Step three is the fuel

Explaining feels like the solution. It is the part of the loop you have most invested in, and it is the part that keeps the whole thing turning.

Here is why. When you explain, you hand over material. Your reasons, your feelings, your finances, your marriage, the thing you were worried about. In an ordinary conversation that material gets you understood. In this one it gets used, quoted back at you next month, or repeated to your sister.

And explaining makes a bid. It says: judge my reasons, and if they are good enough, release me. That puts the decision in their hands, every single time. You have been asking permission and calling it a conversation.

Being understood is not on offer. That is the hard sentence in this course and everything else follows from it.