The Problem with Complaint
Why Voicing Discomfort Creates Distance Instead of Resolution
In our therapeutic culture, we’ve been taught that expressing our feelings is inherently healthy—that voicing our discomforts and disappointments leads to greater intimacy and understanding. While emotional honesty has its place, decades of relationship research reveal a troubling truth: the way most people voice complaints actually creates distance rather than resolution, pushing away the very people we hope to connect with.
The problem isn’t that we have concerns or disappointments. The problem is how we express them, and more importantly, our expectation that simply stating our discomfort should somehow improve our relationships.
What the Research Reveals About Complaint
Dr. John Gottman’s extensive research on relationship dynamics has provided crucial insights into how complaints function in human connection. His work identified criticism as one of the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse”—behaviors that predict relationship instability and unhappiness. According to the Gottman Institute, “criticism is the single greatest predictor of divorce” based on their decades of research tracking thousands of couples.
The distinction Gottman makes is crucial: criticism is “an attack on your partner’s character rather than addressing specific behaviors,” while a complaint “focuses on particular issues”. Yet even well-intentioned complaints often morph into character attacks, especially when we’re feeling hurt, disappointed, or overwhelmed.
The critical difference lies not just in what we say, but in our underlying assumption about whose responsibility it is to manage our emotional state. When we voice complaints without considering their impact or timing, we’re essentially outsourcing our discomfort to others and expecting them to fix what feels broken inside us.
The Drive-By Harm of Asynchronous Complaint
In our digital age, an even more problematic pattern has emerged: the tendency to voice complaints through asynchronous communication—texts, emails, voicemails—without being present to witness how our words land. This creates what I call “drive-by harm”: the psychological equivalent of throwing a rock through someone’s window and driving away.
When we complain via text or email, we miss the immediate feedback that would help us gauge whether our message is creating connection or damage. We can’t see the hurt in someone’s eyes, the defensive posture that signals we’ve crossed a line, or the confusion that suggests our message wasn’t clear. Without this real-time feedback, we often escalate our complaints, assuming the other person simply doesn’t understand our perspective.
This asynchronous complaint culture has been particularly damaging because it allows us to avoid the discomfort of seeing how our words affect others. It’s easier to send a strongly worded text than to have a difficult conversation where we might need to witness our impact and adjust our approach.
Alternative Approaches: What Actually Works
Research on effective conflict resolution points to fundamentally different approaches than the complaint-based model most of us have internalized. Active listening—“fully engaging with the other person’s perspective and emotions without judgment or interruption”—allows us to “understand the underlying concerns and needs of the other party, facilitating empathy”.
The dual concern model of conflict resolution suggests that effective approaches are “based on two underlying themes: concern for self (assertiveness) and concern for others (empathy)”. This balanced approach contrasts sharply with complaint-based communication, which typically prioritizes our own discomfort while neglecting the other person’s experience.
Research on difficult conversations emphasizes “cognitive reappraisal or reframing which refers to looking at alternative perspectives” as a technique to reduce tension rather than escalate it. This approach requires us to do internal work before externalizing our concerns.
Rather than leading with our disappointment or discomfort, effective conflict resolution involves:
Curiosity over certainty: Approaching tensions with genuine questions rather than predetermined conclusions about the other person’s motivations or character.
Personal responsibility for emotional regulation: Managing our own distress before engaging others, rather than expecting them to fix our feeling states.
Timing and context awareness: Choosing appropriate moments for difficult conversations rather than dumping our feelings whenever they arise.
Impact consideration: Thinking through how our words might land before we speak them, especially in vulnerable or stressed individuals.
Working with Tension as a Personal Practice
The most profound shift in approaching relational difficulties comes from recognizing tension as information about our inner world rather than evidence of someone else’s failure. When we feel disappointed, frustrated, or hurt in relationships, these feelings often point to our own unmet expectations, unprocessed wounds, or areas where we need to develop greater resilience.
This doesn’t mean our feelings are invalid or that others bear no responsibility for their actions. It means that our emotional reactions are primarily our responsibility to understand and work with, rather than others’ responsibility to fix.
