The Puppy Problem: When different processing speeds cause conflict in relationships
One wet Wednesday afternoon, Steve hears a knock at the front door. Funny, he thinks. He’s not expecting anyone. Must be the courier. He opens the door to find a well dressed young woman on the doorstep; “Hi, you must be Steve? I’m Francie from Kestle Architects.” Steve’s gaze shifts to the carport where his wife Amy’s car pulls up. Amy calls across the yard; “Francie! Thank you so much for coming over in this awful weather.” Amy kisses Steve on the cheek as she flicks off her heels in the hallway; “Francie, please come in.” Steve looks at both women, dumbfounded. Amy, sensing her husband’s concern, purrs, “Honey I told you two months ago we need to get an architect in to deal with this kitchen renovation.” Steve swallows and takes Amy’s arm to pull her gently aside while Francie pretends to be interested in the hallway wallpaper; “What kitchen renovation?” “The one we’ve talked about a hundred times!” Amy hisses back.
This scenario could sound like a depiction of a stereotypical husband that doesn't listen, or a stereotypical wife who communicates poorly and runs the show. But what if it actually relates to differences in emotional processing speed?
People process emotions at different speeds. Not knowing what type of emotional processors you and your partner are, and how to integrate this within your relationship, can lead to conflict.
There are two kinds of speeds in a relationship. The ‘people’ speed - how fast or how slow a person can process the wants and needs of their partner, and how fast a person can make sense of their own emotional experiences. That's about the person.
The other speed is the relationship speed. When two people connect romantically, one person may want to go more slowly, carefully, tentatively than the other person.
Relationship speed comes down to, at what point should we do stuff? How soon should we have sex? How soon should we have sleepovers? How soon should we introduce our partner to our friends or family? When should we make our relationship exclusive? How soon should we move in together? When soon should we get engaged? How soon should we have a baby? At what point do we introduce our new partner to our children?
The pace of the relationship is separate to the pace of the people in that relationship.
In terms of meeting relationship milestones, there can be societal or cultural baselines or typically accepted paces within a relationship. When you start dating or enter in a relationship with someone, there are some generally accepted norms around speed.
If you're with somebody, you may want to move the relationship forward to the next “stage” in the relationship, you want to feel that it has moved to the “next level”. The pace of the relationship differs from a person’s emotional processing speed. It is possible that the growth of the relationship could feel “too slow” or “too fast” to one or both individuals.
If someone is “too slow”, we could think that they're not “keeping up” with typically accepted baselines of romantic relationships.Effectively, someone can be slow with commitment. They may be so slow that the relationship may feel like it's not growing, but that’s another article.
Individual differences in processing speeds
As a sex and relationship therapist I find that in some couples I work with, one person processes emotions and relational information faster than their partner. They're what I term an agile processor. Their partner, on the other hand, may be a methodical processor and take some time to get their head around an emotional experience. Processing emotions may include identifying our own feelings and thoughts, as well as understanding and empathising with our partner’s emotions.
An “emotional experience” in a relationship is for the purpose of this article, any scenario wherein the agile partner has expectations of their methodical partner to respond to what they have communicated and makes these expectations known to their partner.
And a word about “emotional experiences” - just because someone is not showing their emotions, does not mean they’re not having them. If your partner is a methodical processor, trust me, they have emotions - they may not identify them readily or may not yet be able to articulate them, let alone communicate them to you, Sonic The Hedgehog.
The methodical processor is the person who thinks about what was said, and a few hours, days, or weeks later, they make sense of the data.
Conversely, the agile processor quickly assembles and makes sense of the emotional material. The agile processor will then succinctly brief their methodical processor partner on their realisation or decision, at which point their methodical partner usually resembles a deer caught in headlights.
This neurological processing difference of emotional and relational data in a relationship causes problems because one person can make sense of emotions much more efficiently than the methodical processor can.
This shows up in the following sorts of examples:
The agile partner is itching to travel overseas
The agile partner wants to put the new lounge suite on credit and pay it off later
The agile partner wants to get a new car / house / boat / renovations
The agile partner wants to change career
The agile partner wants to move cities
The agile partner wants to buy a new coffee machine
The agile partner wants to start a new business venture / investment
For the agile processor, when he experiences his methodical processor partner as digging her heels in, he can feel frustrated, rejected, abandoned, controlled, and invalidated, as if his dreams and excitement don’t matter to her. For the methodical processor partner, she can feel overwhelmed, anxious, suffocated, inadequate, put upon, or cornered. This can make her feel protective, leading to withdrawal or shut down.
While the above examples relate to planning, processing speeds also have their role to play in conflict. For example, when an agile processor raises a relationship issue with her methodical processor partner (e.g. about feeling like he is not spending enough quality time with her, isn’t affectionate enough, or isn’t helping with the emotional or administrational load in the relationship), she becomes frustrated when her partner seems to withdraw or become defensive as she shares her emotions and concerns with him in a non-criticising manner one night at they lie in bed together after a long day. The methodical processor is happy to be finally slowing down to integrate [process] his day and feels blindsided when he is suddenly expected to ramp up his processing speed when he is in the middle of decompressing.
How can couples respond to each other’s respective processing speeds when it comes to emotional material?
First, figure out what type of processor you are, and what type your partner is.
For the agile processor in the relationship, the job is to slow down, to take their time, and to become more mindful of their partner who may not process social, relational, emotional material as quickly.
What does this look like? Well, it looks like what I term, “the puppy problem”.
The agile processor wants to get a puppy. One not so interesting Sunday morning over breakfast, she raises the topic;,“I’ve been thinking, we should get a puppy.” Her partner blinks at her and goes back to what he was doing. Several weeks later, the agile processor looks at her partner over her laptop, bats her lashes, and says, delightedly, “We’re getting a puppy, it will be so much fun, you’ll love him once he’s here!” Her methodical processing partner vaguely recalls seeing a dog at the park the other day. He looks at his agile partner, in annoyed dismay, “We’re not getting a puppy.”
