“We don’t avoid conversations because they don’t matter. We avoid them because they do matter.”
We humans love to talk. Conversations serve many purposes: to pass the time, to learn about people and the world, to exchange information, to share a laugh. Sometimes the function of discourse is to get what we want: a change in behavior, a raise, a resolution to some disagreement. These higher-stakes conversations can be anxiety-inducing because there is so much that can go wrong. Will our partner get defensive when we ask them not to make jokes at the expense of our family? Will our best friend dismiss us when we say we fear we’ve grown apart? We may bite our tongue and hope whatever’s eating us up inside fades.
“We don’t avoid conversations because they don’t matter,” says Michael Yeomans, an assistant professor at Imperial College Business School who studies decision-making in conversation. “We avoid them because they do matter.”
Steering clear of potentially consequential conversations can be detrimental to relationships. Left unaddressed, even minor concerns can brew into resentment, anger, and depression — often to the complete surprise of the other party. If you never have potentially thorny chats, you risk never learning the appropriate way to navigate interpersonal conflict, and those you interact with never have the opportunity to change their ways.
Hope is not lost. There are tactics you can employ to deftly share your concerns without accusation, embarrassment, or outrage. All that’s needed is a plan, an objective outlook, and an understanding of what your conversation partner will be most receptive to.
What to do before you have the conversation
Before bringing up a gripe or potential point of contention, decide if it’s even worth discussing. Are you just in a bad mood and are likely to feel differently tomorrow? Is the issue something that you’re unable to change and may only ruffle feathers? (Like telling your partner you find their parents annoying.) Take a beat and consider the alternatives to the discussion, suggests Erin Wehrman, an associate professor at Missouri State University whose research focuses on interpersonal and family communication. What’s the best possible outcome from broaching this conversation? What’s the worst? If the worst that could happen is you argue for a few minutes, you may consider bringing up your concerns.
Taking time to reflect may allow you to be more objective in assessing the situation. Try to focus on the facts of the situation, Wehrman says, instead of filling in the blanks and assuming the other person’s intentions. Your cousin made a comment and it made you angry. A neighbor parked in front of your house and you felt disrespected. “My story about why people do the things that they do,” Wehrman says, “that is my story, that’s opinion.” Collecting and presenting the facts gives your conversation partner the opportunity to explain their perspective without needing to go on the defensive.
You may be feeling nervous about angering or disappointing the person you want to speak to — “this is normal, and emotions are very normal,” Wehrman says. “It’s just part of our body’s reaction to stress.” She suggests preparing exactly what you’ll say and then considering a few potential ways the other person might respond. Have a plan for each outcome. If they respond to your concerns defensively, you might take a different approach (more on this later) than if they are validating and receptive. Remind yourself that improving a relationship involves advocating for yourself.
How to prepare for the conversation
If you decide the issue is worth discussing, you’ll want a plan based on your goals. What do you hope to accomplish? Then consider how the other person might react based on different ways of broaching the conversation. You want to avoid venting, for instance, if you’d like the other person to change their behavior in some way, like becoming more mindful of the language they’re using in front of your children. “Try to avoid using them as a listening board for your own emotions because that translates to very different goals,” says Chris Segrin, head of the University of Arizona’s department of communication and a behavioral scientist whose specialty is interpersonal relationships. “I want to get this off my chest, off my mind, versus there’s something I would like to see different, some change.”
Think about the setting, too. You won’t want to initiate a deep conversation at the dinner table with extended family or after they’ve worked a 16-hour shift, says licensed marriage and family therapist Kiaundra Jackson. “If they are in a good mood, if they’re smiling, if they just ate,” she says, “this might be a good time to have that difficult conversation.” Just be sure to ask if they’re open to chatting before interrupting their favorite TV show.
Then make a plan for when you’ll walk away. If anyone starts yelling or name-calling, you’ll suggest taking a breather and revisiting the conversation later, Wehrman says.
Segrin suggests rehearsing what you’ll say ahead of time, either mentally or with a trusted neutral party.
How to start the conversation
Getting the ball rolling can be the most stressful part of any difficult conversation. Be sure to use “I” statements. Telling someone they’ve done something wrong puts the blame on them — and they’ll likely get defensive, Segrin says.
If you’re at a loss, here are some expert-approved statements to help initiate the conversation:
- I see you’re eating dinner right now, but I wanted to talk to you about something. Is now a good time?
- Ever since we hung out last week, I haven’t stopped thinking about that comment you made about [X]. I wanted to talk to you about that because it’s been bothering me.
