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Hey everyone, welcome back to the Communicate and Connect
podcast. This is episode 30 on
relationship communication skills.
So, as you are probably aware, we have been doing
a series on getting ready for marriage. And
this started with a wedding photographer reaching out to
me, asking me for. For some of
kind of like my best tips, things that I thought were really foundational for
couples when they were preparing to get married or with their
brand, like newly married, you know, kind of brand new to marriage,
and what are things that they can do to set their relationship up for
success early on. And so we're going to continue on in that
series today, and this is going to be about relationship
skills. As I was prepping for this episode, I was thinking
about how there are these times with my
husband where I can really zone out and get lost in my own
thoughts. And I'm sure plenty of you can relate. This is such a
human thing to do. Most people will zone out and get lost in their
thoughts at some point. But there are also times where this happens and
he is, like, directly talking to me.
I'll. I'll even respond to him. So he'll be directly talking to
me. He'll respond, I'll respond and I'll say, mm. But then I don't have a
clue what he just told me and I don't remember what he said.
And so in those moments, this happened kind of recently.
So in those moments, I have taken the route of
just trying to be very honest that I zoned out and
asking him if he can repeat what he just said.
And that is, you know, not always
fun. And it's not always. I don't feel like super awesome
about myself in those moments, you know, to say, like, yeah,
I know I said mm, yeah, to whatever you said,
but I zoned out And I just didn't. I didn't get the message. Can you
repeat it? Like, that's not really a fun thing to admit and tell your
partner, But I'm really glad that I do because it
allows us to come back to that conversation and
repair. There are times where my husband does this also,
and there are times where I have to ask him to
refocus his attention or ask him if
he did hear what I said. And this is
pretty normal, again, for people to do at times to zone
out. And those are. Those are time points
where it's possible for a fight to start. I
think that is a moment in pretty much every
couple relationships where a fight could start because one
partner could say, why aren't you paying attention to
me? Put. Put your phone down. Or I can't believe you
weren't paying attention. Why did you say yes, yes
to my question when you didn't even hear me? That is a moment where there
could be a fight. And so what is it that
you. What are skills. What are communication skills to do
in moments where you could have a fight? And
that is what we're going to talk about today. So
in getting ready for marriage or if you're newly
married, the number one thing that I think can be
helpful, maybe it's not number one, because I
think I've said that every episode on this show so far,
like the number one thing. One of the main things that will
be helpful getting started out is to
learn communication skills. And these are
skills that you can learn that you can practice over and over and over again.
And it may feel awkward, especially at the beginning while you're learning
them, but then as you do it, it becomes more
natural. The skills that I think are pretty important for
learning at the very beginning would be active
listening skills, empathy, like building up
your ability to have empathy, negotiating, and
conflict resolution. So let's talk about each of those four
real fast. So active listening skills
involve not multitasking. You know, most of
the time when I say mm to my
husband, and then I have to go back and say, actually, yeah, I didn't. I
didn't get anything you just said. Or I'm
usually multitasking during those times. And the times
where my husband seems out of it and I have to say,
did you catch anything I just said? Those are usually
times where I'm asking him to multitask.
Actually, those would be times where his attention is focused elsewhere, and
then I'm coming and interrupting him. That's usually what happens. But the
idea of this is that multitasking means that we're going to miss
things. None of us are super great at
multitasking. And so
learning to pause when your partner is
talking and redirect your attention
and not multitask while you guys are interacting
is part of active listening. Another part of
active listening would be to repeat back what you heard your partner
say to make sure you got what they said and
you understood it correctly. And there are times where I'll have couples
practice this in my office in couples counseling,
because oftentimes we all feel like
we're speaking very clearly, but the message is
not getting across to my partner, and my partner is getting a totally
different message. And so repeating
back what you heard gives your partner
a chance to sort of, like, correct any
misinformation that came up. If you didn't quite get the message, they
can clarify it for you. And then you guys make sure you're on
the same page with, okay, did the message I was trying to
send, is that actually the message that was received? And if so,
then we can go from there and continue on in the conversation. But so
often I see issues with communication and couples
happen because they didn't get clarity about what what was
meant in the message to begin with. So
repeating back what you heard your partner say and getting clarity on that
is going to be helpful. That's one skill of active
listening. Another skill that you can learn
is mindfulness, which is really about keeping
my attention in place, keeping my attention where
I want my attention to be in that moment. And this also has
to do with not multitasking. So if I can learn
to pause what I'm doing and redirect my
attention, so that way my attention is fully on my partner in that
moment, then I will more
likely be able to take in what they're saying and actually hear the message
that they're trying to say, and less likely to
misinterpret what they're saying. So active listening skills, all
of that goes into active listening. Another
set of skills that I think is really important to learn at the
beginning of a marriage is finding your empathy.
We all need to know that our partners care about how we
feel and care about what we're going
through and our life experiences. And so one way
to develop empathy, and some people
are more naturally stronger at this than others, but
one way to develop empathy is to get really curious about
your partner's experience, Ask them questions,
ask them what they feel, what they think,
what is making them think or feel the way that they think
or feel, how Are they making sense of what they're going through in
life? You can also start building up
empathy by becoming more aware of your own thoughts
and feelings. The more empathy I can develop for myself,
then it's often easier to also
develop empathy for other people. Part of
developing empathy is also letting go of
judgment and judgmentalness. So
one of my favorite sayings is
that feelings are a fact. Because oftentimes I'll hear
couples say, well, I disagree. And I'll ask them,
like, what is it that they disagree about? Because there is no way to
disagree with how my partner is feeling.
