One broad area of disagreement among red pillers and blue pillers is the importance of open communication. Red pillers are generally against it; blue pillers are generally for it. Red pillers will talk at length about indirect concepts like passive dread, social proof, and shit tests; blue pillers will tell you to "just talk to her."

One big reason red pillers believe indirect communication is so important in relationships is the concept of compliance vs. commitment. A good summary of the difference between the two can be found here:

When someone is compliant, they simply obey – doing what’s asked of them but no more. Typically they’re doing just enough to keep their job. Conversely, someone who’s committed will spend time and effort outside of normal business hours thinking about work and solving problems, finding better ways to get the job done, seeking out new insights, and then acting on them.

Do you want a partner who simply obeys? Who does what's asked of them but no more? Who only does the bare minimum, just enough to maintain the status quo? Of course not -- no one does. No one here, there, on TRP, or anywhere wants a partner who begrudgingly does only what they have to. Men want women who value them, respect them, desire them, and earnestly participate in the relationship. This type of relationship requires commitment, not merely compliance, and open communication -- even if it produces compliance -- paradoxically makes it harder to trust that someone is genuinely committed.

To illustrate the problems open communication produces when seeking commitment, consider a husband who openly asks his wife to respect him. One of three things will happen:

  1. She will openly refuse to respect him.
  2. She will agree to respect him, but he'll only get compliance, not commitment. In other words, while she may feign respect (even convincingly), she'll never actually see him as worthy of it. Long-term this is unsustainable. Unless she's an Oscar-worthy actress and never tells anyone, he'll eventually find out and then be back to square one, and the whole time she'll be unhappy anyway.
  3. She will agree to respect him, and he'll get her commitment -- she'll think something along the lines of "he's my husband and I love him; of course I should respect him!" and genuinely feel that way, happily ever after.

One and two are obvious problems, but three contains a problem of its own. While the wife ends up genuinely respecting the husband, he has no way of knowing whether he's in situation three (actual commitment) or two (feigned commitment). He can get a better guess as time passes, but he can never be fully sure. He can't just take her at her word, because if he could he never would have had to ask for her respect in the first place. He'll forever have that lingering bit of doubt about her sincerity, and even if he convinces himself it's real, or that a 97% chance of it being real is more than good enough, he'll always wonder if respect that can seemingly materialize so quickly can disappear just as fast. And if she respected him all along (and just needed a gentle reminder), why was she acting as if she didn't in the first place?

In short, open communication may help, but that help can prove to be an illusion and will never come without reservations. Only indirect communication can get someone to demonstrate commitment in a way you can trust.