- Sorry I haven’t brought this up before, but I’d really like to talk about [X].
- I’ve noticed you [react a certain way] when I [do something]. From my perspective, it seems like…
Skills to use to make sure the conversation runs smoothly
There are many trust-building and relationship-strengthening strategies to employ even in the most difficult conversations, Yeomans says. Simply being receptive to the other person’s concerns promotes a culture of respect instead of aggression. “I’m always shocked when people don’t realize that when they are aggressive in a disagreement that other people respond with aggressiveness,” Yeomans says. “If you start off nice, people will take that cue from you.”
To signal receptiveness and promote productive conversations, Yeomans has developed a “receptiveness recipe.” Strategies include actively acknowledging the other person’s perspective, highlighting areas where you both agree, softening your claims by using language like “I think…” or “I see it this way…,” using positive statements such as “I think it’s helpful when…” instead of “You shouldn’t be doing this,” and sharing personal stories. Even when you disagree with a sibling’s view on how to care for your parents, it’s crucial to demonstrate you’ve actually listened to their argument (“I understand where you’re coming from”; “I see your point”), addressed common concerns (“I do agree that Mom needs extra support”), and avoided being too forceful when suggesting alternatives (“I think it would be helpful to find a part-time home aid; I’ve heard from friends in similar situations that their parents still had independence, but assistance when needed”). These tactics can be particularly helpful to have in your back pocket if a loved one approaches you with a thorny conversation you weren’t prepared for.
Don’t expect to persuade your conversation partner to totally see things your way. Instead, aim to learn more about how your loved one feels or views the situation and vice versa, Yeomans says. “I want to understand your perspective” or “I want to understand where you’re coming from” is more constructive than trying to strong-arm someone into changing their mind completely.
Continually check in with yourself and the other person throughout the discussion to weigh whether everyone feels comfortable continuing, Jackson says. Ask if they want to take a break or revisit at another time. If things are getting heated, suggest stepping away for a few minutes to get some air or picking up the conversation again in a few days.
Again, think about the conditions for when you’ll walk away from a combative person. If a line is crossed, you can say, “I can tell this is important to you, but I don’t really want to continue to talk about this right now.”
How to wrap up a difficult conversation
If the conversation reaches a point of resolution, first confirm with whomever you’re talking with that they, too, feel satisfied. “Never assume that you have an agreement with them,” Segrin says. Try asking, “Would you agree that tomorrow you’ll bring waste bags on your walk with your dog?” or “How comfortable are you with the plan to not discuss personal details about our relationship with friends anymore?” Give them the space to express their takeaways from the conversation. “Too many people have failed to wrap these up by just assuming I said my piece, everything’s going to magically fix itself — not really,” Segrin says. “Ask them explicitly, ‘Do you feel like we have come to an agreement about how this might change in the future and how comfortable you are with that?’ See if you’re going to get a buy-in from them.”
Show your appreciation for your conversation partner by thanking them for taking your concerns seriously, even if you didn’t come to an agreement, Wehrman says. (You can say, “I know we don’t see eye-to-eye on this, but I appreciate you letting me have a turn to talk.”)
Always remain focused on the future, Segrin says. Blame is retroactive and does nothing to change what already occurred. “If you want change, that’s a future orientation,” Segrin says. “So keep it on the future and don’t get carried away with pointing fingers about who’s responsible for what happened in the past.”
Three years after demands for police reform, police are solving fewer crimes. What happened?
In 2020, after the police-involved killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, millions of Americans took to the streets for months to demand police reform. Almost three and a half years later, a report of national crime data, compiled and published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as part of the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, indicates that police departments nationwide have changed — for the worse. The data says cops are solving fewer crimes today than they did then.
“The UCR is sort of the best source of crime data that’s released each year,” crime data analyst Jeff Asher tells Vox. “It provides a trove of information on what’s happening nationally.”
Asher says UCR data tells us things like whether murder and other violent crime rates are down; the level of staffing in law enforcement; and the percentage of crimes solved (also known as clearance rates).
“The first thing I look at is the murder clearance rate,” Asher says. “And the murder clearance rate fell from above 60 percent in 2019 to just 52 percent in 2022.”
Asher tells Vox’s daily news podcast, Today, Explained, that murder clearance rates aren’t the only figure that fell: “It was really across the board to some of the lowest levels ever reported for every crime.”
