20 Negotiating Yes & No in Relationships

We can mean more than one thing when we say yes, or when we say no.

There are situations, actions, and people for whom we feel, say and perform solid yeses — strong and spontaneous affirmation. Parents experience solid yes for their children. We feel and do solid yes for our highest ideals. Love is solid yes. Loyalty or fidelity is solid yes. Sacrifice and nurture are solid yes. There are other principles that you feel deeply, passionately about. Our passionate goals and dreams are solid yeses.

What does “soft yes” mean? There are many other things that we feel we should or ought to affirm, that we think are good things to do, that we accept as good principles. But something holds us back. We don’t move directly from saying yes to doing yes. Often times the bar is work. It takes energy and effort to do work. We feel that we should clean up, do difficult jobs, exercise more, diet, help someone who is struggling. But messes, labor, exercise, and service take time and energy. And time and energy are limited resources. So we say yes, but we often mean yes tomorrow, yes but later, or yes in principle, or maybe yes, rather than yes now I will do it. These soft yeses are second choice priorities.

Next let’s consider negation. There are situations, actions, ideas, and even people we feel strongly we do not want to do or be or be with; we ought not to do them or embody them; we instinctively and strong turn away from them; we have experienced the pain of getting burned, humiliated, or hurt, and we do not want to repeat that experience. This is solid no. 

Next, what does “soft no” mean? There are many examples of things we do not really want to do, or think we should not do, that we say no to, but we later feel obliged to do, or we try them out of curiosity, or we change our minds, or we can’t escape the temptation to do. There are two broad categories of soft nos. 

First, Things we probably ought to do that are hard that we say no to because we don’t want to do them. These are the difficult soft nos. And

Second, Things that we probably should not do because they are frivolous or slightly unhealthy or somewhat harmful if done too often. We say no to these things because we recognize that they aren’t great, or because we have been taught to say no by parents or authorities. But these things have a pull on us. We are curious. They may feel good, or help us let go of stress. They may be pleasurable. But if done habitually they are recognizably harmful or risky. These are the tempting soft nos.

We and those we have relationships with move between solid yes, soft yes, soft no, and solid no. We definitely move between yes sometime or maybe yes to yes now. Managing and negotiating the complex, sometimes contradictory, movements between affirmation and negation is the substance of close relationships.