Welcome to my column, “Ask Anna.” This is a space where I act as a researcher and fellow traveler exploring relationships. I share what I have observed from twenty-five years of living and working across four continents. You can ask me any question about tension, conflict, and creating closeness where others see division.
Here is the question we will look at today:
“My partner and I love each other, but we keep fighting about manners. I value directness and honesty. He says I’m being rude. Conversely, I feel like he beats around the bush, which feels manipulative to me. It’s exhausting. How do we stop fighting over who is being polite and who is being real?”
When I moved to Paris to live with my husband Jerome, I was absolutely certain I knew how to be a polite person.
I had spent twenty years navigating complex social webs in China and built successful businesses in the United States. I spoke multiple languages and prided myself on my adaptability. I assumed I knew how to be respectful.
Then I walked into a bakery in our new neighborhood.
I smiled at the woman behind the counter and asked for a baguette. “Une baguette, s’il vous plaît.” I thought I was being efficient and respecting her time.
The woman looked at me with ice in her eyes. She handed me the bread without a smile, took my money, and turned away before I could even say thank you. I walked out feeling confused and rejected. When I told Jerome later, I was angry. Why were they so rude to me? I said please.
Jerome listened quietly. Then he gave me that little French shrug I was still learning to interpret and asked if I had said “Bonjour, Madame” before I ordered.
I told him I said hello. I told him I smiled.
But did you wait for her to acknowledge you? he asked. Did you establish the relationship before the transaction?
In my Ukrainian upbringing and my American business life, directness was a form of respect. You say what you need clearly so you don’t waste anyone’s time. But in Jerome’s French world, starting a transaction without first establishing a human connection is treated as an aggression. I thought I was being efficient, but to her, I was being brutal.
I see this dynamic constantly in the couples I work with. One person operates from a map where love looks like honesty and directness, while the other operates from a map where love looks like harmony and reading between the lines. We usually call this a personality clash, but I’ve come to see it as a clash of cultural maps.
Erin Meyer writes about this beautifully in her book The Culture Map. She distinguishes between cultures where communication is precise and simple, like the US or Australia, and cultures where communication is sophisticated and layered, like Japan or France. In one relationship, “No” simply means “No.” In another, “No” might be expressed by a hesitation or a change of subject.
When these two systems meet in a marriage, chaos often follows. The direct partner feels like they are chasing a moving target and accuses the other of being manipulative. The indirect partner feels battered by constant verbal bluntness and accuses the other of being aggressive.
For years, I tried to convince Jerome that my way was simply more honest, while he tried to teach me to be more civilized. We were stuck in a loop of trying to prove who was right.
It took us years to figure this out, but eventually I realized the conflict wasn’t actually about manners at all. It was about safety.
For me, safety meant clarity. If I know exactly where I stand, I feel safe. For him, safety meant harmony. If the social fabric is preserved, he feels safe. When I demanded direct answers, I was rupturing his safety, and when he gave nuanced responses, he was rupturing mine.
We didn’t find peace because we suddenly changed who we were. We found it when we realized we were actually building a third culture together.
In my workshops on creating collaboration, I often ask participants to stop trying to win the argument and instead investigate the origins of their map. We use a practice I call “The Three Questions,” which helps us move from judging the other person to understanding the software they were installed with.
1. How was this handled in your world?
When you were growing up, how did people show respect? Was it by being direct, or was it by protecting feelings? If you disagreed with your father, what happened?
2. How was this handled in mine?
For me, growing up in Soviet Ukraine, family intimacy meant brutal honesty. In the US, I learned that time is money. I carry those maps with me everywhere I go.
3. What culture do we want to build for us?
This is the application of what I call the “Rule of Us”. We aren’t bound by his French map or my Ukrainian map. We are the founders of the Lecat Family Culture, and we get to decide what polite means in our house.
This shift takes the moral weight out of the argument. Instead of accusing each other of lying or attacking, we can simply ask which protocol serves us best in that moment.
Recently, Jerome and I had to make a difficult decision about a family commitment. My instinct was to say a hard “No” immediately to set expectations, whereas his instinct was to say “Maybe” and let the “No” emerge slowly over time to save face for everyone involved.
Ten years ago, I would have called him manipulative, and he would have called me American and abrasive.
This time, I took a breath. I told him I was feeling anxious because I needed clarity, but I also told him I knew he needed to preserve the relationship. I asked how we could do both.
We decided he would handle the communication in his nuanced way, but we agreed on a hard deadline for when the final “No” would be delivered. He got to protect the harmony, and I got my clarity.
Love isn’t about whose normal wins. It’s about recognizing that you are two foreigners building a new country together, one conversation at a time.