When You’ve Done the Work and It Still Doesn’t Work

When Knowing Isn't Enough Series | Part 2

In my article When Your Needs Still Aren’t Met, I talked about realizing that sometimes the issue in a relationship is not communication, it is compatibility. After I wrote it, I sat with that for a few days and kept thinking about the process it took for me to even arrive at that distinction, because that part did not fully make it into the piece.

That process is not quick. It can be long, tedious, difficult, and at times painful. It requires a level of maturity, introspection, and intentional self-awareness to really check in with yourself and identify what you are feeling, what you are responding to, and what need is not being met. That kind of awareness requires both a willingness to do the work and the recognition that the work is needed in the first place.

It also requires a certain level of bravery, because once you become aware of your needs, you also become aware that you are responsible for making sure those needs are met.

And that responsibility is not as simple as saying, I have this need, so the person I am with should meet it. It shifts the ownership back to you in a way that is not theoretical. It means you have to face what it looks like if that need is not met here. It means you have to decide what you are willing to continue participating in and what you are not. It means you can no longer unknow what you now see.

When I came into that awareness, I became very intentional about communicating my needs in a way that I thought would convince or compel the person I was with to meet them. Every relationship I have been in has been committed and long term, at least a couple of years, and I carried an expectation into those relationships that communication, if done well enough, would lead to change.

A lot of that expectation came from my previous relationship that lasted nearly two decades, along with the messages I received through religion, premarital counseling, and the general belief that communication issues are one of the main causes of divorce. Somewhere along the way, my mind made a connection that if communication problems lead to divorce, then learning how to communicate would prevent a relationship from ending. So I focused heavily on communication.

Because of that, I spent years in a loop.

When my needs were not being met, I assumed I was not explaining them well enough. I questioned my wording, my tone, my timing. Maybe it was not the right moment. Maybe he was distracted. Maybe I needed to wait until halftime, or until we were out to eat, or until things were calm and quiet. I adjusted, softened, clarified, expanded. I kept trying different approaches, different moments, different ways of saying the same thing.

It became mental and emotional gymnastics that went on for years.

I could not understand why my efforts were not producing the outcome I expected, because in my mind, communication was supposed to lead to results.

And I did not yet have language for the possibility that you can do the work, and it still doesn’t work.

Eventually, I began to ask a different question. What if clarity is not the issue?

Sometimes clarity comes from the person who isn’t trying to solve the problem.

I remember being in a conversation, years later, with someone I was in a relationship with at the time. It was not an argument, but it was focused. We were going back and forth about something we had already gone back and forth about before. My daughter was in the room reading this time, and she looked up and said, almost casually, you two just fundamentally do not agree, so you are not going to resolve this.

I paused.

She was a teenager at the time, and what she said caught me off guard, but I knew she was right. We did not agree. And that was the problem.

That realization was difficult to sit with, especially because this was someone I had known my entire life. It felt like it should work. We were both capable, intelligent people, and I believed that if we just communicated well enough, we could figure it out.

But what I had to face was that nothing I said was going to change the fact that we fundamentally did not agree.

I stayed in that relationship for a while after that, because it was hard to accept. But every time we circled back to the same issue, that truth became harder to ignore. It was not something we could talk our way through, because it was not a misunderstanding. It was a difference in alignment.

And that pattern repeated itself in another relationship.

What I came to understand is that clarity and communication can create understanding. They allow you to be seen and heard. But they do not make you a priority in someone’s life. They do not change a person’s capacity to love you in a way that is meaningful to you. They do not change a person’s willingness to support you in the way you need. They do not shift someone’s willingness to adjust their life in a way that helps you feel secure.

Communication and clarity do not change alignment.

Because that was such a difficult truth to accept, I stayed in the loop longer than I needed to, continuing to explain and re-explain.

And what I eventually had to face is that it was not a matter of communicating better.

It was a matter of being willing to see that clarity does not always change the outcome.

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