According to Asher’s analysis of the UCR data, “For all violent crimes, the clearance rate went from almost 46 percent in 2019 to 36.7 percent in 2022. The same thing happened with property crimes. Property crime went from a 17 percent clearance rate to a 12 percent clearance rate from 2019 to 2022. And so you look at crime by crime, and with the exception of burglary, every crime has seen really a nosedive in the last three or four years.”
So why are fewer crimes being solved by police departments? Asher says it’s harder to explain the trend than to describe it. But he thinks the data may offer some insights. “There was a substantial decline in the summer of 2020,” he says. “We can relate the drop in clearance rates to everything that’s happened in American criminal justice, in policing, in attitudes toward police since the murder of George Floyd in May of 2020.”
Asher also points out that 2020 began an exodus of officers leaving law enforcement. “The majority of big cities had fewer officers in 2022 than they did in 2019,” Asher says. “If you have fewer officers, you have fewer resources to dedicate to solving crime, which means lower clearance rates. And we do have lots of research that shows that.”
Noel King, host of Today, Explained, wanted to know what law enforcement thought about Asher’s analysis of the FBI’s report. How are officers responding to the suggestion that they’re not doing their jobs as well as they once were? So she talked with Dallas Police Chief Edgardo “Eddie” Garcia, who is also president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association.
A partial transcript of their conversation, edited for length and clarity, follows. Listen to the full conversation wherever you find podcasts.
Noel King
Chief Garcia, we’re chatting today because of an annual FBI report that comes out in the fall. One of the data points in that report has to do with the solve rates for violent crimes. And this year, what the data suggests is that that solve rate fell from about 46 percent in 2019 to about 36.7 percent in 2022, meaning fewer violent crimes are being solved. What do you think is happening here? What do you think is causing this drop?
Chief Eddie Garcia
I mean, the one thing that we have to say is that solving a violent crime is not an easy task. And as departments face staffing shortages now, I know that there are other chiefs [across the nation], as am I, that are very reticent to move bodies out of patrol, as that’s the number one priority of any department. So you have amazing detectives doing an amazing job that are working a lot. They are overworked in some areas. As departments face staffing shortages, we always look at that patrol, there’s no question about it. But, you know, most of us also have a lot of holes to fill in our detective bureaus. And so that is one of the major issues. I believe that if some agencies are seeing drops in their solve rates, I believe we could start there.
Noel King
Why do you think you’re having staffing problems, personnel shortages?
Chief Garcia
What is often not talked about is really in these last few years, beginning in 2020, honorable police officers have not felt supported. They have not felt supported by their community at times. They haven’t felt supported by their administration at times, and they haven’t felt supported by their city governments. There’s probably not another profession of honorable men and women, and I say honorable because I’m not going to sit here and tell you that every police officer deserves to wear this uniform. They do not. But most of our men and women that are working in this profession are honorable men and women. And I don’t care what field you go into, if you don’t feel supported, if people don’t honor the work that you do and sacrifice in your life every day, you know, I don’t know if there are many other professions that have had a defund movement. [And] that’s going to have an impact on honorable men and women joining any profession, much less law enforcement. That’s important.
Noel King
What do you hear specifically from officers? I imagine you sit and you talk to them and you’re alluding to a couple of things. Some real issues have arisen since 2020. The nation goes through an uprising. We see calls to abolish the police altogether. We see slogans like ACAB. When you sit with officers and they tell you it’s harder, what are the specifics? What are they talking about?
Chief Garcia
I started 32 years ago. And I’ll tell you what, being a police officer 32 years ago is different than it is today. There’s a lot more on officers’ plates, quite frankly. Officers are asked to do too much, to deal with a lot of the social ills that are impacting crime. And officers want to get compensated fairly. They feel they’re overworked, oftentimes. And so those are some of the issues that I hear.
But, you know, one of the disconnects that I really believe is occurring now, and I say this because I’m not a stay-in-the-office chief, but a lot of this division is not being driven by neighborhoods. There’s not a neighborhood in the city of Dallas — and I can speak for my other colleagues as well, regardless of language spoken, racial makeup, or economic status — that I have ever heard the words, “We want to see less of you.” It never happens.
And in fact, oftentimes it’s our communities of color that plead with me for more officers. I have invited people to come to community meetings with me where they will hear my community let me have it if they are not seeing patrol officers and presence in their neighborhood. And oftentimes it’s our most vulnerable communities, and it’s not often, but sometimes they’ll accuse police departments of providing more police services to other, more affluent areas than the areas of need. And so there’s a real big disconnect. And I think people need to get out of their offices and go into neighborhood meetings with police chiefs to hear the same information that I hear at every community meeting that I go to.
