▹Posts Categorized: Communication

How To Deal With Your Defensive Partner

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How do you stop defensiveness from harming your relationship?

Your partner hurt your feelings or crossed a line. You want to share how you feel, but you never feel heard. Better yet, you have tried so many ways to talk about your feelings and get nowhere. They respond with explanation and frustration. They may say, “I would have gotten that done sooner, but I was busy.” Or “You are always so critical.” While we can’t control how your partner responds, we can increase the chance that they will listen by communicating in a positive and constructive way.

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6 Steps to Prevent Your Partner’s Defensiveness

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Defensiveness puts up a wall in your relationship. Stop it before it starts.

A defensive person is emotionally closed off, argumentative, and often exhibits negative body language like crossed arms. They will deflect the conversation away from the original issue and either refuse to engage or launch loosely related counterattacks on their partner. This doesn't sound like the kind of person you would feel safe expressing your hurt or concerns with, does it? So how do you stop yourself or your partner from jumping to the defensive?

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Stop Pokémon Go from Ruining Your Relationship

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Pokémon Go and Relationships, Pokémon Go boundaries, Pokémon Go pros and cons, Pokémon Go fights, Pokémon Go boyfriend, Pokémon Go girlfriend, Pokémon Go husband, Pokémon Go wife, Pokémon Go kids, Pokémon Go family,

Should you say "stop" to Pokémon Go for the sake of your relationship?

Pokémon Go has quickly become nothing short of a cultural phenomenon. With so many players and an incredible amount of media hype in a culture arguably already electronically obsessed, many are concerned about how this augmented reality game could affect relationships.

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Talk About Sex During Sex

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How to Talk About Sex During Sex

How to Say "Eh" Without Killing the Mood

Usually the most productive conversations about what goes on in the bedroom happen outside of the bedroom, but sometimes in the moment you need to get your partner on the same page. A lot of times we hesitate to talk about sex during sex for fear of hurting our partner’s feelings or to avoid “killing the mood” but the truth is that when you are not fully present, the sexual experience is just not what it should be.

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How to Communicate Hurt to Your Partner

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Every relationship could happily do without dramatic confrontations and the mess that ensues. So how do you have the tough conversation without the theatrics or name calling? Overcoming hurt is not a simple thing. Each of you have an array of feelings and it is important for both of you to share what you need.

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What to do When Your Spouse Won’t Talk to You

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Communication

what to do when your spouse won't talk to you

This may sound familiar: you and your partner are sitting in the car, a mere two feet from one another, yet nobody is speaking.  You try to start a conversation, but getting your partner to say more than a few words feels like pulling teeth from the mouth of an angry crocodile.  You realize that you may have done something wrong, but your partner won’t tell you what it was.  

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Conflict Resolution: How to Fix a Fight in a Relationship

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Steps on How to Repair and Pick Up After a Fight

Let’s face it: in the heat of an argument you can say things that are hurtful, passive aggressive, or downright untrue. So can your partner. That’s the bad news. The good news is that it IS possible to pick up after a big blow out and repair your relationship, restoring it to a healthy place.

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Communication Advice: How to Practice Fighting Fair in Your Marriage

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From an Emotionally Focused Therapy and Attachment Perspective - By Jen Zajac, IMF

There are some couples who fight explosively and often, and others who seem to rarely get into a heated argument. Perhaps you can recall separate relationships you have been in where each has had a different “fight dynamic”. Regardless of how you define what a fight is, we all at some point encounter conflict, or disagreements, in our relationships. If our emotional needs aren’t attended to, even the small things that get dismissed or “swept under the rug” can develop into larger issues later down the line. Merely avoiding a fight does not resolve conflict.

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Dating Long Distance

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Communication, Dating

Dating Long Distance

How to Make it Work

Long distance love can be difficult, but it’s not necessarily a relationship death sentence. If you are really committed to someone, then there are ways to sustain your connection until you can live in the same city. Some couples maintain a long distance relationship for years, especially when professional opportunities don’t make it easy to get close. Here are some ways to stay connected to your loved one even when the miles keep you apart.

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3 Ways to Stop Being Defensive

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When your partner brings up something that is bothering her in your relationship, it can be easy to put up a wall and start to defend yourself. But what if you took a deep breath and were careful about how you responded? Your partner is being vulnerable when she tells you something that hurt her, so shutting down with defensiveness will only teach her not to open up in the future. Here are some ways that you can learn to stop being defensive and own up to your own feelings and responsibility.

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How to Deal With Fear in Your Relationship

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Overcoming the Obstacles that Keep You Stuck

Many arguments between couples have fear at the heart. Whether it’s fear of abandonment, fear of being rejected, or a fear of falling apart – sometimes you can lash out at the person who you want to keep the closest to you. Even though the fight might look on the surface like it’s about something else, if you look close enough you can often find that some sort of fear is hiding just under the surface. By managing your fears, you can begin to calm the storm that has begun in your relationship and heal the wounds. Here are some tips for how to conquer the fear in your relationship so you can move into a healthy direction.

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5 Ways to Prevent a Fight

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Quick tips on how to stop fighting in a relationship

Arguments in relationships become a cycle — when a specific pain point or topic gets brought up, one partner gets defensive and the other pushes to get the point across. One partner might always flee, and then the other has to chase him. You might also experience arguments more when one person is exhausted after a day at work. These patterns become a comfortable cycle, even though they may be detrimental to your bond as a couple.

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What’s Your Love Language?

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We all experience love in different ways.

Like my #BeingLovedIs project has shown, what it means to be loved can be so different from one person to the next — and no one way is right. If you and your partner have different love languages, it can seem like you’re not on the same page. One or both people in the relationship might wind up feeling neglected, which will cause a crinkle in your bond. The best thing you can do is figure out which love language applies to you and get your partner to do the same. Once you know who you each receive love, you can start to best communicate your love for each other!

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ADD in Marriage: Management Tips

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Learning tools for Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)

When you are living with a partner who has ADD, there are additional challenges above and beyond what the average couple will encounter on a daily basis. You might feel like your partner doesn't listen to you or can't really "see" you. Because your partner has difficulty focusing and may have trouble with organization or forgetfulness, you are bound to encounter situations where you ask for something from the store and he forgets, or you need help with a project but he walks away half-way through. When a long pattern of this occurs is where most problems occur. It can be easy to take your partner's actions personal, even though they are the result of the ADD, and not a reflection on how much he cares for you. If you don't treat the underlying issue, the ADD, it's easy to build resentments over years of forgotten birthdays, impulsive behavior, or distracted conversations.

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