The Temptation of Scripting

I thrive on fixing problems. And in most cases, this is a good thing. My ability to fix things has served me well. But there is one unique exception -- one area where fixing things has not served me well -- and that is in my marriage. Bringing a fix-it mentality to marriage is counterproductive! In fact, there are few things my wife appreciates less than when I try to fix a problem that she just started sharing with me. So she will begin to express her feelings about a difficult situation at work and I immediately launch in with my brilliant plan of how the entire thing could be resolved. I focus on the content of what she is communicating and ignore the feeling and emotion that is driving it. Then, I end up shocked and bewildered when she doesn't appreciate my plan! What's her problem! I wish I could say that I learned this lesson a long time ago and no longer fall into the fix-it trap, but that would be a lie. I keep having to learn and re-learn this lesson.

At the heart of a fix-it mentality is a relational behavior called scripting. We are most often unaware of this behavior when we are the one doing it, but we immediately recognize it when someone is doing it to us. Scripting is when you read your autobiography into someone else's life. So, for example, a person begins to share a problem they have, and you respond by describing a similar problem that you faced and how you handled it. A person shares a relational tension that they are experiencing at work, and you respond by sharing how you handled a similar situation at your place of employment. A person begins to talk about how overwhelmed they are with all the demands of life, and you respond by explaining how you juggle life and have managed to avoid anxiety at the same time.

Truth be told, we tend to filter most of our conversations with others through our own autobiographies. We impose our life experiences onto the experiences of others in a way that assumes a one-to-one correlation. The problem is, of course, that a one-to-one correlation simply does not exist. My life is not your life. Sure, we have similar experiences, but no two experiences are identical--just like no two individuals are identical. And so when we gloss over these differences by offering solutions to other people's problems based on our own life experience, it is no wonder they don't feel heard or understood and do not accept our advice! Can we really blame them?

Perhaps the single most important thing when it comes to communication is the art of listening. Simply giving someone your undivided attention and seeking to truly understand them as a unique individual within their unique context and situation is one of the most loving and selfless things we can do. And maybe that's the reason why we have such a hard time doing it. It is much easier to by-pass the hard work that listening requires and offer up solutions that may or may not do any good. So what would happen to our relationships if we started to avoid the temptation of scripting? What would happen to our family dynamics--our relationships with our spouse and kids? What would happen in our friendships, at our places of employment, and in our communities? I won't pretend to have all the answers, but I do think we would start looking a lot more like Jesus.