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How to Enhance and Enrich Your
Marriage By Garrett Coan Any marriage counselor will tell you that one of the most common problems observed when couples come for help is poor communication skills. People get into trouble in their marriages because they have not developed their ability to listen and communicate. Barriers to Communication These are a few of the things that prevent people from communicating effectively: Not knowing how to communicate properly Not taking the time to think through what you want to say Not taking the time to anticipate what your partner might be thinking and feeling Fear of revealing too much of yourself Fear of your partners anger Not wanting to hurt your partners feelings Empathy and Acceptance People marry because they want to spend the rest of their lives with their partner. They have every hope of growing together and creating a relationship that makes them feel emotionally healthy. Two factors that are necessary for this to happen are empathy and acceptance on the part of both partners.
Empathy is the capacity to put oneself in anothers shoes and understand how they view their reality, how they feel about things. Demonstrating empathy and acceptance is critical to maintaining a strong relationship. Lets look next at some communication skills that enable you to create a climate of empathy, acceptance, and understanding. First we will explore a skill called Active Listening. Active Listening Active listening is a way of communicating that creates the important climate of empathy, acceptance, and understanding. It is a two-step response to a statement made by your partner. It includes reflecting back what emotion you detected in the statement, and the reason for the emotion. This is what active listening sounds like: Sounds like youre upset about what happened at work. Youre very annoyed by my lateness, arent you? Why Active Listening Is a Valuable Skill Active listening is a valuable skill because it demonstrates that you understand what your partner is saying and how he or she is feeling about it. Active listening means restating, in your own words, what the other person has said. Its a check on whether your understanding is correct. It demonstrates that you are listening and that you are interested and concerned. Actively listening does not mean agreeing with the other person. The point is to demonstrate to your partner that you intend to hear and understand his or her point of view. This is good for your relationship for several reasons: When someone demonstrates that they want to understand what you are thinking and feeling, it feels good. It creates good feelings about the other person. Restating and checking understanding promotes better communication and fewer misunderstandings.
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More Active Listening Examples
Here are some more examples of active
listening:
You sound really stumped about
how to solve this problem.
It makes you angry when you find
errors on Joeys homework.
Sounds like youre really
worried about Wendy.
I get the feeling youre awfully
busy right now.
More Communication Skills
Although our space is limited in this
short newsletter, there are a few more communication skills that I must mention.
These include asking open-ended questions, making summary statements to check
understanding, and encouraging your partner to open up and elaborate by using
neutral questions and phrases.
Open-ended questions begin with what,
why, how do, or tell me.
These questions get the other
person to open up and elaborate on the topic.
Asking these kinds of questions
gets the other person involved by giving him or her a chance to tell what
he or she thinks or knows.
These questions are designed to
encourage your partner to talk.
They are useful when the other
person is silent or reluctant to elaborate.
They are also useful in dealing
with negative emotions (such as anger or fear), since they help encourage
the other person to vent feelings.
Summary Statements
Summary statements sum up what you hear
your partner saying.
A summary statement enhances your
partners self-esteem by showing that you were listening carefully.
It also helps you focus on facts,
not emotions.
It helps your partner clarify
his or her own thinking by hearing your summary.
Summary statements also help you
deal with multiple disagreements so you can deal with them one by one.
They help eliminate confusion
by focusing on the relevant facts.
Summary statements also help you
separate the important issues from the trivial.
Neutral Questions and Phrases
Neutral questions and phrases get your
partner to open up and elaborate on the topic you are discussing.
These questions are more focused
than open-ended questions.
They help your partner understand
what you are interested in hearing more about.
They further communication because
they help you gain more information.
When you ask these kinds of questions,
you demonstrate to your partner that you are interested and that you are
listening.
Business Skills for Marriages
You might be surprised to hear that the
same skills that help people succeed in business can also be used to build
a better marriage. Like any business, a marriage is a partnership of people.
Many of the skills that make businesses run successfullyplanning,
organizing, and setting goalsalso can be applied to running your marriage
successfully. These are some of the skills that will strengthen any
marriage:
1. Create an overall vision of what you
want your life to be like; consider all life areas.
2. Develop a long-range strategy.
3. Set short-term and long-term
goals.
4. Plan the steps that will help you
accomplish your goals.
5. Organize projects.
6. Manage projects.
7. Manage people.
8. Evaluate progress and results at regular
intervals.
9. Revise goals as needed.
Do you believe
that fairy tale marriages exist?
Yes
or
No
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