Working with tension as a personal practice involves:
Sitting with discomfort before acting on it, allowing space for our initial reactions to settle and for more nuanced understanding to emerge.
Examining our expectations: Often our disappointments reveal assumptions we’ve made about how others should behave, assumptions that may be unrealistic or unfair.
Considering multiple perspectives: Before concluding that someone has wronged us, we can explore other possible explanations for their behavior.
Distinguishing between impact and intent: Someone can cause us pain without meaning to harm us, and recognizing this distinction often opens pathways to resolution that blame closes off.
A Personal Example: The Cost of Unprocessed Complaint
This dynamic became painfully clear to me during a holiday week when I hosted a longtime friend who was going through a difficult period. I had agreed to have him stay with me despite my own challenging circumstances—I was maintaining my therapy practice through the holidays while processing devastating personal news. The day before he arrived, I learned that the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office was dropping my rape case despite having ample evidence to prosecute, simply because they were triaging cases and prioritizing serial rapists. The rape crisis center at UCLA had documented both physical violence to my body and sedatives commonly used in date rape drugs in my system.
Despite this profound personal tragedy, I made significant efforts to create joy and connection during his visit. We spent dedicated time together most days—going to restaurants, getting manicures, attending multiple holiday parties. I cooked for him, read tarot cards, made him hot chocolate during a cozy day we spent reading and chatting. I paid for nearly all our meals and entertainment and accommodated additional friends of his on New Year’s Eve. There were only two days when I opted out of specific plans to attend to my work responsibilities and private grieving—times when I needed to close my door to process the trauma in my life.
Thirty minutes before I had to return to seeing clients, this friend told me he’d had a terrible time and was exceptionally disappointed in me for not spending more time with him and helping him through his personal difficulties. Two weeks later, he followed up to restate this disappointment, saying he wanted to “own” only one component he considered his responsibility: he wished he’d communicated his expectations in advance.
What struck me most was that this person is a psychologist. He seemed to have taken the unprocessed, feelings-first language of therapeutic confession directly into his relationships without considering the impact on others. He appeared to have no capacity to hold both his disappointment and my circumstances simultaneously, no ability to consider that his near-constant marijuana use during the visit might have affected his memory of my availability, and no recognition that I might have legitimate reasons for not being able to meet his unstated expectations.
This pattern—of voicing complaints without context, empathy, or personal responsibility—is exactly what keeps many people in cycles of isolation and relationship failure. When we treat others as resources for managing our emotional states rather than as whole people with their own inner lives and limitations, we create the very disconnection we’re trying to resolve.
Taking Ownership: How I Fell Into the Same Trap
As someone who consistently looks to my own part in complex dynamics, I spent considerable time in consultation with trusted advisors after I realized I’d disappointed my friend. I felt awful for missing the mark, as though I had failed in one of what I consider the chief responsibilities of friendship: showing up for someone during times of pain.
But when I was asked pointed questions—“Has he ever done the same for you?” and “Did you let him know how his behavior was bothering you throughout the stay?”—I realized I’d been contributing to the problematic dynamic all along.
I could have set a boundary around the marijuana use in my home. I could have voiced a preference for equal contribution to cleaning and costs. I could have reminded him in advance that I’m not the sort of person who likes to go out every night. Instead, I silently accommodated behaviors that drained my energy and resources, building resentment that I never directly addressed.
When we finally got on the phone to discuss what had happened, it probably would have been wiser for me to hear him out and take a moving-forward approach rather than addressing my own disappointments after the fact. By that point, voicing my hurt feelings served more to discharge my own discomfort than to actually repair the relationship.
Perhaps most importantly, I could have sat with my disappointment in the friendship without immediately needing to assign blame or seek resolution. We were both sad that more community support wasn’t available during a genuinely difficult time. In an ideal reality, we might have simply acknowledged that shared sadness without needing someone to be at fault for it.
This experience taught me how easy it is to fall into complaint patterns even when we intellectually understand their limitations. The pull to externalize our discomfort, to find reasons why others should have behaved differently, remains powerful even for those of us who work professionally with these dynamics.
