25. Communication Skills for Couples

Even the best couples have conflict- how to stop disconnection in its tracks.

In this podcast we discuss:

The enemy in the relationship: the conflict cycle. Feeling heard and understood

How to do everyday communication

Levine & Heller’s book Attached, and the reasons for effective communication

Tips to help couples communicate:

Use empathy

Use body language

Stop interrupting

Ask good questions

Free Guide: 3 Step Script: Talking So He Listens

This relationship podcast is not meant to diagnose, treat, prevent or cure any medical, mental health, or relationship problem. It should not be seen as relationship advice for your specific relationship. Seek out couples therapy or marriage counseling by a practitioner in your area for advice for your specific problem.

Host: Amber Dalsin., M.Sc., Psychologist (Amber Mckenzie). She does Couples Therapy in Toronto. She does online individual relationship counseling and online couples therapy.

---

Transcription (this is a close transcription. It may not be 100% accurate.)

COMMUNICATION Skills for couples

Even the best couples have conflict- how to stop disconnection in it’s tracks.

The conflict cycle is an enemy in the relationship with keeps you from a safe, loving and responsive connection. Sure all couples do conflict, but how we do the conflict either leads to connection or disconnection.

Feeling got and understood by your partner really feels nice. You get the sense that someone is on your team, someone has your back. It feels good to have a sense that in this great big world, with all the things that could go wrong, you have someone who can brave the touch stuff with you and hold your hand.

How to talk to your partner everyday

Early courtship is overflowing with pleasurable experience a feeling understood. Couple for almost like a secret language just for the two of them. They can talk for hours, text all night, and feel cared about by a glance across the room. In can been indescribably wonderful, that sense our partner understands us, knows us.

In episode 20 we de discuss your brain on love because that easy talking with your partner at the start is helped by pleasure neurotransmitters and phermornes’. These smooth conversations give us the sense that the partner knows us, that we are understood, and we can let them truly see us- maybe we even feel loved.

So many of my couples say, they do not understand. Where does understanding come from? That sense our partner is really seeing the world through our eyes, they are looking at it with us.

The tv show transplant is based on a character Bashir Hamed who ER doctor, is a refugee in Canada. He and his sister end up in Canada after his parents were murder in a war. He was a trauma doctor, and after a series of heroic life saving events- like drilling into his soon-to-be- bosses head with a drill after a truck drives through a window, he ends up as a resident in the emergency room in Toronto. Another resident, Mags Leblanc is always learning, weather she is outside the hospital reading gin her car or taking the next double shift, she is keen to know more. Over the course of the season, Mags and Bash work on many cases together, share some hugs and seem to have an almost magnetic connection. Now on season two, the couples never does more than look at each other from across the room, hug, or work together, but the show has you thinking that there is something special between them…. Even though nothing has happened. They both have that sense of being understood with the other, safe with the other.

Now Mags and Bash have not gotten to the relationship stage of dissatisfaction. Couples eventually have moments of displeasure, hurt, let down, or broken trust and that early experience becomes a long past memory.

Going back to the TV show Animal Kingdom Cath is married Baz. Baz was adopted at age 12 by Smirf. She grooms him to be the leader of the family robberies. He has a quiet and somewhat kind nature making him likeable, but there is a manipulative self-centered side to him. Cath and Baz began dating when they were teenagers, and they eventually marry. However Cath often becomes upset because she has to compete with Smirf. Baz and Cath start taking about having another child and are excited at the prospect. One day, Cath attempt have sex with Baz, and he turn her down. She immediately accuses that Smirf said something. He appears angry and accusatory. Now, rightly so, because Smirf did say something. All the past hurts, past disappointment, past moments of broken trust flood into this interaction. And their moment loses the seamless ease of early relationship.

So it’s pretty normal to have that early easy flow of conversation glitch up the longer you have been with someone. that means you need to intentionally hone in your communication skills.

This is where a lot of my couples protest- but it should just be natural.

Sure- but think about when it’s natural. When the relationship is good.

So if you’re struggling, you need to work to make the communication good again.

In the book by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller, Attached the new science of adult attachment and how it can help you find a keep love- they write that the purpose of effective communication serves two primary goals:

1.       To help you pick the right partner for you- basically if you use effective communication, can your partner meet your needs, and if they can’t you have some real thinking to do about if this partner is a good long term fit

2.       To make sure your needs are met in the relationship- old relationship or new relationship.

So maybe it’s worth really trying to be an effective communicator, if for no other reason than getting your needs met.

Use Empathy

Theresa Wiseman’s research on empathy points out that to make it safe to connect, we can use empathy. There are four main components of empathy.

• Seeing the world through your partner’s eyes

• Refraining from judgement

• Understanding the person’s feelings

• Communicating your understanding of their feelings 

Using empathy, allows you to choose how you communicate your message, your partner can understand you. When communication becomes a nasty tit for tat dance,  it not usually the message that’s the issues, rather the behaviors used in the delivery.  

Consider a time a conversation has gone well between you and your partner, What were you doing? Did they understand you? How were you acting?

Think about time communication went south. What were you doing? Did they understand you? How were you acting?

2.       Use body language

Work by Burgoon JK et al., (2009) estimates that 60 to 65 percent communication between people is done through non-verbal behaviour. That means it’s not so much the words we say, it’s how we say things and how we listen. So when your partner is talking, lean in, nod your head and get interested (like you would in early dating, even if they were talking about a topic you didn’t know anything about. Make that partner feel important with your body language).

For more on how to get him to finally listen to you, check out the 3-point formula so you’re heard, available at www.emberrelationshippsychology.com.

Remember just because the sound of what your partner is saying is hitting your eardrums, does not mean they know you’re listening.

3.       Stop interrupting

While sometimes great conversations are made from the spontaneity of just saying things as they come to you, a  lot of partners come to my office and end up saying “they don’t listen to me.” 

So just listen, until it’s your partners turn, even if you disagree- back to point 1- use empathy, see it form their view and stay away from judgement.

4.      Google questions- or just ask questions. But I say google, because often I am shocked that people don’t know how to ask them, they use statements like you agree that I do housework, what are you trying to say about the housework. Questions can draw our partners out of their shells, and having them share things they wouldn’t usually. People ask how I get people to open up? I act interested and ask questions.

If you and your partner are more like Cath and Baz and you want to get back to being more like the Mags and Bash, it’s time to up-level, with intention your communication game.

If you want that seamless, easy conversational flow- and you don’t make changes, well as the saying goes, insanity is going the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

You need to make intentional changes to make things better.

These little changes can take literally minutes per day, but really really really make a relationship better. And by using effective communication, and communicating your needs  in a gentle, kind and reasonable way, you will learn if your partner can meet your needs, and fi they can’t you have some real thinking to do about the pros and cons of the relationship.

This podcast is not meant to diagnose, treat, prevent or cure any mental health or relationship problem. Please see a psychologist, or marriage and family therapist in your area for more help for your specific problem.