Part 4: The Courage to Clarify - Communicating Around Assumptions

Published on 23 August 2026 at 15:21

🌿 The Courage to Clarify

There are few phrases more humbling in a conversation than:

"Oh. That's not what you meant."

Suddenly, the argument you've been preparing in your head has lost its entire plot. Your evidence has been dismissed. The jury has gone home. And now you're standing there realizing you may have been having a conversation the other person wasn't even aware they were participating in.

Communication is fun like that. 😊

Throughout this series, we've talked about what it means to feel heard, how our experiences influence what we hear, and what happens when silence leaves enough room for our brains to write the story themselves. But eventually, all of that brings us to a choice.

Will we assume, or will we clarify?

🌿 Clarification sounds simple. In practice, it can require an incredible amount of vulnerability.

Asking "What did you mean by that?" means being willing to discover that our interpretation might have been wrong. Saying "Can I tell you how I heard that?" means letting someone see the tender place their words touched. Asking "Are we okay?" means admitting that, at least for a moment, we weren't entirely sure.

Sometimes it's easier to assume.

Assumptions allow us to stay safely inside our own version of the story. Clarification invites another person into it.

And they might change the ending.

✨ Intention and Impact Can Both Matter

One of the more complicated parts of communication is recognizing that intention and impact aren't the same thing.

Someone can genuinely mean well and still hurt you.

Someone can say something carelessly without intending to be cruel.

You can communicate something with love and discover that it landed painfully.

We sometimes get stuck trying to decide whose experience gets to be "right."

"But that's not what I meant."

"But that's how it made me feel."

Both statements can be true.

Understanding impact doesn't require us to assign malicious intention. And explaining intention doesn't automatically erase impact.

This is where communication gets less interested in winning and much more interested in understanding.

Maybe the better question isn't, "Which one of us is right?"

Maybe it's, "What happened between us?"

That question leaves room for both people to exist.

🌱 Curiosity Is Different From Interrogation

There is, of course, a difference between being curious and conducting a full criminal investigation because someone put a period at the end of a text.

"Okay."

Why the period?

What does the period mean?

You usually say "okayyy."

Are we fighting?

😅 Sometimes punctuation is just punctuation.

Curiosity isn't about analyzing every word another person says. It's about slowing down long enough to recognize when we've assigned meaning without actually knowing whether that meaning belongs there.

It might sound like:

"I noticed you got quiet. Do you need some space, or is something bothering you?"

"I think I may have interpreted that differently than you intended. Can we try again?"

Or even:

"My brain is telling me a story right now, and before I believe it, I'd rather ask you."

That last one requires courage because it takes responsibility for our interpretation without pretending our feelings aren't real.

🤍 Being Understood Requires Being Known

There is another side to all of this that I think we sometimes forget.

If we want people to understand us, eventually we have to let them know us.

We have to communicate our preferences. Our needs. Our boundaries. The things that make us feel connected. The things that make us shut down. The conversations we prefer to have face-to-face instead of through a screen.

We cannot expect people to follow an instruction manual we've not provided.

And yes, wouldn't relationships be considerably easier if everyone arrived with one?

Me: Version 2026. Please provide snacks before difficult conversations. Do not attempt emotional processing when battery is below 10%.

Honestly, I'd read everyone else's manual too.

But that's essentially what healthy communication becomes over time: learning each other.

Not memorizing the perfect words. Not communicating without ever making mistakes. Not eliminating misunderstandings.

Learning.

🌿 Repair May Matter More Than Getting It Right

Maybe one of the most freeing things we can understand about communication is that we're going to mess it up. We will misunderstand people we love. We'll speak too quickly. We'll choose terrible timing. We'll get defensive. We'll hear criticism where someone intended concern. We'll occasionally send the text we absolutely should have slept on first.

Being a healthy communicator doesn't mean we never get communication wrong.

It means we're willing to repair when we do.

"I'm sorry."

"I misunderstood you."

"I didn't communicate that well."

"Can we start over?"

"I can see why that hurt."

Those aren't signs that communication failed.

Sometimes they're evidence that the relationship is strong enough to survive being human.

✨ The Goal Was Never Perfect Communication

When I started this series, I didn't want to give you another list of communication skills.

There are plenty of those.

I wanted us to look underneath communication.

At experience.

At nervous systems.

At timing.

At assumptions.

At silence.

At the stories our minds create when information is missing.

Because communication isn't simply about saying the right thing.

It's about creating enough space for two people to bring their experiences into the same conversation without requiring either person to disappear.

Sometimes that means speaking.

Sometimes it means listening.

Sometimes it means asking another question instead of assuming we already know the answer.

And sometimes it means saying, "I don't think we're understanding each other. Can we try this again?"

There is something deeply hopeful about that sentence.

It says the conversation isn't over simply because we got it wrong the first time.

Neither are we.

🌱 Maybe that's the heart of communication: not perfectly understanding each other, but caring enough to keep trying.

So the next time you find yourself certain you know what someone meant, perhaps leave just a little room for curiosity.

Ask the question.

Let them explain.

Listen to the answer.

And remember that one of the greatest gifts we can offer another person is the opportunity to explain themselves before we've decided what they meant.