Silent agreements will help readers define unsaid beliefs and expectations that could generate discontent, discontent and resentment in their relationships, and provide them with the tools to explore these agreements and work toward healthier communication with a partner, friend, boss or family member. If you have relationships, you`ve probably been part of silent agreements. Unspoken agreements are the implicit “rules” of your relationship, born of unspoken beliefs and expectations that have both sides, that stem from your first experiences and that are reinforced as you mature. It`s like “The person who makes more money should pay for the data” or “My boss doesn`t offer me a raise, and he knows I don`t ask for it.” These agreements can interfere with your relationships and remain insensitized due to fear, aversion to conflict, sense of duty or guilt. Given that expectations are so scarce and none of them will address the issue, a silent agreement can generate discontent and resentment on both sides. Clinical psychologists Drs. Anderson, Banks and Owens will help you explore your chords and work toward healthier communication with a partner, friend, boss or family member. You`ll know more about your own motivations and how to disassemble beliefs that don`t help you. With guidelines and advice on how to have productive conversations about sex, money, commitment, family, work and health, this book will help you lift the silence and solve these problems in land mines before they cause irreparable damage. In Silent Agreements: How to Identify Relationships with Unspoken Expectations Professor Linda Anderson of Hostos Community College and her colleagues not only identify the origin of these “silent agreements” but provide a step-by-step guide to review them. If neither person is ready and able to tackle the problems that bother them, silent chords can cause resentment and unhappiness, even in an otherwise surprising relationship. Unmatched expectations can lead one person to feel hurt and misunderstood, while the other wonders what they could do wrong.
A little honesty about how you feel if you constantly pay for dinner might be exactly what your relationship needs. It may be hard to find out that you work two in separate spheres, but this can lead to a relationship reset that you desperately need. You`ve had this dating type for almost a year, and even if it goes pretty well (you both like morning morning hikes and bingeing rom-coms on Netflix), there`s one thing that kind of bugs you. Every time you go to dinner, he never takes the check. While you have nothing against paying the tab (you can afford it) you have a great job and your salary is higher than salary, it is a bit strange that he never offers to cover his own Pad Thai. Are you petty? No no. You, my friend, are part of an unspoken agreement. Silent chords in your relationships work the same way as this, but with more levels. Here, we sometimes keep a squent about what`s going on beneath the surface, even though your behavior reveals you.
For example, your partner experiences your real feelings when you experience your fear of sexual intimacy in the form of headaches in bed. But he agrees (tacitly) not to say anything about it, because he fears that if you two talk about the subject openly, the real reasons for your disinterest could be so serious that he might never have sex with you again. He also wants to avoid an uncomfortable conversation about sex, because he doesn`t want to say out loud that he doesn`t have sexual confidence and therefore finds women intimidating.