Lack of Communication in a Relationship? Decode Your Style

Jason: It’s gonna be easy for me to say, “The reason we can’t communicate is you don’t get it.” And, and I think if we both do that, we’re stuck.

Dr. Lisa: Okay, I’m gonna confess something on a podcast that I probably shouldn’t confess on a podcast, particularly this podcast, but I’m gonna do it anyway. You know, I’m a marriage and family therapist. I’ve been doing this work for, like, 20 years. I talk to paying clients all the time about how to improve their communication, and communication can still, to this day, sometimes go sideways in my own relationship. Like, what I think I’m saying is not what my husband is hearing, and sometimes his responses to me are not always in alignment with what I would like them to be.

Jason: You know, any time that there’s a problem and we make up that the problem’s all attributed to somebody else, I think it’s a little bit dangerous. You know? Not, not to say it can’t sometimes be all somebody else’s fault, but I just think that’s less likely than we might say it.

Dr. Lisa: And so, you know, here’s the deal. 100% of adults who have been in a relationship with someone for more than six weeks can relate to this experience, and I think that is why we need to be talking about communication over and over again, because this is such an opportunity for growth for all of us. And today we are taking a bit of a, a different stance, an important one. We’re talking about what might be the missing link to all of this, which are communication styles, communication types, the fact that different people need different things out of communication, and that cracking this code is what can really help us all improve. So that is what you’re gonna be learning about today.

Jason: So if you’re my person and I say, “Here are the facts as I see them,” and, and you say, “Well, actually, I’ve got a different set of facts,” then I wanna learn from you. Okay. Then I wanna say, “Okay. Well, let’s talk about your facts.”

Dr. Lisa: And if this is your first time tuning in, I could not be more thrilled that you found me, that you’re here. I’m Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby. This is a love, happiness, and success podcast. If we have not yet met, I myself, I’m a marriage and family therapist, a board-certified coach. I’m a licensed psychologist, founder of Growing Self, and this is the show where we are talking about real, practical, evidence-based ways to make your whole life better, including your relationships. And on today’s show, I couldn’t be more thrilled to introduce you to a very special guest, Jason Van Ruler. Jason is a licensed psychotherapist, and he’s the author of a brand-new book, Discovering Your Communication Type. He has been doing this for 15 years and has deep insight into these communication patterns, communication types, and he’s here today to share his wisdom with us. So welcome, Jason.

Jason: Thank you so much for having me. I’ve been looking forward to this.

Dr. Lisa: Well, thank you for being here. And I hope that personal disclosure at the very beginning was okay. I mean, you’re, you’re married too, from what I understand.

Jason: I am. Yeah, I’ve just never struggled with communication. You know, that’s never happened to me, ever… I’m kidding, of course. We didn’t even wait six weeks. When you said six weeks, I thought, “We didn’t wait six weeks in our relationship.” We had communication problems two weeks in. We were early to it.

Dr. Lisa: Well, you know, and I just mention that because, like, some people in the business, they talk about it like they have all this stuff figured out. And I think you and I in the business, it can still go sideways so easily. I’d love to just dive into all of this with you — what you’ve learned over the years about communication types, how they play a role in what happens in the space between two people, and even though nobody’s doing it perfectly, what are some of the best practices that can help us improve the odds it’ll go better?

Jason: I like that. That is a great goal for today.

Dr. Lisa: So where should we begin? What do you think is the easiest entry point to understand your work?

Jason: Yeah. I mean, I think for a lot of people, they maybe don’t even realize there are different types. And for yourself, myself, probably a lot of people in the therapy coaching space, we’d probably say, “Yeah, well, there are definitely different types,” but we’re not always great at naming what that is.

Dr. Lisa: You know what? Just to say, I’m a marriage and family therapist, and I never learned anything about different communication types. It’s only been many years after that, learning things like theory of personality, that I think influences communication styles. But generally speaking, it’s, you know, what is the problem? There could be a psychopathology thing, or it could be what is the dysfunctional part of the system? So don’t assume there’s common knowledge about communication types. I think we should start at the very beginning.