The Therapeutic Alternative: Personal Responsibility and Mature Communication
In my work with clients, particularly younger ones or those struggling to maintain stable relationships, addressing this complaint-versus-responsibility dynamic represents a significant portion of our work together. The pattern is remarkably consistent: people who chronically complain about others’ behavior while avoiding examination of their own contributions to relational difficulties find themselves increasingly isolated and frustrated.
The therapeutic approach involves helping clients develop what I call “emotional ownership”—the capacity to recognize and work with their own feeling states without immediately externalizing them. This doesn’t mean suppressing emotions or avoiding difficult conversations. It means developing the maturity to:
Process intense emotions privately first: Rather than immediately sharing every feeling, we learn to sit with our reactions long enough to understand them and consider their origins.
Consider context and timing: We develop sensitivity to what others are dealing with and choose appropriate moments for difficult conversations.
Take responsibility for our expectations: We examine whether our disappointments stem from realistic or unrealistic expectations of others.
Hold multiple perspectives simultaneously: We cultivate the ability to acknowledge our pain while also considering the other person’s experience and limitations.
Distinguish between feelings and facts: We learn to recognize that feeling disappointed doesn’t necessarily mean someone has failed us.
The Path Forward: From Complaint to Connection
The goal isn’t to eliminate all difficult conversations or to suppress legitimate concerns about others’ behavior. Some situations do require direct communication about boundaries, needs, or problematic patterns. The key is approaching these conversations from a place of curiosity and mutual respect rather than blame and demand.
Instead of: “You disappointed me and didn’t meet my needs.”
We might try: “I’m noticing I felt disappointed this week. I’m wondering if we experienced our time together differently, and I’m curious about your perspective.”
Instead of: “You weren’t there for me when I needed support.”
We might try: “I found myself needing more support than I realized. I’m wondering how we might handle similar situations differently in the future.”
This shift from complaint to inquiry creates space for genuine dialogue rather than defensive responses. It acknowledges our own subjectivity while remaining open to information that might change our perspective.
The Deeper Work: Tolerance for Disappointment
Perhaps the most important aspect of moving beyond complaint culture is developing greater tolerance for disappointment itself. Disappointment is an inevitable part of human relationships—people will sometimes fail to meet our expectations, misunderstand our needs, or prioritize their own well-being over our comfort. This isn’t a sign that relationships are broken; it’s a sign that relationships involve imperfect humans with limited resources and competing priorities.
When we can hold disappointment without immediately needing to voice it, blame someone for it, or demand that it be fixed, we develop a kind of emotional resilience that actually deepens our capacity for intimacy. We become people others can trust with their own imperfections because we’re not constantly looking for someone to blame for our discomfort.
This doesn’t mean accepting genuinely harmful behavior or avoiding all conflict. It means developing the wisdom to distinguish between disappointments that require conversation and those that require internal work, between legitimate concerns about others’ behavior and our own unrealistic expectations.
Conclusion: The Courage to Look Inward
The complaint-based approach to relationships is seductive because it offers the illusion that our discomfort is always someone else’s responsibility to fix. It’s easier to point outward than to examine our own contributions to relational difficulties. But this approach consistently creates the very isolation and conflict it claims to resolve.
The alternative requires significantly more courage: the willingness to sit with our own difficult emotions, examine our expectations and assumptions, and take responsibility for our inner world while still engaging meaningfully with others. This approach doesn’t guarantee that others will always meet our needs or that relationships will be free of disappointment. But it does create the possibility for genuine intimacy based on mutual respect rather than mutual blame.
In therapy, we work toward this kind of emotional maturity—not because it makes life easier, but because it makes deeper connection possible. When we stop using others as repositories for our discomfort and start taking responsibility for our own emotional experience, we become people others actually want to be close to. And that, ultimately, is how we create the very connection that complaint-based approaches promise but can never deliver.
If you find yourself caught in cycles of complaint and disappointment in your relationships, therapy can provide a space to explore these patterns and develop more effective approaches to conflict resolution. The goal isn’t to eliminate difficult emotions, but to work with them in ways that create connection rather than distance. Reach out today.