our intentions, which is what we like to do, right? Our ego shows up and says, I didn't do anything wrong. I got to protect myself. But instead, this is about acknowledging that we had an impact on the other person. The second piece I want to talk about. When it comes to breaking apart, intention versus impact is the lurking emotion of shame. Shame is an incredibly fast feeling, and it says, I'm not worthy, I'm inadequate, I'm defective in some way. The piece with shame is that it leads us to break the interpersonal connection between partners. I almost use the analogy of, like, you're rolling out of the relationship and down into your shame. And when you do that, your partner is left standing out saying, hello, what about me? Shame disconnects us. It's like closing the curtains. It's like breaking the bridge. And when this takes over, it really stops you from being able to see what your partner is experiencing. The goal in our partnerships is to be able to first, acknowledge you are not going to be perfect and you make mistakes. But when you get curious with how your actions and your words affect your partner, and then you're going to then be able to create a better connection moving forward. Think about this. Information is power. When you can understand how you show up affects the other person, it doesn't mean we're asking you to change your entire being, but instead it says, oh, I can understand that what I did there hurt you in some way and it didn't feel good. And so what can sometimes happen is couples start flaring up into their negative cycle. Be sure to check out my other videos on the negative cycle that takes over and our relationship. So when one partner then rolls into shame, the other person feels that sense of disconnection. It's like, where are you? You're not reaching for me. And instead of being able to check in with them because they're in their own feelings, then this person says, hey, you're hurting me. You always do that. You never think of me, you always think of yourself. So we end up slipping into criticisms. And the more criticism we enter into, the more fuel we are adding to the fire and the negative cycle where partners then start to get. It's so important for both people to start understanding when shame shows up in the relationship. And even for one person who is slipping into shame to be able to say like, oh, that shame response is showing up, it can be really powerful in your partner dynamic. The last thing to consider when it comes to intention versus impact is how we are addressing this misalignment. And I think it's so important first to be in the moment to soothe and focus on connection and then return to conversations at another time. So. So in the soccer ball moment, I could see that my husband was having a hard time. And I said, I know you didn't mean that. And it actually really hurt. I wasn't going to pile on top of him in that moment, particularly because I saw the shame piece show up and it wasn't going to move us forward and he wasn't going to further understand it. But what I did do was that I came back at another time and I said, hey, I want you to know that I saw your intention and I know it wasn't to hurt me, except what you ended up doing was invalidating how I was feeling. And you don't know how I was feeling because you didn't ask. And it actually hurt a lot. Here is the last piece to consider around the intention versus impact debate. And that really is about what you do in the moment and how you revisit the conversation. Sometimes when we are hurt, we can step into our righteous indignation and we want the other person to understand us and to validate us and to see us right there in that moment. It becomes a really big pressing need. And something that is more important in our relationships is actually the skill around understanding when to go into these conversations. In this moment with my husband, he was taken over by shame that it wasn't the time for me to talk about how he had just invalidated me and I really needed something different from him. So instead I decided to soothe the moment. Soothing in that moment means doing something like I squeezed his shoulder and I was like, I know you didn't intend to hurt me, it really hurt. And I moved forward. So in that moment, I'm allowing us to co regulate. I touch his shoulder, I say something soothing. I'm also allowing myself to self regulate, meaning I'm going to take a few breaths so I don't come out in my angry, critical position. That would then loop us into our negative cycle even more. But what was more important was coming back to this situation at a time where I could be calm and compassionate and say, hey, earlier you ended up invalidating me, and I know you had good intentions, but that actually ended up really hurting me. And I needed you to see the impact that you had on me. I want to leave you with this. It's important to view our partner as having positive intentions, as viewing them with the most positive interpretation, meaning that they're not there to harm you. It is important to recognize though, that if a partner continuously says to you, that's not my intention, that's not my intention, you will stay stuck. Because we know from the research that impact weighs more heavily on the connection in your relationship than intention. If you are someone who gets stuck in understanding your impact on somebody, I want you to know this. When you hurt your partner, it does not make you a bad person. It means you have more to discover about who they are. And it's also an opportunity for you to learn how to change your behavior. But you need to be willing to own those mistakes, take responsibility, and to validate your partner. And those are all possible things that you can do in your partnership to help you both move forward to feel more connected every single day. So remember, while good intentions are important, they don't always translate into positive outcomes. And failing to recognize this can lead to hurt and more misunderstandings. By focusing on the impact we show our partner that we value their feelings and that we're committed to building a healthy and supportive connection. If you found this video helpful, I would love for you to click the thumbs up. Subscribe. Subscribe to my channel and I will see you next time.