Jason: Yeah, so what started this book for me was getting to work with a lot of people doing retreats and workshops. Being in that space, there’s so much wisdom because you’re learning from so many people at once. What would happen is I would try to teach people empathy. Empathy’s tricky for most people. And so I would say, “Okay, this might be a way you could communicate empathy.” And what I would watch is that people would try to repeat what I said. They’d go, “Okay, well, he said it, I’ll say the same thing.” And I would look down the line and I would see for some people that landed perfectly. They just completely parroted what I said to their partner, and their partner was like, “This is awesome. I’ve wanted to hear this.” But there were some other couples where it didn’t land at all, even though they had just said the thing I said. And it started me kind of wondering. If you’ve ever talked with someone where you know what you meant, you know what you wanted them to hear, but they walked away with something wildly different — you know that feeling. It really led me down a path of, “Let’s figure this out. Why did that work here and it didn’t work there?”

Dr. Lisa: Yeah, no, that’s a great point. And even something you’d think is as basic as empathy — an accurate understanding of how someone else is feeling and the ability to acknowledge that. For some people, that’s very meaningful, but what you saw is for other people, that also didn’t land. So then what did you learn? What was different about those couples where empathy was not the coin of the realm?

Jason: I think they were speaking in a way that the other person understood deeply. They were communicating to their type. Especially the challenge around empathy is being seen. How do we see somebody best? We speak to them in the language they speak. What I found is that where that worked was where a person really understood their partner and what communication was about for them. Early on, I kind of thought of it as different accents. I’m from the Midwest — I’ve got a bit of a Midwest accent. If you were to go to New York or LA, we all have a little bit different accent that’s really born and raised with us based on where we’re from. That made a lot of sense to me because our communication types are like that — there’s something we’re kind of given in childhood that we develop in our family systems, and then we end up living those out. That’s the language we most naturally speak, especially when we’re under pressure.

Dr. Lisa: Yeah. Family culture, the way communication was conducted in our family of origin, is so important. The life experiences of healthy versus unhealthy feeling communication. And I think wiring can have an impact too. Would it be okay to ask you, just even for a quick overview — I think you said five primary communication types?

Jason: Yeah, so there are five, and I always preface it with there’s no one better than the others — although we all think our own is the best, obviously. They’re all full of strengths and opportunities. They follow the acronym PATHS, P-A-T-H-S, and they’re really the why behind our communication. So the P is the peacemaker. What it means in our communication type is when I’m talking to you, I want you and I to have harmony at the end of our conversation. Even if there wouldn’t naturally be, or maybe there shouldn’t be, I’m always scanning as we’re talking going, “Is she doing okay? Are we okay? Is this gonna end the way I want it to?”

Jason: The A is the advocate, and their communication is really about what’s fair, what’s just, and what’s right. They’re scanning the conversation going, “Was that moral? Was that just? Am I sticking up for the person that needs me to stick up for them? Am I saying the thing that needs to be said?” They make great friends because if you’ve ever been in a space where you’re like, “Is someone gonna say something?” — the advocate’s gonna say something. They definitely will. The next one is the thinker. The thinker is more of your internal processor. They’re the person who wants to get it right. They want to be accurate, precise, factual. If they were on your show and gave you a stat and said, “Hey, it’s 29%,” but it was actually 24, they might lie awake at night going, “How could I have done that? I was percents off.” The H is the harbor, and harbors are about their feelings and others’. A lot of people in the therapy space, coaching, not everybody but they have a leaning towards that. If you and I said, “Hey, let’s just riff on our feelings,” I could do that for a long time. And then the last one is the S, and the spark is the person who brings the energy. They’re charismatic, kind of magnetic. They like to go really fast, and they struggle slowing down to deal with things that aren’t as fun.

Dr. Lisa: Well, I have to ask you now what your communication type is, don’t I? I’m, like, legally obligated to.

