Avoid Communication Meltdown
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A great communication technique for you to try tonight is called reflecting. It is when you stop a conversation to repeat what your partner has just expressed. It’s effect is two-fold: you ensure you received the intended message and you reinforce to your partner that he/she is being heard.
Many people complain this can feel phony or weird. Our answer is always the same: Reflecting your partner’s feelings will remain an empty technique and fall flat on its face unless you are genuinely interested in understanding your partner. If you are more concerned with being understood (bad) or being right (worse), communication in your marriage will never be truly satisfying.
So as long you are sincere about your desire to know your partner’s heart, reflecting her feelings can be extremely powerful and healing. You may feel awkward at first. You may even feel like a robot programmed to say, “It sounds as though you are feeling…” But if you practice this routinely, and if you genuinely want to repair or deepen your connection with your spouse, you’ll see just how natural it can become.
By the way, you don’t always need to begin your reflection with “It sounds like…” Here are some additional leads that may be helpful:
It seems as if…
What I hear you saying is…
It must have been…
Could it be that you are feeling…
You must feel…
I wonder if you are feeling…
Even using a variety of leads to reflect your partner’s feelings may feel a bit odd, but don’t give up. It is natural to feel awkward any time we try something new. Keep at it. In a relatively brief amount of time, with enough practice, you will begin to reflect feelings with an ease that naturally becomes part of your daily conversations.
One more thing – you don’t have to be a feelings expert to decipher your partner’s emotions. The good news is that when you are genuinely interested in understanding her heart, you can reflect back a feeling that isn’t really on target and still succeed with this practice. Your partner may be feeling frustrated; you respond from a genuine heart, “It sounds as if you are feeling pretty angry!” Your partner may not be feeling angry at all, but because you are genuinely interested in understanding her, she will not shut down. Instead, she will say something like “Well, I’m not really angry as much as I am just plain frustrated.” Do you see how it works? Even when you read her wrong, this technique works – as long as you are genuine in your effort to listen to her words and understand her meaning.
So if you listen carefully to your partner, you will hear many different feelings. You will “hear” them in their eyes, in their fidgeting, even in their silence. Think of this kind of listening as mining for feelings. Once you think you have identified a potential feeling, check it out with your partner. You will be surprised how understood she feels.
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4 Responses to “Avoid Communication Meltdown”
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My wife and I learned this technique several years ago and it was known as “mirroring’ and later “echoing”. It was initially effective and my wife and I used it on many occations to clear up difficulties. No matter what the technique is called, it will be effective for anyone who honestly undertakes this technique. Honesy and “genuine intrest” as the two doctors point out above is imparative though for it to work. If your wife begins using the method to shoot back your very own words twisted in order to use them against you or introduces absurdity into the message to damage your character, just step back, don’t get angry and seek outside help from a skilled counselor.
Hi there all,…
My wife to be and I can totally relate to what I just finish reading above.
Tracy and I, have’d, had, many hours of talks, and, yes, It does become so Godly natural…
It’s totally Sinus’s, (modle together), as in being one…
God Bless you all…
Joseph
How blessed your wife must be to have a husband that cares to learn and try.
God bless you both!
Guys who read this, take it from a woman this is so true and if my husband had done this tonight we’d be in bed together, not him watching baseball ALONE and me on the computer. We had a disagreement, to sum it up I asked Is ___ okay with you? he said no, I said why, he gave a reason that didn’t make sense to me. I tried to give him information backing my opinion, and he started raising his voice, telling me to quit badgering him (he does this a lot) and taunting me, telling me that I can’t walk away, I have to keep bothering him, why am I so selfish? This was so hurtful. If he only could have said “I understand that you feel ____ because of ____, but I feel ______ because of _______.” He says I always need to be right, and I tried to explain that I just wanted to tell him why I felt the way he did, and to get the reasons behind why he feels the way he does. I think he perceives this as me trying to be right, when I would just like him to listen to my reasoning, and also speak to me in a normal tone of voice, rather than rude and disrespectful.
SOOOO…. Lay it on, guys, I want to hear how this makes you feel. Am I full of crap? Am I a selfish B—- like he says because I’m making it all about me? Does any of this help you understand your own woman? I’m here on the “guys side” to try and get a new perspective.