How they feel. Their emotional experience is
a fact. I might disagree with
a rationale behind something, but I cannot disagree with
a feeling because the feeling is the fact. And
so developing that curiosity
about their emotional experience. Help me understand
how you feel this way. Help me understand what it is that
you're actually feeling can help build
up empathy. And then you can
also think about trying to imagine what it would be
like for you. Sort of like being in your partner's shoes, type of
thing. Imagine what it would be like to feel what your partner is
feeling. And that can also help build up a sense of
empathy. The third skill or set
of skills is around negotiating. And
so we've covered this a little bit in this podcast already. You can go
Back to episode 26, which is on decision making in
relationships. And that is a big component
of negotiating. But generally you want to try to find a middle ground.
And some people do this by thinking
about how important is this thing
to you versus your partner.
And that is one way to sort of
find a middle ground. Like, if it's really important to you, it's not important
to me, then let's go with what you want. And
then, you know, if something else is really important to me, but
you don't really care, then we'll go with what I want. That's one way that
people negotiate. Another way is by taking
turns on things. So there. There are
lots of ways to navigate that
negotiation, but that is a whole set of skills that you could
learn. Part of
what is happening when people get stuck in
negotiation. So let's say something
matters a lot to both of us. It matters a lot,
a lot to both of us. There's not really. It's really hard to find a
middle ground. What do you do in those moments? My stance
on this is that usually there's a deeper emotional meaning
around what I want versus what you want.
Sometimes that is
that I think,
maybe I think, or you think that your
partner doesn't care about what you
want. And so then it's. It's this extra
emotional stuck point. I can't really negotiate
for where we go on vacation
if I feel like you don't care. If I,
you know, if somebody is feeling like my partner doesn't care about me, of
course they're going to hold on to, no, I want to go here for vacation.
And that is proof that you care. And so then
we have something else that needs to be worked on before you guys
can actually really negotiate where to go
on vacation. Do you care? Is often a common one that comes
up in those points where it's really hard to negotiate. Another one that
comes up is, are we equal? If one
partner feels like, well, I do all the. All
the chores, all the things for the house, then.
And then their partner says, well, I know I normally do this, but could
you do this this time? Their partner
might say, no, I don't want to do it, because I do everything around the
house all the time, and it's not equal, so you should have to do that
still. And now we're stuck. And
there's not really a way to negotiate because there's
this deeper conversation going on
about, are we equal? Is there fairness and
justice in the relationship? And that has to get
addressed first before you can really
negotiate about the task. So clearing out kind
of the deeper emotional struggles helps make
negotiating easier. And if that's where you find
yourself at, then probably a couples counselor
is going to be what will be helpful for working on the deeper
emotional struggles. The last skill is conflict resolution.
And this is because the Gottmans, and I know I've mentioned them before,
the John and Julie Gottman, they're both doctors.
I think they're psychologists, if I'm remembering correctly. They
are over at the Gottman Institute, and they do a ton
of research on couples. And one of the things that they found
in their research was that the repair is always the most
important part. You can't really avoid conflict, and
you can resolve conflict by using
active listening skills, empathizing
with each other, negotiating. Like, these are all skills to
resolve conflict. But the big point
is that you can avoid conflict. And
when you do sweep it under the rug, it tends to
keep coming back up. So you can use all the skills that
we've talked about so far in this episode
as forms towards working towards conflict
resolution. But it's that repair. It's the making sure
you and I are okay. There is a resolution where we're
on the same team and we're on the same page. And
that is the most important part for the
sustainability of couple relationships. So if
you are either, you know, engaged, about to get married,
or you're newly married, and you want
to figure out, okay, how do I learn a lot
of these relationship communication skills? Here are ways that
you can do that. So, obviously I'm a couples counselor.
I think couples counseling is, like, the best thing ever. It's my
jam. So you could do couples counseling and you could learn
these skills with a couples counselor. But there are
also options for you outside of couples counseling
if that either doesn't work for your
schedule or your partner's not open to going to counseling. There are
a variety of reasons why counseling might not be a good fit for you or
a good fit for you at a certain time in your life. So
other options would be workshops. There are a lot of
different types of couple workshops out there.
Some of them are specific for, like, marriage
preparation workshops. And I'll list some
of these in the show notes. So if you want a list of
workshops that currently exist out there,
like the main. The main ones for marriage preparation,
I'll list them in the show notes. So go check them out.
You could also do a relationship intensive.
So this is something I started offering.
I do them for normal couples counseling as well, but for
premarital and newlywed counseling, especially when
people are working on getting ready for a wedding
and a honeymoon, there's all this planning all the time. It's
stressful. Counseling doesn't have to be stressful. So
intensives are where you go work with a
couple's counselor for a full day or a full two days,
depending on what you need. And you
just do like six hours of therapy in a day.
And so it is very intensive. But it's not
too bad when it's. I mean, I like them and I like them for intensive
therapy work as well, but especially for premarital
intensives, it's a lot of skills that you
can learn with your counselor and knock out all your
premarital counseling in a day. There are
also relationship retreats. So if you wanted something
more like a vacation versus just like a workshop that you
might travel to, that's either in your city or in a town
nearby if you wanted more of a vacation feel, or
like a destination travel location where you work
on learning skills like this, there are relationship retreats out
there, and then there are books and
podcasts like this podcast that you can listen to. And these
are all ways that you can go about building up your
relationship. Communication skills. The action item for this
episode, like if you were to do one thing or
take away one thing from today,
what I would want you to go home and try is try to start
reflecting back what you hear your partner saying
and use that as a way to start developing your active
listening and your empathy skills.
So it's not a huge task here, it's
just repeat back. Okay?
Thank you for sharing. I heard you say this. I heard you say
X, Y and Z. Did I understand that correctly? That's all you got to
do. So if you do this challenge, post
about it or send me a message or tag me on social
media, I want to know how it goes. All right, have a great
day.
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Until next time.