Listening to Determine How You Should Say It

Today’s passionate relationship principle (PRP) is Listening to Determine How You Should Say It.    When you have conversations with your spouse (or your significant other for those who aren’t married), how you communicate is important.  We discussed this in a previous segment.  We also discussed the importance of listening in a previous segment.   In this segment we are putting together those two concepts to get feedback about how to communicate with our mate when you have to talk about a difficult or stressful topic--right now, if for some reason the topic cannot be discussed later.   When you ask your mate if they would be up to talking about the issue right now, listen to how they respond.  What you’re doing is, you’re listening to get some very information.  You’re listening to find out how open they are to really talking about the topic, and you’re listening to try to find out if they are going to give you a reasonable amount of time to talk about the topic.  For example, let’s say that Mike and Kim have both gone back to school and both of them have tuition payments that are due immediately, they are having some financial challenges, and they need to figure out what they’re going to do about school.  Let’s say that Kim wants to talk about it and Mike doesn’t want to discuss it, but he’s been avoiding the conversation with her and he feels pressured to at least hear what Kim as to say.  Otherwise, she’ll say that he won’t even talk to her when there’s an issue--and he doesn’t want to hear that again.   Kim says, Mike I want to talk about this situation with our tuition and finances.  So, Mike says something like, Alright, what is it now? By responding in this way, he’s saying to Kim that he doesn’t want to talk at all, which means that he’s not going to give her much time to talk.  It also says that he’s not open to really working toward a solution.  Since Kim is using today’s relationship principle, Listening to Determine How You Should Say It.  She might say something like this, Mike I know that school is important to both of us because we have dreams and goals that involve having a better life and more opportunities than our parents had.  Based on some of the great ideas that you’ve shared in the past, I asked myself: What kinds of alternatives would Mike come up with.  Using that train of thought I came up with three alternatives.   What are your thoughts about: Option 1 .   . . ,  Option 2 . . ., and Option 3 . . .     (Yes, ladies it usually helps him to accept the solution if he thinks it’s his idea).  Today’s relationship principle is Listening to Determine How You Should Say It.    


Can you think of instances in your relationship in which you listened to your partner and got feedback that really helped you to have a more effective conversation with them?

Dr. Simon – The Relationship Doctor at Center for Passionate Relationships (CPR)

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