You’re getting ready to leave when someone says, “Can we talk about something?”
You have twenty minutes before you need to be somewhere. They tell you it won’t take long, so you stay.
Nearly fifteen minutes later, you’re watching the clock while trying to listen. You answer too quickly. They say something you disagree with, and you start defending yourself.
The conversation is taking longer than either of you expected. You look at the clock again.
“I have to go.”
They’re annoyed. You’re annoyed. Nothing has been settled.
“I want to finish this. Can we talk when I get back?”
That evening, you sit down together.
The disagreement is still there. Nothing about the conversation has become particularly easy. But you aren’t watching the clock anymore. You can listen to the end of a sentence. When something bothers you, you don’t have to answer immediately.
At one point, you realize you misunderstood something they were trying to say earlier.
The conversation that went badly that afternoon is going differently now. Not because either of you figured out how to communicate better in the meantime. You just aren’t trying to do it while one of you needs to leave.
Sometimes the thing that needs to change isn’t what you’re doing. It’s when you’re trying to do it.