HOW TO TALK TO YOUR LOVER AND ENJOY A VIBRANT RELATIONSHIP

       Have you ever watched couples at restaurants? You can find one table where two people are deeply engaged in conversation, dwelling upon each other’s words as if they were the only two left in the world. Then you can scan a couple of tables over and find another couple that is almost completely devoid of emotion. While one couple may be loud and the other silent, in reality they are both communicating.

            Ask a husband and wife that have been together for a long time and they will assuredly tell you the secret to a long lasting marriage is communication, but they may very well be wrong. In fact, “communicate more” has become so cliché as to become meaningless. Communicate what? Communicate how?

            Having spent over ten years counseling couples, I can assure that to communicate doesn’t mean to talk more. The reality is that men and women have a far different makeup when it comes to quantity of communication. Studies show that men use about 20,000 words per day, where women use about 40,000. Often a wife will complain, “He never talks to me.” In truth communication is far more than words, which in fact play the smallest part.

             Words are about 7% of communication, with tone of voice playing about 38%, and the remaining 55% are contained in body language and facial expressions. Think about it, would it mean more for someone to drone on with endless sentences, or would a more intimate connection by simply hearing your name said by your lover who then stares deeply into your eyes? So when wives and girlfriends complain that their partner doesn’t “talk enough,” what they really mean is that the interactions they have are not deep connections.

            But let’s take a few moments and consider the act of talking in a relationship. What is meaningful when it comes to having discussions? Norman Wright suggests a few defining qualities that happy couples have in their conversations.

            First, along with the dialogue, each partner conveys the feelings that they understand what is being said. Rather than simply saying ‘uh-huh’ quality communicate involves giving feedback. The next time you are talking to your lover be sure to make it clear that you are fully engaged in the moment. Rather than ‘uh-huh’ try, “I know exactly what you mean,” or “I think that is a brilliant point!”

            Second, happy couples have a wider range of subjects to talk about. For some people, if they were not able to talk about their kids or their jobs they would have little to say. Here is a simple way to grow in this area; for the next four days tell no one what you do for a living, rather find other things to share. This will help you pay more attention to the world around you as your find things to engage your mind in and begin to notice about others in your life.

            Thirdly, and this is a big one, they refused to give the silent treatment. John Gottman refers to “repair efforts.” Repair efforts are words and gestures and forms of touch that reengage a person’s partner in the conversation if the other party is detaching because they feel slighted. Pay attention to nonverbal cues and how you partner speaks, and less on the words themselves.

            So there you have it, some of the best research on how people talk to one another, along with several principles to put into action. Just be sure to work on these areas with a loving spirit that is more concerned with giving than receiving, if you do that I can promise you that you will never run out of things to say to your sweetheart.

Tobin Crenshaw

Twominutesermon.com