Don’t Text to Thrive: How Making Eye Contact Helps You Navigate Relational Conflict

Summary:

• Texting is an ineffective tool for resolving conflict in relationships because it lacks the non-verbal cues that are essential for true connection and understanding.
• ​Eye contact, alongside physical touch, is the most powerful form of communication.
• ​Texting creates miscommunication.
• ​The best way to resolve conflict is in person. The second-best way is via video call.
• ​Couples can establish communication agreements to protect and enhance their
• connection.

"What good is a love affair when you can't see eye to eye?" sang Mick Hucknall in the classic Simply Red hit If You Don't Know Me By Now. Released in 1989, Hucknall was years ahead of research that highlights the primacy of eye contact in all relationships, be they romantic, familial, or friendly.

“Direct eye contact really is the most powerful form of communication,” says Dr. Allan Schore, a leading researcher in the field of interpersonal neurobiology. He explains that our eyes are controlled by the autonomic nervous system, meaning that it is an unconscious process, and they convey a wealth of information about our emotional state. This can include sincerity, compassion, anger, openness to receive, and countless other realities.

The nonconscious part is important, because our eyes convey how we are really feeling, rather than how we think we are feeling (more about that in a future blog!).

Connecting with the gaze of a partner, baby, or even a dog, has the effect of increasing our levels of dopamine, oxytocin, and vasopressin. That’s a rather scientific way of saying that it is pleasant and soothing.

The Power of Eye Contact

Psychologist, author, and relationship expert Dr. Stan Tatkin explains that eye contact, “disconnects the parts of our brains that plan, predict, chatter, worry, and overthink.” This allows us to be present with each other, and with ourselves. It means that we can be in our feelings as much as our thoughts, and lead with our hearts as well as our minds.

So convinced is Tatkin of the importance of eye contact in romantic relationships that he incorporates “gazing” – couples looking into each other’s eyes, including during sex – as a key part of his Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy (PACT) treatment.

In short, eye contact, alongside physical touch, is the most efficient form of coregulation, which is the nonconscious act of two or more people soothing each other’s nervous systems and experiencing connectedness. The eyes really are windows to the soul.

The Problem with Texting

Communicating via text message negates all these powerful forms of connection. It is well-known that tone is lost during text communication, and what is less known is that our brains essentially fill in the blanks to make up for the lack of intonation and other sensory information.

According to Tatkin, the brain “takes shortcuts." He says: “I may be making clarity errors with you, in thinking that you understand. You, as the listener, may be making mistakes by assuming you understood something, or linking it to something else, that may be a leap too far.” While this occurs during in-person interactions, its negative effects are magnified exponentially via text message, without the benefits of eye contact.

This could look like projection: reading the message through a lens of woundedness and listening to some historical messages you received about relationships and conflict. For instance, a partner reading a text message reply that says, “Hey babe. Can’t talk. At gym. Will text later,” may trigger old thoughts and feelings about abandonment and separation anxiety, when in truth the person sending the text did so hurriedly, out of compassion for their partner, while their heart rate was 175 beats per minute!

How did you read the above paragraph? I invite you to pay attention to my use of an exclamation mark. Based on what we now know about how our brains work, it is safe to say that your mind was filling in some blanks. My use of an exclamation was a little ambiguous: some of you may have interpreted it as humorous; others may associate it with rushing, or even a threat. Had we been face to face, making eye contact, and I had said it softly with a smile, our perception would likely be more aligned. Our realities would be closer together, and therefore we would likely feel more connected.

A Healthy Approach to Conflict

Because of all this, my No.1 communication tip, not least to couples, is to not address conflict via text message. While it can be successful, doing so is certainly not giving yourself the optimal opportunity to reach a desired outcome or resolution.

Accordingly, I invite you to consider setting a boundary around communication with your partner, friends, and family. It’s perhaps useful here to remind ourselves that boundaries are used to protect and maintain connection, rather than to keep people away. Text message discussions about relational conflict are minefields that have the potential to drag you down, with little upside.

To those who are a little more avoidantly attached (prone to hypoarousal, to use the neurobiological term), tabling a conversation for a later time, when you can make eye contact, may feel like an act of avoidance. It is not: avoidance is a compulsive act, whereas scheduling a conversation about conflict is an intentional, conscious act that is motivated by a loving desire to maintain connection.

Of course, staying true to this boundary is easier said than done and the key factor here is anxiety: how bearable is it to you and your partner to bookmark this relational stress, knowing that you will return to it when you are face to face, while knowing that you still have to navigate through your day? The face-to-face conversation may be hours or even days away. This speaks to the primacy of emotional regulation in relationships. To enjoy a secure-functioning relationship, based on emotional intimacy, vulnerability, and trust, both you and your partner must be committed to developing your emotional regulation through practices such as meditation; breathwork; connecting with nature, friends, and pets; and therapeutic modalities like Brainspotting, which synthesizes all these learnings about our ability to access our emotions through gazing.

Setting Boundaries for Better Communication

Considering that it is not always practical to make eye contact with a partner (or friend) at short notice – although Zoom, FaceTime, etc. help in this area – how might two people go about implementing the principle of intentionally postponing a discussion about a relational rupture? First and foremost, this relationship agreement must be discussed face to face, before implementation. Once agreed upon, you may choose to wait until you are together, in-person, to raise the topic; if some form of written communication is necessary before then and you cannot continue authentically without expressing your need to address the conflict, a compassionate text that emphasizes collaboration may be useful.

You are human and your level of emotional regulation is constantly changeable. There may be times when you or your partner aren’t able to stay faithful to this relationship agreement, and one of you may begin to address conflict via text. If one partner can take a few breaths and regulate any temptation they may have to respond instantaneously, they may reply something like this: “❤️I hear that you have something you need to address with me. I would like to talk about it when we are face to face, so that our love shines through. We got this. 🫶😊”

Note the use of emojis, which may go some way to mitigating the unconscious process of our brains filling in the blanks. A heart at the beginning of a message, for instance, may have a disarming effect on a recipient who was braced to fight.

​Applying This Principle to Your Life

What utility is there to all this research, beyond the deliberate avoidance of addressing relational conflict via text message? It may be worth bearing in mind the usefulness of eye contact to establish emotional safety when planning a first date. A walk in the park may sound like the ideal, serene, low intensity activity when getting to know someone – just make sure that there are opportunities for eye contact along the route, such as sitting down together on a bench. The same is true of a night at the movies when in the early stages of dating: can you sit across from each other before and after the screening?

Anxiety and confidence, as well as neurodiversity, play a role in a person’s ability to hold eye contact. If maintaining eye contact is an issue for you, it’s important to name it, when it feels emotionally safe to do so. Try to be vulnerable. State your needs – either for more eye contact or for less of it. Otherwise, your partner will, as Hucknall also sang, never ever know you.

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