Jason: Yeah, it is Harbor. So what you get from the assessment is there’s a primary and a secondary. That primary is our go-to. Now, we can adapt different styles based on our environment. Sometimes we’re in an environment where we have to adapt and be something different because that’s what it requires. But we all kind of have that primary, and then we all have a secondary. For me, I’m a Harbor Thinker — I lead with feelings, and then I kind of go, “Is it accurate, factual? Does it add up?” I am married to a Thinker Advocate, and so we’ve got some things in common, but we also see some things differently.

Dr. Lisa: Hmm. And so it’s not just communication style — you see things differently. It impacts worldview. Is that right?

Jason: Yeah, because it’s what we talk about.

Dr. Lisa: Yeah. Well, as you’re describing these, I could see there being certainly many positive things and many strengths to each communication type, but also some things that could — that flip side, that light and dark of the same thing. Where a peacemaker might also be kind of avoidant or potentially passive-aggressive, or an advocate could be like your champion in one situation, but also getting upset with people when they’re not following the rules that they have decided on. Have you seen that in your work, that kind of both/and?

Jason: Yeah, you nailed it. It’s both of those things, and what I say is it’s a strength and an opportunity. For the thinker, it’s sometimes the facts aren’t the most important things, and sometimes they have to narrate their process because they kind of go internal instead of letting people know where they’re at and talking about feelings. On the harbor side, feelings aren’t always the things that should drive the conversation. Sometimes we need to have conversations about other things. I’m kind of known as a bad dinner party guest, because when I meet someone, I’m like, “Hey, tell me about your mother and your relationship as a child.” And these people are just like, “Can we just talk about the weather, Jason?”

Dr. Lisa: That time we hung out with Jason, right?

Jason: Yeah. My friends who are hosting, they’re just like, “Jason, come on. Can you please…” And so, you know, it’s a lighthearted example, but sometimes we have to adapt and say it’s not all gonna be about that. And then the spark, their opportunity is to slow down a little bit, because sometimes they’re just running through life. As they run through life, that’s great — they’ve got good momentum — but sometimes they run and people get left behind, and so their job is to include some people with that.

Dr. Lisa: Yeah. Well, as you’re talking through these, of course, I’m naturally thinking like, “So how do you figure out what personality type you are?” I think you mentioned an assessment, and I absolutely wanna hear more about that. As you were describing them, I’m probably that spark type a lot — I like to go fast, I’m always off to the next thing. But I also related to what you were talking about with the peacemaker part. Like when it’s important and when I care about someone, I tend to prioritize the way they feel. I need to think more about all of this. What would be the best way for people to first get clear about their own communication type, and then of course get clear about their partner? Were you saying that you have an assessment, or is it more things to think about?

Jason: Yeah. So there’s an assessment in the book that you can take, and there’s also one online. It’s a free assessment, and it will actually rate you in your categories. That’s a great start. I always say a good communicator kind of understands themselves. A great one knows themselves and others. I think the first step is learn a bit more about where you’re at and how you show up, and then learn about the people you love, because it helps us approach important conversations differently.

Dr. Lisa: Yeah. I think that when I get sideways with my husband is needing really to modify the way that I talk to him or to other people around what they will take on board. I could see how that is incredibly important. Before we go into actualizing all this stuff, would you be willing to share an example even from your own relationship about the combination of communication styles you mentioned you and your wife having? What does it look like when people with different communication styles are missing each other? And perhaps some of the changes you’ve made in your own life?

Jason: Yeah, totally. I’m happy to share, and I’ve been married long enough, I’ve got a lot of examples I could use. So, one kind of thing that’s happened a lot in our experience — I get to do new things and projects, I get to speak different places. So I would learn about something I’d be excited about, and I would come home and I would go to my wife and we’d be sitting down and I would proceed to tell her all about my feelings, all about what was happening. I’d say, “I’m so excited and I feel this and I feel like it’s working out,” and just feeling, feeling, feeling. She would hear that, and because she’s a thinker, she would go, “Well, what are the details? So you’ve got a speaking engagement, you’re really excited about it. Where are you speaking? When are the dates? What are the times?” She would go right to the details. Before I really did the work on the book and dug into this, I would hear that as an attack on me.

