The Psychology of Relationship Conflict: Active Listening and I-Messages

If a 10-year colleague turned their back on you because of a one-second facial expression, whose personality is the problem?

Relationship conflicts often grow not from bad intentions, but from miscommunication and hasty interpretations. Active listening and I-messages are the primary tools to break this cycle.

A 10-year friendship ended over a one-second expression

Jisu and Minho were colleagues who had been dreaming together since their college days.

They were so close they could understand each other just by looking into each other’s eyes, but just three months after Minho was promoted to team leader and Jisu became his subordinate, their 10-year friendship fell apart.

There was no grand betrayal or embezzlement. The catastrophe began in a trivial moment.

One afternoon, exhausted from overtime, Jisu was handed a stack of documents by Minho. “Jisu, can you analyze this by the end of the week? It’s urgent.”

Already crushed by three deadlines and struggling to breathe, Jisu didn’t want to disappoint Minho, who was both a friend and a boss. After hesitating for about a second, she curled the corners of her mouth slightly and replied, "…Yes, I understand."

Three weeks later, Jisu applied for a department transfer, accusing Minho of being an “authoritarian dictator,” while Minho vented at a bar, saying, “Jisu is a two-faced, untrustworthy person.”

The cause of the fight wasn’t work. Unverified interpretations had piled up like a wall between the two.

This article follows the process of building that wall in four stages: inconsistency, assumption, silence, and ambiguity.

Since Jisu and Minho are fictional characters created to explain communication psychology, please read their inner thoughts as an example of interpretation. At the end, we will apply two tools—active listening and I-messages—to the same scene to break this cycle.

Stage 1 Inconsistency: Conflict sprouts when words and expressions clash

The first seed of conflict is Incongruence, where words and body language tell different stories.

Jisu said “Yes” with her mouth, but her body was giving a different answer.

Verbal**:** “Yes, I understand.” (Acceptance)>

Non-verbal: Weak voice, avoiding eye contact, stiff shoulders, taking the documents as if snatching them (Rejection)

When explaining this scene, the most frequently cited concept is the 7-38-55 Rule by Albert Mehrabian, an emeritus professor of psychology at UCLA. It suggests that when reading someone’s likability or attitude, the content of the words accounts for 7%, tone of voice for 38%, and facial expression for 55%. However, this number isn’t a universal formula.

Mehrabian himself clarified that this calculation cannot be applied unless the situation involves conveying feelings or attitudes, and the experiment was a small-scale study where participants were played a few words with mismatched tone and expressions to gauge likability. The phrase “93% of communication is non-verbal” is an over-interpretation of the rule.

Still, Jisu’s scene matches the situation addressed in this study. She revealed feelings of ‘difficulty’ through expressions and tone that differed from her verbal acceptance. In such cases, listeners tend to place more weight on expressions and tone than on the words themselves.

To Minho, “I understand” might have been read as “I am deceiving you right now, and I hate your instruction,” and Jisu’s white lie may have been transmitted as a signal of ‘deception.’ This discrepancy becomes the fuse for conflict.

These conflicting signals are often called a Double Bind, though that is not the correct usage.

Proposed by Gregory Bateson’s team in 1956, a double bind refers to a structure where contradictory commands containing threats of punishment are repeated, and one cannot escape the situation. Jisu’s “Yes” is closer to a mixed signal common in daily life.

Stage 2 Assumption: Filling empty interpretations with fiction hardens conflict

After receiving conflicting signals, a blank space for interpretation appears in Minho’s mind.

“Why on earth does Jisu act differently from what she says?” Humans cannot leave this blank space alone and enter ‘author mode’ called Assumption, and the stories written this way tend to flow toward more dramatic outcomes than verified facts.

In this stage, three common errors work in tandem.

First is the Fundamental Attribution Error.