Noel King
I think the reason that FBI data struck a chord, Chief Garcia, is that there is a sense in this country, in parts of this country, that police have stopped doing their jobs. Even if you understand why, you kind of feel like the police are doing less now, if morale is low, that certainly can happen. Do you think there’s any truth to the sentiment that police are pulling back because they feel overworked, they feel disrespected? And they feel like doing this job is just going to get you in trouble? I mean, what are you hearing?
Chief Garcia
You hit the nail on the head. That is absolutely an issue. They want to ensure that when chaos ensues, they’re going to be judged fairly. And one of the dynamics, if the pendulum swings too far, oftentimes officers will feel, is this worth it? Listen, I’ll tell you this, proactive policing is absolutely necessary. I can make an officer answer a 911 call for service, that I can do, but I can’t make officers be proactive. And the only reason honorable men and women will be proactive is if they feel supported. So when officers don’t feel supported, when they don’t have morale, what it causes oftentimes is a community to go to their corner, the police go to their corner, and yet there’s no one in the middle keeping us safe.
And those are things that come not just from my officers or other people that I’ve spoken to, but from community members themselves. And so certainly that exists. You know, we have a crime plan here in the city of Dallas and in our offices. I go around the country and I talk to individuals about what we’re trying to do differently in Dallas with the crime plan. The first thing that I say to people is, “Please do not screw up a perfectly good crime plan [by not having] your finger on the pulse.” [If] your men and women don’t feel supported, if they don’t feel they’re going to be treated fairly once chaos ensues, there’s no crime plan that’s going to work. So your point is 100 percent valid. And that’s something that we need to work hard on.
Noel King
What do you think it’s going to take to turn this around?
Chief Garcia
It takes strong leadership. It takes strong support from city government. I have a very supportive city council, which absolutely is necessary. I have an incredibly supportive city manager. And quite frankly, I have arguably the most supportive mayor of public safety I think there is in the country. And it starts with that. It starts with great community trust and great community understanding. We have to build the department. We can’t lose sight of the fact that we need to grow. Nothing will ever amount to having a human being sitting at a desk, sitting in a patrol car, offering that and providing that service. So we need to grow and solve rates will then increase. And to your point, 90 to 100 percent [solve rates] is definitely something we should strive for. But it’s not necessarily realistic.
There are several reasons. Communities don’t speak to us. One of the reasons [they don’t speak to us] is lack of accountability in the system, in keeping violent criminals in custody. We have witnesses in the city of Dallas that fear for their lives when they come forward, only to see the individual that they came forward to be a witness against — to see them back out on the street does not lend credibility to the system. And it certainly doesn’t make them feel safe when they come forward. So we have that to worry about, which is a humongous issue. We need accountability. And that’s hugely important. That trust the community has in its police department will have people come forward to speak to us about what’s occurring because we can’t solve these crimes alone oftentimes. You know, the community is not a monolith. Obviously, we have to get better as professionals. Little question about it. But in my experience, at nearly 32 years and now going into the new year, I’ll be in my ninth year as a police chief, whether in California, here in Dallas, our communities have never and still do not want us to go away.
Plus, how to make sure you get your fair share of a mortgage investment in the case of a divorce.
On the Money is a monthly advice column. If you want advice on spending, saving, or investing — or any of the complicated emotions that may come up as you prepare to make big financial decisions — you can submit your question on this form. Here, we answer two questions asked by Vox readers, which have been edited and condensed.
I struggled with my mental health over the past few years, and as a result have racked up a considerable amount of credit card debt. I’m also a freelancer, so my ability to work and increase my income depends somewhat on my mental health. I’ve gotten to a point with my mental health where I can put in more hours to increase my income, but I’m finding tackling this mountain of debt to be daunting, especially since my income fluctuates month to month. Any advice on how to dig myself out of this hole?
If you’re looking for tried-and-true methods of tackling debt, consider the snowball method or the avalanche method. Both involve putting as much of your income as possible toward a single outstanding debt while making the minimum payments on all other debts — and once your first outstanding balance is paid off in full, you can repeat the process with a second debt.
The snowball method starts with the smallest debt and works its way up. The avalanche method starts with the highest-interest debt and works its way down. Either method can be successful, in part because it allows you to successively increase the speed at which you pay off your subsequent debts. The snowball gets bigger as every credit card is paid off; the avalanche increases in strength as you eliminate your high-interest balances. Both of these methods allow you to see rapid results, which is one of the reasons they work so well.