Dr. Lisa: Oh no.

Jason: So I would go, “Well, I’m so excited. I’m telling you about my feelings and you’re making it go sideways because now you want to start an Excel spreadsheet and talk about all the details. I don’t want to talk about the details, I want to talk about the feelings.”

Dr. Lisa: Right. And she’s like, “But you’re supposed to know these details, and maybe you hadn’t. I don’t know what hotel I’m staying at.”

Jason: I hadn’t even thought about it. And it’s not particularly enjoyable for me to talk about that. But it is something that matters to her, that she talks about. For her, the details matter a lot. When the details are in order, she can be excited. So it’s kind of like that happens first, then the feelings come. When that would happen, what I would make up is that we weren’t on the same team anymore, that I was excited and she couldn’t be excited for me — and why did I share this? Because she just had this reaction that I didn’t really want her to have. She would exit that conversation feeling the same. She’d go, “I am excited. I’m trying to love you well. I just have some questions about details and the facts, and I don’t understand why you’re upset.” In that moment, we would lose each other. We’re best friends. We’re doing life together. We’re partners. In that moment, my best friend would kind of turn into something else. Learning these different types and learning that she’s different than me has helped me to stop seeing that as something attacking and just see it as that’s how she communicates. So what I started to do when I would come home and be really excited is I’d lead with the facts, the details, the logistics, and then I’d say, “Hey, can we switch gears?” And she would go, “Yeah, totally, we can switch gears.” We had the best conversations, but I just had to know how to speak to what she needed to hear, and she knows what I need to hear. And when we both make space for that, we actually connect.

Dr. Lisa: Oh, thank you so much for sharing that example. The level of self-awareness that you were each able to have — nobody’s wrong, right? But being able to just understand, yeah, this is how I think about things, how I communicate, what I want to have happen in conversations. So just having a lot of awareness of yourself, but also the other person. And then it’s almost like being able to take turns in a really intentional way so that you’re each getting that.

Jason: Yeah. And also — if we’re supposed to be best friends, how did we lose each other? That was kind of the question that drove a lot of that. We’re supposed to be best friends. What happened that made us not?

Dr. Lisa: Yeah. Because of frustration and that we are not connecting, we are not speaking the same language. What does this mean? It can, in a very real way, erode a connection after a while, especially if you don’t know why. That secure bond had started maybe to fray. Like, are you still my best friend? What’s going on here?

Jason: And don’t you wish we made up good stories about why it happens? A lot of times our narrative about that experience is not usually very positive towards the other person.

Dr. Lisa: What I would love to hear your thoughts about — being a podcast host and a therapist and a human — there is this really weird thing happening in our culture right now. It’s accelerating over the last few years. There is this story in the air specifically about men and their capacity to be emotionally intelligent, self-aware humans, communicators. There’s this weird stereotyping about who men are, and what I have seen in my therapy practice is sometimes women make up stories around the capacity of their partner. Like, they’ll come in being like, “I think maybe he has autism spectrum disorder.” No, he does not actually. I’d love to get more of your thoughts about that, particularly from a male perspective when it comes to communication and communication types, and how to maybe manage some of the storytelling that can happen in relationships partially as a product of our culture right now.

Jason: Yeah, this is — being on social media, I’ve seen a lot of this, and it has become a pretty powerful narrative about men and their emotional capacity to really have these discussions. What I think is, any time that there’s a problem and we make up that the problem’s all attributed to somebody else, I think it’s a little bit dangerous. Not to say it can’t sometimes be all somebody else’s fault, but I just think that’s less likely than we might say it.

Jason: When we get into those waters, I just think that’s dangerous territory because sometimes it reflects a lack of awareness on our part. Even tying it to what we’re talking about today, I think a lot of men really connect with the thinker, and a lot of women connect with harbor. Neither one is right or wrong, but if I’m a thinker and you’re a harbor or vice versa, it’s gonna be easy for me to say, “The reason we can’t communicate is you don’t get it.” Now what’s true is each party could say that. If we both do that, we’re stuck.