Rooted in attribution theory organized by Fritz Heider in his 1958 book, and named by Lee Ross in a 1977 paper, this is the tendency to attribute others’ behavior to their personality rather than the situation. Minho interprets Jisu’s attitude as a personality flaw rather than a result of excessive workload and fatigue.

Rational** interpretation:** “Jisu is struggling because she has too much work right now.”

Minho’s interpretation: “Jisu is ignoring me because I’m the team leader. She’s naturally jealous, so she can’t stand to see me succeed.”

Second is Psychological Projection.

Explained as a defense mechanism since Freud, this refers to the psychology of attributing one’s own unwanted feelings to others. If we assume Minho harbored deep anxiety about ‘whether I can do well’ as a novice team leader, that anxiety can be shifted outward like this.

Minho’s inner thoughts: “Am I unqualified to be a team leader?” (Inner anxiety)>

Projected thought: “Jisu thinks I’m unqualified to be a team leader!” (Transformation into an external enemy)

Third is Confirmation Bias.

Once Jisu is labeled an ’enemy,’ even a sigh she lets out simply because she’s tired is seen as a ‘signal of rebellion.’ Every subsequent action starts to be read as evidence of that belief.

Stage 3 Silence: Conflict deepens while avoiding each other

Hurt by ominous assumptions, Minho stops talking to Jisu. Jisu also senses Minho’s cold attitude and keeps her mouth shut.

Both may believe they chose silence to avoid conflict, but in relationship research, silence is not treated as a good signal.

John Gottman identified four communication styles that destroy relationships: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling, and the Gottman Institute calls these the ‘Four Horsemen,’ explaining them as signals that predict the end of a relationship.

Among them, Stonewalling is the act of the listener withdrawing from the interaction, closing their mouth, and stopping their response. As Gottman’s research primarily focuses on couples, it cannot be assumed to apply perfectly to colleagues, but it is useful as a framework to show how the pattern of shutting down solidifies.

Silence is not neutral. To the recipient, it is easily read as a silent message that “You are not worth talking to,” and can feel like a form of passive aggression.

By this point, the two enter the shortcut of a ‘Cognitive Miser.’ Instead of using brainpower to understand the other person again, they save energy by concluding, “That person is just like that.”

The office air becomes heavy, and work cooperation turns into dry notices sent only via email. Even though they sit in the same space, the psychological distance between them becomes farther than the other side of the planet.

Stage 4 Ambiguity: “Just handle it” fuels relationship conflict

As silence lengthens, anxiety grows and project deadlines approach. When they must communicate but feelings are hurt, people tend to hide behind Ambiguity.

Let’s look at the email Minho sent to Jisu.

“Jisu, please handle that matter appropriately depending on the situation. I trust your expertise.”

It looks polite on the surface, but to the recipient, it can be read like this.

“Appropriately”: Since there is no standard, if a problem arises later, it becomes an exit strategy to argue, “Was that appropriate?">

“I trust your expertise”: If she fails, it becomes justification to push her, saying, “You’re an expert, how could you not even do that?”

There is no evidence that Minho did this on purpose. Since clear instructions carry clear responsibilities, it is a more realistic explanation that insecure people are more likely to offer hazy words like fog. Regardless of intent, it feels like Blame Shifting to the recipient.

Jisu receives this ambiguous instruction, goes back to stage 2, and falls into a swamp of assumptions.

“He’s trying to pass the work on to me and make me take the responsibility.” Thus, the four-stage vicious cycle from inconsistency to assumption, silence, and ambiguity is completed.

Active Listening: The first key to resolving relationship conflict is in the ears

To break this cycle, you must reverse the order.

The first key is not your mouth, but your ears: Active Listening.

Many people think of listening as just sitting quietly.

Active listening is the act of reflecting back the content the other person said and the emotions beneath it in your own words, and confirming if it is correct.

According to Gordon Training International, this method emerged from the analysis of counseling recordings of Carl Rogers’ students, and Thomas Gordon introduced it to the world through his parent education program, P.E.T. The idea that there is depth to listening was covered separately in Stephen Covey’s 5 Levels of Listening and Empathetic Listening.

