7 Ways to Improve Your Relationship
Every relationship has it’s challenges. This is not only true for romantic relationship but it is true of any relationship - family, friends, coworkers, even the relationship you have with yourself. Sometimes these challenges persist or even worsen, especially when we don’t make a change.
As a relationship therapist and coach I’ve helped hundreds of individuals and couples navigate the challenges in their relationships and rekindle healthy relationships. I’m by no means perfect but I also practice what I preach and I believe these 7 relationship tips can help you improve the relationships in your life.
Develop Your Emotional Self Awareness
The lack of emotional self awareness is one of the most impactful dynamics I see in unhappy relationships. Yet, emotions play a vital role in our happiness and relationship satisfaction. And reality check, money can’t buy your happiness. One of the reasons I spend so much time with clients helping them identify and process their emotions is because it’s rare to have healthy modeling of how to identify and express our emotions in childhood and even more so in adulthood. When you are able to name what you are feeling, you can begin to understand why you are feeling the way you are, and then you can learn to communicate your emotional activation. If you want to feel happier in your relationships and happier in life over all, invest your time in developing your emotional self awareness.
Stop Criticizing
There are very few situations where criticizing the person you are in relationship with is going to have a helpful outcome. Take folding laundry for example. You might feel frustrated when your partner doesn’t fold the clothes the way you like and so you say, “Don’t hold the clothes that way, do it like this.” This immediately comes across as a criticism. It’s not to say your preferences aren’t important. It’s how you communicate your unmet needs and being able to see the problem from the larger context that matters. If you step back for a moment and ask yourself, “Does this really matter in the large scheme of life?” and you are honest the answer will be no 99/100 times.
Criticizing doesn’t feel good on the receiving end and if we’re honest, it doesn’t feel good for the giver either. In my experience, often times one person in the relationship tends to take on the role of criticizer. However, it’s possible for all members of the relationship to be stuck in a criticizing downward head spin. It’s important to distinguish criticism from healthy feedback. Not only is constructive feedback okay but it’s actually helpful to building a healthy relationship. But in order for there to be constructive feedback there must first be a strong emotional connection within the relationship.
Vulnerability
Vulnerability is being able to say, “I’m feeling really overwhelmed from work today, could you help me by listening to me vent for a few minutes?” Vulnerability is directly connected to having emotional self awareness because if you don’t know what you are feeling or why something is bothering you, you won’t be able to step into vulnerability and communicate what you need. Vulnerability could also be asking for helping figuring out what you need, “I’m feeling down, can we talk?”. So often we bring unprocessed emotional activation from one environment into another, often times in the relationships we care the most about and then that relationship becomes the unhealthy outlet. It doesn’t make you a stronger person pretending like you have it all together and nothing is bothering you. The reality is, life is stressful, work is stressful, finances are stressful, parenting is stressful, navigating relationships is stressful, the list could go on and on. It takes more strength to admit that something is bothering you and to talk about it.
Deep Listening
You’ve likely heard of active listening but I believe that doesn’t fully convey the practice of being fully present, fully engaged in what the other person is saying and trying to communicate. Deep listening means you are locked in with the other person, distraction free (i.e. no phones, no TV, etc.), and coming from a posture of seeking to understand. If you are listening deeply, you aren’t waiting for a pause to jump in to defend yourself or responding with, “You’ve done that plenty of times before.” If you are truly coming from a place of wanting to understand, it doesn’t really matter how, what, or when someone says something to you because you are able to hear deeply. Interrupting, name calling, unkind language, or being condescending has no place in a healthy relationship. Healthy communication depends just as much on the listener as it does on the talker. If you are the one talking you too have a responsibility to listen deeply. Listen to how your partner responds and what kind of questions they follow up with. This can help indicate to you if you are communicating in a way that is conveying what you are trying to share and if you need to adjust your approach.
Validation
Validation is saying, “That makes sense… thank you for sharing… your experience is valid.” Following up these affirming statements with further questions solely focused on your partner and inviting them to share more is what validation is all about. Even if you feel you have a valid justification or different facts about the situation or a completely different view point, don’t go there yet, stay focus on what they are sharing and valid their share. Validation is not saying, “I’m sorry you feel that way, here’s what I was trying to do.” This type of statement often feels invalidating, minimize, belittling, and dismissive. It’s a sure way to start conflict. Relationships aren’t about who has the best recollection of what happened or the best memory of facts of the event. Yet so often I see couples getting stuck in unhealthy conflict because they can’t move beyond who is right or wrong and get sucked into the attack/defend cycle. Validation is being able to say, “Your emotions, your feelings, what you are experiencing is valid and I am here to listen.”
Stop Fighting over Fact Finding
This stems directly out of validation. If we’re honest, we all want to be right. We want our experience to be proven as accurate and our memories to be held in high regard. But I am here to tell you there is a difference between what is factually true and what is true from your experience. This isn’t to say the facts of what happened aren’t important because in fact they are important and do serve a purpose in reconciliation and repair. But when you hear your partner sharing something that upsets them or hurt them you can’t start off the conversation with, “That’s not at all what I said/did/meant.” This type of response immediately takes the focus of the person attempting to sharing their hurt with you and by jumping to fact finding the conversation dynamic has now moved into arguing about what did or didn’t happened. This doesn’t just depend on the person listening, it also requires that the person sharing doesn’t get stuck on the exact details of what happened but has done some of their own processing to identify and communicate the deeper hurt and emotions. After 10 or 15 minutes of listening and validating, you can then share what you wanted to say at the beginning but in a way that also communicates your emotions and feelings and less so about the accuracy of the facts. This might look like, “You know when you said I did this, I felt like I was beginning attacked and that hurt because I don’t think that’s entirely accurate.” Now the other person has the responsibility to respond with validation and willing to compromise. For example, “That makes sense and I can see how that hurt you, I don’t know if my phrasing was entirely fair and I’m sorry.”
Seek Understanding
Seeking to understand what your partner is feeling or experiencing on a deep, intimate level requires that you are practicing all that I’ve discussed so far. These each build on one another and feed into each other. True understanding is being able to ask, “Tell me why does that make you feel that way?” Often times I see couples attempting to understand but getting stuck with a passive statement such as, “You seem upset” when instead this can easily be rephrased into a question seeking deeper understanding and connection, “It seems like something is really bothering you, would you like to talk about it now?”. I think many people are too busy and inpatient to slow down and commit time to talking with their partner and this leads to emotions building up, explosive arguments, resentment, stonewalling, withholding, avoidance, and shutting down - all characteristics of a toxic relationship. I believe this is because many people only talk about their emotions in the heat of an argument or when it’s convenient for them. Sometimes all it takes is dedicating 30 minutes once a week to sitting down together and talking about how you each are feeling.
You’ll notice that these dynamics are entirely within your control, they do not require any change on the other person’s side. This isn’t to say the other person doesn’t also need to change. In fact, I believe all members of the relationship must look at themselves and identify where they each can change and try something differently. However, we have absolutely ZERO control over anyone else and we cannot make anyone, except ourselves, change. If you have genuinely been trying different ways to show up in a relationship and you truly feel the other person has not changed at all, then that should give you pause to carefully consider if it’s a relationship you want to continue.
Wondering where to go next? I’m always taking new therapy clients who are located in the state of Colorado or coaching clients world wide - schedule a consult call with me and let’s talk.