Jason: I think men and women have strengths and weaknesses in their communication that aren’t universal, but we all have that. That’s just part of being human. So we have to really watch out because with our brains, we always want to label something because that seems really convenient, and then we can kind of make it true. But if that labeling means that we miss connection with somebody we care about, that’s not really a win for anyone.

Dr. Lisa: Yeah. Absolutely. We can’t stereotype, we can’t pigeonhole, we can’t generalize. Certainly in my own life, my husband, I think, fits that harbor communication type. I have worked with so many men who are very emotionally attuned, more so than female partners. I think it can look like many different things. We have to not assume who people are or how they feel or what they care about based on these superficial gender demographics.

Jason: Let them teach you. Yeah, let them teach you their capacity. Sometimes what I’ll see with a couple or a team is someone will say, “Well, they don’t have the emotional capacity for this. They’re a guy, they don’t really get it.” And I’ll say, “Let’s give them space to actually communicate and see.” What I find sometimes is that people are quickly labeled and they’re given a very little amount of time to talk, and then of course they don’t have a whole lot to say. Sometimes we just have to let that person teach us about their type. And guess what? Most people are willing to do that. It’s got nothing to do with capacity.

Dr. Lisa: Yeah. And I’m also thinking right now about what universally happens in distressed relationships. There are distressed relationship dynamics that will always take over. One person tends to be the pursuer wanting to connect and talk, and sometimes that looks and feels and sounds like hostility and criticism, a lot of energy, which then will create a withdrawal — like, “It is not safe for me to tell you how I feel actually, so I’m not gonna do that.” Which then of course makes the other person pursue. So it’s like a chicken-and-the-egg kind of thing. I’m wondering how you tease apart what is a natural communication style versus what is a product of a relationship that is not feeling good for either of them.

Jason: Yeah, that’s the challenge. If there’s been that unresolved stuff, or as I would call it, residue — relational residue — how do we deal with that? A lot of times what it is is, even the example I gave in my own marriage, we just missed each other so many times that now it’s become something much bigger. So what I try to do in my office is to get a couple to speak to each other in the way the other one listens for the first time. Because it gives them some hope. They go, “Oh, actually, we maybe could do this.” So many times we just get in these loops where we know how to do it in the way that doesn’t work, but we have no idea about the alternative. What I want to demonstrate for them is there is a different way. We can’t undo what’s happened, but if we can really capture what the experience was for the other person and communicate that in a way that they can hear it, it starts to open some doors.

Dr. Lisa: Hmm. At some point I would love for you to take us into some examples of what it might look like or sound like in action. Do you feel like you need to know your own communication style before you do that with somebody else?

Jason: Yeah, I feel like it’s very helpful because it informs us about probably how the other person’s hearing us. The dinner party story — I wouldn’t have necessarily thought that was a problem. To me, I’m talking to somebody about something I want to talk about, I like to go deep. All of that to me is just a Friday night. Had I not known that about myself, I probably would just approach situations assuming everybody liked that.

Dr. Lisa: Well, yeah. You’re offering your conversation partner something that would probably be so meaningful and valuable to you. For somebody to come and engage with you that way is like, “This is the best conversation I’ve had in a long time” — if somebody’s like, “So how did you feel when your dad…” Versus somebody else, they’re like, “I don’t know what to say right now.” So for people listening — of course everybody after they finish listening to this podcast is going to go to your website or read the book and take the assessment to find out for sure. But what are one or two questions that would be like, “Yeah, that’s probably me,” for each of the personality types?

Jason: Yeah, of course. For that peacemaker: if it is really hard for you to say no, if it’s hard for you to introduce friction into a conversation, if it’s important to you that when you’re communicating, you can wrap it up with a nice bow at the end, there’s probably some peacemaker.