What if Minho had asked like this in the early stages of the conflict?

“Jisu, your expression looked a bit dark when you received my request earlier. Are you feeling burdened or troubled because I made an unreasonable request?”

This question contains two actions.

One is observation, pointing out the non-verbal signal of facial expression.

Another is reflection, giving a name to the emotion (burden, trouble) the other person might have felt. It is important that it is a form of confirmation, not an assertion, like “…did you?”

In its ‘Aristotle Project,’ which analyzed internal teams, Google identified five factors for effective teams, and identified psychological safety as the most important factor. It is the belief that you will not be in trouble for speaking up. Although it is a team study and cannot be directly applied between two people, it is in the same direction in that listening that reads emotions becomes a signal that ‘it is safe to speak here.’

When they feel their emotions are read, it becomes easier to lower defenses and share the situation. Jisu’s inner thoughts might change like this: “My emotions were read! And accepted!”

“Actually… Team Leader. I have three deadlines overlapping right now. I forced myself to accept because I didn’t want to disappoint you if I refused…”

With this answer, Minho’s assumption (she is ignoring me) is cleared, and the fact (excessive work) is revealed in its place.

I-Message: The skill of relationship conflict resolution to say what you want without blame

If the other person’s defenses have been lowered through listening, now it is your turn to convey your intentions, and this is when you use I-Messages.

Most conflict conversations start with “You.”

“Why is your expression like that?">

“You are always full of complaints.”

Such words are heard as blame and evaluation, so the other person immediately goes into a defensive posture.

I-Messages are a way of speaking where you change the subject to “I” to state your own state, known to have been named by Gordon in the 1960s and introduced in his 1970 P.E.T. book.

The basic form consists of two parts: ‘When you do X, I feel Y,’ and a three-part form that adds what you want is also used. What is revealed here is your vulnerability. Brené Brown has long said that revealing vulnerability is close to courage, not weakness.

Below is Minho’s I-Message woven with three elements: behavior, feeling, and impact.

Behavior (Fact): “When you sighed and answered ‘Yes’ earlier…” (Fact as it is)>

Feeling (Feeling): “I was honestly a bit taken aback and anxious.” (Not saying ‘I was angry,’ but saying the emotion beneath it)>

Impact (Impact): “Because I was worried that we wouldn’t be able to start working well as a team.” (Reason, not blame)>

When Minho confesses, “I was anxious,” to Jisu, Minho starts to look like a colleague who needs help, not a dictator who must be attacked. Since there is no blame, the reason to defend oneself is also reduced.

Of course, it is not a method that always works. If blame is hidden at the end of the sentence, like “I was hurt because you were rude,” it becomes a “You-Message” with just a different name.

“Ah, Team Leader. You felt that way. I’m sorry. Actually, I was so exhausted…”

Thus, the two return from enemies attacking each other to partners solving problems together.

A relationship without conflict is not necessarily a healthy one.

Because no conflict could mean one side is enduring (silence) or they are indifferent to each other.

A healthy relationship is closer to a state where they confirm each other’s hidden hearts through conflict and reconnect.

the path Jisu and Minho took is not unfamiliar to us.

Words and expressions clash (inconsistency), we judge others on our own (assumption), we shut our mouths out of fear (silence), and speak vaguely because we don’t want to take responsibility (ambiguity). The tools to reverse this order are ears that read the emotion behind the other’s words, active listening, and a mouth that shows my emotions, I-messages.

You can continue to see how to point out the desires and fears underlying conflict in Conflict Cause 5-Step Analysis, and the process of reading minds in the workplace in 3 Steps for Workplace Conflict Resolution. If there is someone you have been avoiding because it is awkward, try starting a conversation today like this.

“I’ve been feeling uneasy because it seemed like our conversation was a bit crossed last time. How were you feeling then?”