Why Don’t You Understand Me? – But I Really Do!

Sometimes you spend countless hours in a debate, argument, or negotiation with someone or some group of people and it just doesn’t seem to be going your way. Immediately you think to yourself, “They must not understand me, if I could just get them to understand me then they’d agree with me.”

What if I told you that the majority of people that don’t agree with you actually understand you or what you’re trying to explain? What if I told you they probably understand it so well that if you asked them to repeat it back to you, they’ll be able to recite it exactly?

It’s always good for you to ask them to repeat back to you what you are saying if you feel they don’t understand. That’s probably one of the first steps you should take to clear up misunderstandings.

When they repeat it back to you, you can correct the parts they didn’t understand. You may come to find that it was only a certain part of what you said and you’ve been retelling the entire thing from start to finish, again and again. They probably felt belittled or annoyed.

But the question remains, “If they understand me, then why won’t they agree with me?”

Avoid being offensive

Before I get into this subject further, I should point out that if you are talking to someone and they feel belittled or like you’re lecturing them, it won’t matter whether they agree with you or not, they probably aren’t even listening to you at this point and they’ve shut you down completely.

If you have to say out loud to someone “You’re not getting it”, “You don’t understand”, or any variation of any words that places the fault for the misunderstanding on them, then there’s probably a very good chance they aren’t going to keep listening to you.

You should avoid using the word “You” when talking about misunderstandings. Generalities like “everyone else” or “always” are also not acceptable when convincing someone else of your point. If you have to say “everyone else agrees with me” then what you’ve done is made yourself look like an asshat.

This person isn’t an “everyone else” and they are taking the time to listen to you. Now you’re pressuring them to accept something they may or may not understand because other people have accepted it?

This is an attempt at ostracizing and manipulating them. No one likes to feel that way. Besides, it’s impossible for “Everyone else” to agree with you. This is the same strategy they used in the dark ages to push religious beliefs.

Putting the word “You” in any sentence is considered highly offensive to most people in this scenario and you will push them away instead of opening them up to your view. Adding the word “You” is placing blame on someone for not understanding something that you’re trying to explain to them.

What I try to do in misunderstandings is to get that person on my side. Using phrases like “you don’t understand”, causes most people to think “Okay Genius, why don’t you explain it to me since I’m so stupid. Tell me what I don’t understand your majesty.” This does not help you at all.

What I do instead is to place the blame on myself by saying things like “Maybe I am not doing a very good job of explaining this.” which does a few things that are in your favor.

1) You are blaming yourself for the misunderstanding instead of the other person.
2) You cause the other person to want to help you explain it
3) You make them feel like they are the smarter one

Now that you know how to avoid trying to offend someone, let’s continue into the meat of this article.

If I’m Understood Why Don’t They Agree

There are a couple reasons why someone won’t come to the same conclusion as you and they are based on relevance and emotions.

Relevance

Logically speaking, not everyone places the same importance on facts. Just because they may agree with what you’re saying doesn’t mean they will come to the same conclusion as you or place as much importance on them as you. This can be contributed to life experiences and their values.

This is apparent in politics. Almost everyone agrees that spending more money than we take in is unsustainable. But the importance of that agreement varies. Some people want to slowly scale back spending, some want to borrow even more, and some want to cut only certain areas. For some entitlements can’t be touched and for others defense can’t be cut.

Some will agree that spending is a big problem but they don’t think it’s the most important problem while others will and our political system in America demonstrates the point of this article. We bicker back and forth about not understanding when understanding has nothing to do with it.

Most people in congress understand exactly everything being said, the problem is they don’t place as much value to what’s being said as others. Failure to understand why that particular person values something so much is the only misunderstanding. No one takes the time anymore to understand why a person values certain things (see the generality? I used “no one” and I can’t possibly know whether or not that’s true but I used it to try to convince you it’s a problem). It may be for purely emotional reasons instead of logical which is the next section but first let me give you an example.