Several weeks later, he arrives home to find a puppy in his living room. A couple of months later, he feels somewhat ok-ish with the dog, but at the expense of his potential feelings of resentment towards his agile partner.
We cannot railroad our methodological processor partners. We do so at our peril. It is certainly kinder to the methodical processor not to overwhelm them with emotions, but most critically, it prevents conflict and resentment forming in a relationship.
Before approaching her methodical processor partner with a new idea, an agile partner must first break down the concept into soundbites or incremental steps. An agile partner must take care not to use their agility to pressure their partners into what they want. For a relationship to feel balanced both partners must feel like they have equal say in their preferences, and a methodical processor may need more time and space to identify how they actually feel about a topic. The agile partner can take comfort in knowing that this will likely support a more considered and genuine response from their partner, rather than a rushed agreement that turns into resentment or a later change of mind, or kneejerk, "No".
For example;
Week 1: “Did you have pets when you were a kid?” [gauge your partner’s experience with the issue / tolerance for risk / give them space to start chewing on the idea].
Week 2. Space / time off talking about the topic [this space of a week is proportional to the topic at hand - no one can rush getting a puppy pragmatically speaking].
Week 3: “What do you think the hardest things about having a pet would be?” [figure out what fears your partner has]. Gather information about your partner before springing emotional material on them and asking them to process it [make sense of it] rapidly and make decisions about it.
What you can do when your partner is a methodical processor and you want to raise a relationship [emotional] issue with them?
Get your timing right.
Don't blow up at them or get upset at them - it only gives them double the emotional data to process thereby waylaying the discussion, meaning you don’t get what you need any time soon.
Don't approach them when they're distracted or stressed or doing something important - this just gives them more emotional data to navigate through which creates noise / confusion.
Book them in.
Say to them, “Hey, can we hang out later?”
Or, “Can we have a coffee in an hour?” And then bring it up. Then when you're with them, they're not distracted, they're able to process what you're saying and concentrate on you. You can then potentially leave it with them. You don't ask them to respond to your concern or request immediately. You say, “Please take your time. Take some space to process what I've given you and come back to me.”
It's then on them to come back to you. If you’re reading this, and you’re a methodical processor you also have a few jobs to do;
Communicate [affectionately*] to your partner that you’ve heard them and their concerns by listening intently then checking in to see if you got the key takeaway; “You’re really keen on getting a puppy, did I get that right?”
If they’re talking too fast or there are too many emotions for you to process, [affectionately*] ask please that they slow down
Communicate to your partner [affectionately] that you will think about it and get back to them within [insert time frame here - i.e. 24 hours, 48hours, a week].
Communicating to your partner that you will think on things and get back to them within a stated time frame can effectively prevent or remove all conflict between you at that juncture.
Most importantly - Do keep your promise. Do reflect. And do get back to when you said you would.
*Affectionately: I stress this “affectionately” repeatedly above because any attempt at communicating to your partner that you need time and space to think on things will be thwarted if your delivery sucks. If you are brusque or dismissive or defensive or anything other than kind, they will become emotional, which for you, feels overwhelming, so don’t set you, or them, up to fail.
Agile processors - do not put pressure on your methodically processing partner because then what you're doing is you're overloading them triply with, a) your emotions b) the topic c) the pressure they feel.
They're already overloaded because you're asking them to crunch emotional data. It's harder to crunch emotional data if you're a methodical processor. You need time. You need space. You need to make sense of that data. If you put pressure on your methodical processing partner to have a response to what you share, or to validate what you’ve shared, if you need them to take action, to do something, to say something that's like affirming of you and affirming of what you've said. There's every chance that they cannot do that depending on the topic raised, depending on your emotions, and depending on the emotions that brings up for them.
These factors are always present in any effective relationship discussion:
Relationship discussions always -
Involve the Agile Partner’s emotions
The topic / concept / issue / bone of contention / decision / question / expectation
The Methodical Partner’s emotions
And it's not because they don't want to tend to you or what you’ve said. It's because they need to assemble the material that you've given them before they can respond. It's a two step process. Don't put upon them. Book them in. Don't say, “We need to talk”. Never say that line. Never say we need to talk. Why? Because it automatically puts somebody into defence mode as it feels threatening. It makes people anxious. So then they've got to deal with that as well. And remember, they don't process emotions as fast as you. So they're processing. Oh my God, she said we need to talk. Then he’s already emotional before you even table the actual issue.
We want to reduce the emotional load on our partner’s brain. The name of the game is to reduce the emotional load. The less load you put on them, the faster they can respond to you.
Which brings me to my next point.
When you talk to them, make sure that you keep it really, really short. One to four sentences about what the issue is or how you're feeling.
Do not sit and talk at your methodical methodical processing partner about your frustrations with them, your memories, your dreams, your angst, your worries, your fears, your childhood, the future, or your analysis of their attitude, words, or behaviour.
Give them one to four sentences about what the issue is and leave it at that. Remember, they are a late adopter. They need a chance to digest what you're giving them. The more you give them, they'll minimise or get distracted away from what you needed from them in the first place.
If you experience your partner as “digging their heels in”, there’s a 25% chance the issue is them, and a 75% chance that you’ve gone too fast, missed steps, overwhelmed them to the point of paralysis, and failed to get buy-in.
Processing speeds are not good or bad. They’re not right or wrong. It’s just how we are wired. And we’re all different. It’s how we manage diverse processing speeds which can make or break a relationship.
Book a session today to find out what your processing speeds are and how you can embrace each other’s differences so that you both get your needs met.