Since your income fluctuates, you may wonder how much money you can afford to put toward your debt every month — and you might end up reducing the amount of money you put toward your debt, in part because you might be anxious about having enough leftover cash to tackle your future financial needs.
Here’s how I solved that problem when I was in a similar situation:
About 10 years ago, I had $17,000 in credit card debt. While some of the purchases I made on those credit cards were undoubtedly discretionary, it’s worth noting that much of my debt — like many of our outstanding debts — came from a mismatch between income and necessities. I had just started earning enough money as a freelance writer to begin to seriously tackle my debt situation, and my parents offered me a $14,000 no-interest loan (the maximum they could give me without tax implications) to help me pay everything off as quickly as possible while avoiding credit card interest. I paid my parents back in $800-a-month installments, and paid off the rest of the debt using the snowball method.
To help ensure that I would have enough available cash to meet my financial obligations, I set up three savings accounts in addition to my checking account. Every time I got a freelance payment, I put 20 percent into the savings account marked “taxes,” 20 percent into the account marked “debt,” and 10 percent into the account marked “savings.”
It took me 19 months to pay off my debt. I was in Seattle, in 2015, renting a converted hotel room with no kitchen (my landlord told me to wash my dishes in a bus tub and dump the dirty water down the toilet, but that’s another story) while earning $40,000 the first year and $60,000 the second. Since I was living on 50 percent of my income and putting the rest toward savings, taxes, and debt payment, that meant I effectively lived on $20,000 the first year and $30,000 the second — and increasing my freelance income gave me the opportunity to move into a better apartment without slowing down my debt repayment plan.
Putting in more hours is a good way to increase your freelance income, and I’m glad you’re in a position to put more time and mental energy toward taking on assignments, but I’d recommend putting at least some of those hours into finding higher-paying clients. The kinds of freelance clients that pay the best are often the kinds of clients that have policies built in to allow employees and contractors to manage their workloads without becoming overwhelmed by demands and deadlines, which could be a net positive for both your financial and mental health.
In return, you’ll need to be in a position where you can make those deadlines even when you’re struggling more than usual. I don’t know which mental health challenges you’re dealing with right now, and I don’t know how they affect your ability to complete your work. You may need to budget your time the way you do your finances and set aside a buffer of hours every week/month that can allow you to take mental health days without falling into deadline debt. You may also want to budget more time for sleep, food prep, and relaxation — or, depending on where you’re currently living, budget time and money to move into a better apartment — and, if you’re anything like the person who wrote me last month, you’ll want to avoid impulse buys.
From there, all you have to do is set aside a certain percentage of each paycheck for debt repayment, set aside another percentage for savings (just in case you have a few lower-than-expected earning months), put a chunk of each paycheck into an account labeled “freelance taxes” (20 percent is a good start, but 30 percent is even better), and then use the snowball or avalanche method to pay off each of your outstanding balances.
You’ll be out of your debt hole faster than you realize.
Is there a way to get a mortgage together and keep track of how much each of you invested so you can get back your fair share of the investment in the event of divorce?
You’ll want to talk to a mortgage lawyer about how to draw up this kind of documentation, which will likely involve an ownership contract in addition to your mortgage and title. The contract should allow you to specify each partner’s equity in the home, as well as the rights to which each of you are entitled in the case of a divorce. Since many states automatically treat marital homes as 50/50 assets, getting your documentation in place as soon as possible is the best way to ensure that you can divide the value of your home proportionally if you need to.
That said, there’s more to the value of a home than the initial investment. Your spouse could argue that their paid and unpaid contributions to the upkeep of the home should be factored into future equity distributions, and if one of you puts more of your income toward day-to-day household expenses — child care, for example, or groceries — you could justifiably claim that these financial contributions should also be treated as investments in the shared home.
This is why many states — and many banks — treat homes and mortgages as both shared property and shared responsibility. It’s also why I checked in with the Chase Home Lending team to confirm that I was offering the right advice. They agreed with my recommendation to consult a mortgage lawyer and added the following insight:
Even when a divorce is finalized, your lender may still view both spouses as responsible for the loan until one has been removed or the property has been sold. To resolve this, spouses can also consider refinancing in order to remove one party from the mortgage and title. This process is easiest if done prior to filing for divorce; however, it’s still possible if you’ve already filed.
Talk to a lawyer, talk to your bank, and make sure you understand both your individual rights and your states’ marital property laws — and if you’re already concerned that your future divorce might be so acrimonious that you won’t get your fair share, you may want to avoid both marriage and mortgages.