Sam and Frodo want to have a ring destroyed, let’s pretend that it’s a magical ring and can only be destroyed in a land far away.

Sam wants to make preparations before they go on this journey. Sam gets out a map and marks down stopping points for each night. He also calculates how much food and water they’ll need for the journey. He also figures out what type of gear they’ll need and how much time it will take to get all this.

Frodo on the other hand wants to get going as fast as possible. He’s afraid people might be looking for this ring and if they find him before he can destroy it bad things will happen.

Sam and Frodo get together and talk about destroying this ring. Sam presents his plan and concludes with “Mr Frodo, if we hurry, we can have everything ready in 3 days and be on the road.”

“But Sam, we don’t have three days, we need to leave tonight.”

“But Mr Frodo, if we leave right now we won’t have what we need to make the trip.”

“Sam, we’ll have to figure it out on the way there’s no time.”

“Mr Frodo, What good is leaving so soon if we won’t make it the entire way?”

“Sam, what good is making preparations for the trip if we are killed before we can start?”

In the above example, it is very clear that they understand each other. Sam understands why Mr Frodo wants to leave so soon and Mr Frodo understands why Sam wants to make preparations, yet they come to different conclusions. Sam is willing to take the risk of waiting so that they can prepare and Mr Frodo is not. And here we have the core of every political argument, it happens in the same fashion.

Emotional

The greatest challenge anyone will ever face when trying to persuade someone to be on there side is when they are opposed by an emotional element, usually stemming from a traumatic or childhood experience of an individual causing them to have a firm stance on their beliefs, whether they are logical or not. Some people will admit that their beliefs might not make sense but they keep them on emotional grounds.

So in the following argument we have a logical argument vs an emotional argument (these happen in congress all day I used to watch CSPAN then I realized I was wasting my life).

Argument:

“We shouldn’t force people to wear seat belts in cars. That restricts the choice of an individual. Individuals are aware of the consequences of not wearing a seat belt. Making it mandatory is in violation of the constitution and our right to freedom. We should educate the general public to persuade them to wear seat belts. It is a known fact that seat belts can save lives, but each individual is in control of their own life, not the government.”

Response:

“Do you know how many people die each year or become seriously impaired because they weren’t wearing their seat belts? Just the other week, I was riding in a car with my neighbor and we got into an accident. He was killed because he wasn’t wearing his seat belt and was ejected from the car. I, however, wearing my seat belt survived. We were great friends. Do you know what it’s like to hold a friend in your arms and watch him die when a simple click of a seat belt could have saved his life? If he was here today he would tell you that he wished he had worn his seat belt that day. It’s not just his life that was affected, his family and his two children now carry on without him, all because he chose not to buckle a seat belt that was put there for his safety.”

Argument:

“You cannot mandate people get health insurance and penalize those that don’t through a tax. It is not the government’s job to force anyone to have to buy services. You cannot force doctors to provide services to everyone either, that’s borderline slavery. Everyone has rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, but no one has a right to another persons life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness. You cannot pay doctors less and force them to work for you and you cannot force everyone else to pay for others health insurance. Most chronic diseases are preventable and because someone wants to eat unhealthy and not exercise, you shouldn’t force those who have their own health insurance and don’t make those life choices to pay for the mistakes of others.”

Response:

“People are important, not money. We all need to pay a little bit more for those who are less fortunate. One of my constituents is in the hospital right now because he has cancer. He has no insurance and cannot get the treatment he needs to survive. What do I say to his family when they ask me “What about us?” While we are here talking about money and taxes, we’re are forgetting about the people who need us, the very same people that elected us here and whom we represent. Those who don’t have health insurance, those who become suddenly ill and cannot afford to pay for it. Why do we deserve to suffer and die unnecessarily when we have the ability to save them?”

If you run up against an emotional opposition the only way you’ll be able to counter it is with an emotional response. Your response mine as well scrap all facts and you better paint a picture that illustrates how taxing someone leaves them starving and homeless on the streets, otherwise, you’ll be out of luck in presenting your case.