Jason: On the advocate side: if when I’m talking to somebody, what I really want to have happen is that they see me as a person who’s fair and just and moral, and I want to see them as that, and I want to catch them if they’re not and ask about it — probably leaning towards the advocate.

Jason: The thinker, usually the thinkers self-identify pretty quickly because they’re like, “Yep, that’s me.” The facts, the logical, the practical — they’re like, “Totally.” On the harbor, if you are kind of feelings-driven in conversation, even just noticing the words you use, if you use a lot of feeling words, that’s probably a good sign. And sparks are fun because sparks are usually kind of the life of the party and they know it. If you’re the person where you’re like, “I can talk to anybody anywhere, and it’s always fun and it’s kind of moving and it’s great” — you can kind of identify. I think we see ourselves in so many of these, but I think there’s one we kind of come back to. And one of the things I’ve noticed with a lot of people who’ve taken the assessment is a lot of times our primary has a lot to do with what our family needed from us as communicators. I grew up in the Midwest — we’re not really known for being big feeling people. So I grew up in a family where there wasn’t a lot of discussion of that. And so it sort of felt like — and this is all subconscious — what do I add to the conversation? Well, this is the thing not being said, I can add. So what I see for a lot of people is their primary is really driven by what was needed and how did I learn to communicate that way?

Dr. Lisa: Yeah. You became the feeling voice of the entire family.

Jason: Yeah. And then for other people, sometimes advocates, they’re like, “Someone needed to say something. In our family system, there was no one talking about the elephant in the room, and somebody needed to, so I did.”

Dr. Lisa: Okay. So Jason, I’d like to pick this back up. What I’d love to hear you talk about is how other people perceive you — or to give people listening visibility into how other people see them as communicators in relationships. And then what I’d love to do is talk about how to communicate according to your partner’s style. Can we do that?

Jason: Absolutely.

Jason: Yeah. That’s such a good thing to note, because there’s what we meant and there’s what people experienced, and there’s often a gap there. And the bigger the gap, the more likely the conflict. So we need to understand the gap. What I hear when I’m working with people — if you’re with a peacemaker, you might say, “They don’t want to have the hard conversation, Jason. They don’t want to get into the thing that might lead to conflict.” With the advocate, the thing might be they always want to get into the hard conversation. They’re always wanting to say the thing. For the thinker, sometimes the experience of them is that they’re kind of removed or checked out, and that they’re very succinct to the point that there’s not a lot of conversation.

Dr. Lisa: Hmm.

Jason: For the harbor — we could phone my wife and ask her — a lot of times the thing is, sometimes it’s about the feelings and the feelings change. So we might communicate about this feeling today and that one tomorrow, and it’s a little tough to keep up. And about the spark: they’re kind of a good time friend, a good time communicator, and when it gets difficult, they sometimes exit. I’ve got a really good friend, and they’re a spark as they should be, because they’re just a spark through and through. But if I’m talking to them and I say something negative, it’s pretty much a cue for them to get off the phone. If we’re having a great 10-minute discussion and everything’s amazing, and then I go, “Eh, yeah, I’ve got to do my taxes on Saturday,” they’re like, “Okay. Well, take care.” It just immediately — well, the energy’s gone. This is not fun. I’m out. That’s not the message they’re trying to communicate, but that’s often how they’re experienced.

Dr. Lisa: Okay, so related to that — what you’re describing in some ways is how bad it can feel to be communicating with someone when it feels like they don’t care or they don’t really understand you or how you feel. For a thinker or a spark, there’s a vulnerability there. You can seem like you don’t care, you’re not invested, you’re not engaged, you’re not trustworthy maybe in some ways. Versus — a peacemaker too, you just won’t engage. You can’t connect with that person on a deep level.

Jason: Won’t always say the thing.

Dr. Lisa: Yeah, like a real barrier to authentic intimacy is that if somebody just won’t even engage with you, that feels bad, or avoidant. But then with the advocate, and also potentially that harbor big-feeling person, it can be, on both of those maybe, intense — or with an advocate, uncomfortably conflictual sometimes. Like, “No, here, here’s why you’re wrong,” that kind of thing.

Jason: And enjoying it. Kind of enjoying the back and forth.

Dr. Lisa: Yeah.

Jason: So if that’s not your style, that can feel like a lot.

Dr. Lisa: Well, that’s true. And there are certain personality styles where they like it. Some people are coming in with a goal of reducing conflict in a relationship, but they’re like, “No, I like it when we do this.”

Jason: Want more of this. This is wonderful. I’ll take seconds. Yeah, this is good.

Dr. Lisa: Let’s do it again. But with a harbor, there could be this intense — well, and to your point, things change. So if you’re trying to understand somebody in a factual way and then their feelings change, then there’s like, “I don’t know what’s happening anymore.” But I know from my own experience with my husband, there can be these big feelings. Things are very important and deeply felt. And sometimes if you’re in different places with that, you’re like, “Well, it’s okay.” But it’s not okay. It’s not okay, Jason.

Jason: It’s not okay.

Dr. Lisa: Yeah. Okay.

Jason: But yeah, what you’re highlighting is so good, because it’s not like we’re trying to be hurtful. It’s just we all see it differently. So in that space, it’s easy to make up a story about the other person being against us when they just don’t really get it the way we do because they’re different. And that’s a great quality. Even in my marriage, I’ve grown so much and been so strengthened by my wife’s differences. Some days they’re not my favorite, right? But ultimately, once you get through the tough stuff, it’s like on the other side of it, it makes me better. So I don’t think we actually want everybody to be the same. We want to embrace the difference, but sometimes it’s kind of tricky.

Dr. Lisa: Yeah. Well, especially if you don’t have visibility into those differences. What a fantastic skill. I’m thinking about, in the spectrum of emotional intelligence skills, the adaptability and flexibility that comes when you have that awareness of yourself. But you can also, in communication with anyone, understand: here’s who this person is, and here’s what I probably need to offer in terms of communication in order to have a bond with this particular genre of human. You were talking a few minutes ago that one of the interventions you’ll do in your couples practice is set people up in enactments — where you get people to practice communicating in the language of their partner. Could we go into that? Give examples of what that might look like for those of us thinking, “Okay, my person is this way.” So what does it look like? What does it sound like?

Jason: Yeah. And this is really impactful for couples, because sometimes they’ve never gotten to hear it that way. So what we want to set up is: okay, what are the hallmarks of their type? So what do I know? We’ve described those a little bit — if I know that about them, how do I speak to that point? This is really impactful too when it comes to if someone’s been hurt and you’re trying to apologize or trying to speak to some woundedness.

Dr. Lisa: Like languages. Yeah.

Jason: Because if I’m gonna speak to a thinker that I’ve hurt, and I’m gonna tell them all about my feelings about their hurt, a thinker’s probably not gonna resonate with that.

Dr. Lisa: Gonna make it worse.

Jason: A little flat. Yeah, it’s gonna fall a little flat. If anything, I might even overwhelm their communication where they’re just like, “I’m not really sure what to say here.” So what I might have a couple practice is: okay, if they’re a thinker, I’m gonna speak to what’s factually true, what’s actually going on with precision. When I kind of open with, “Hey, this is the thing I did. This is how it happened. This is when it happened. I acknowledge this was the mistake” — when I can kind of get that level of precision, a thinker goes, “Okay, they get me. They get it. They’re starting to understand what happened.”

Dr. Lisa: Okay, one follow-up question. In my experiences, sometimes for relational things, facts are very subjective. So in that scenario, are you seeking to communicate facts that the thinker believes? Because it’s not like math. There’s not an objective reality around what happened. There’s different points of view. So are you trying to tell the thinker, almost like, validating the facts as they see them?

Jason: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I’m trying to state the facts as I’m aware of them, and then I want to work them out with you. So if you’re my person and I say, “Here are the facts as I see them,” and you say, “Well, actually, I’ve got a different set of facts,” then I want to learn from you. Then I want to say, “Okay, well, let’s talk about your facts.” Which is different because a lot of times if we didn’t know that you needed that, we might even argue it, or we might just try to skip over it while you’re still stuck at that place saying, “I really can’t move forward until we do this.” It goes a different way too if you’re a Harbor with feelings. A Harbor can get really stuck if you won’t honor how they felt. So if you come into that conversation and say to a Harbor, “Hey, here are the facts as I experienced them,” and you don’t mention anything about the feeling, a Harbor will go, “Wait, wait, wait. I’m not moving forward until you’ve said the feeling I needed to hear.”

Dr. Lisa: So give us an example. You’re in a relationship with a harbor and what does that sound like? “I understand that you felt really angry in that situation” — how would you frame that?

Jason: That’s great. It’s acknowledging that feeling for them. So it’s either saying, “I anticipate, I imagine you must have felt…” It’s naming a feeling. Or, and sometimes this is a struggle for people to go, “I don’t know what they felt.” I go, “Awesome. Ask them. What did they feel?” So it’s even just opening that conversation and saying, “I have no idea what you felt, but I don’t think it was good. Can you teach me?” And most people go, “I’m happy to tell you. This is how I felt.” But it’s leading with that instead of making that something that either doesn’t happen or gets pushed to the side.

Dr. Lisa: Or as a problem that someone feels the way they do. I see that sometimes as well.

Jason: You can diffuse so much conflict by just speaking to that thing first. Most people kind of go, “Okay. All right, I can take a breath.” They want to work it out. If we skip over the thing that they need in communication, we usually kind of double down. Then if it’s really conflict, we say, “Well, I’m not moving forward till I get it.” So it’s just so much easier to speak to it.

Dr. Lisa: Right. Okay, one last one, and then I know I need to let you go, because we’re just about up on time. And so you guys, for other examples and pro tips, you’re gonna have to check out Jason’s book. But Jason, what about how to manage this when the other person in a communication system — a peacemaker, a spark-oriented person — there’s an avoidant quality to that. Making them feel comfortable in a conversation might look like — what does that look like? Is it, “Never mind”? Because we can’t do that either. So what’s your advice there?

Jason: Acknowledge the struggle. Acknowledge the struggle and have an invitation. So with a spark, I might say, “Hey, I’m aware what I’m about to say is probably not super fun, and yet we need to say it. So I just want to invite you to a conversation for a couple of minutes about something important.” Or a peacemaker, you might say, “I understand that this is not gonna feel peaceful or harmonious right now, and yet I just want to reassure you we are okay, but we have to talk about this thing.” I think just kind of speaking to the challenge — because once we know other people’s strengths and challenges, we can just acknowledge what’s true. “Hey, this is, you know, you probably don’t wanna have a hard conversation today, and yet we need to. So will you join me?”

Dr. Lisa: Well, and that’s so beautiful, and just the way that you presented it. Because I think that intense conversations — there’s a spectrum of comfort or desire to do that. I think universally what people want is a good relationship. They want to be connected. They want to have that intimacy with a partner. And when you frame having this conversation as part of having a really good, healthy, strong relationship, that feels more appealing, and that creates, as you say, an invitation.

Jason: We want the same outcome. So if we have a shared outcome, let’s do it together.

Dr. Lisa: Amazing. So my guest today has been Jason Van Ruler. Again, the book is Discovering Your Communication Type. Jason, I wish we had more time to visit, but before we wrap up, would you share with our friends here more about where to find you, where to learn more about this, above and beyond the book of course, because this is great and just so actionable. Where do we go from here?

Jason: Thank you. Yeah, you can find me on my website, jasonvr.com. I’ve got some resources there, or on socials @jason.vanruler, where I give updates daily on communication and relationships.

Dr. Lisa: Amazing. I’m gonna tune into that. Well, Jason, this was a really fun conversation, and thank you again so much just for coming here, sharing your wisdom, your perspective, and also your actionable tips with all of us. And I hope everybody tries at least one of these ideas today in your own relationship.

Jason: I’m so grateful. Thanks for having me.