Every Relationship Needs These 9 Important Communication Skills

Effective communication is one of the important aspects of every successful relationship. How we discuss on issues like the time spent together or apart, money issues, health related talk, gender differences, children, family, friends, commitment, trust, and intimacy affects our ability to nurture and sustain lasting relationship friendships. If well learned, these 9 skills can help put our relationships on a positive path to success.

The 9 skills are going to be divided into two group, the don’ts group and do group. You should however remember that every couple has a degree of these Don’ts in their relationship. Dealing with the don’t group and take them out of our relationship friendship and at the same time bringing in the do group into the relationship can result in the growth of better commitment, trust, and intimacy.

The Four Don’ts

1. Criticism: In every relationship, it is important not to attack your partner personality or character with accusation of blame if you want to communicate with them effectively. Statement like; how can you be so selfish? Or you never think of anyone else in your life? will never open up your partner to communicate with you effectively.

2. Contempt: Disrespectful to your partner, Intentional insulting, name-calling, mocking, rolling the eyes, or sneering can’t bring the best out of your partner. You will have to do away with anything that has to do with contempt before you’ll expect your significant other to open up line of good communication with you.

3. Defensiveness: if at every point in time, you are always on the defensive side of the equation, failing to take personal responsibility for your action even when it is glaring that you are at fault, will only block you from getting out the best from your partner communication skill. Being defensive blocks a couple’s ability to deal with an issue. Even if one partner feels completely justified in his/her actions, becoming defensive will only add to the couple’s troubles.

4. Stonewalling: No matter what happen between you and your significant other, you should not shy away or refusing to interact in form of communication with your partner at all. When couples refuse to communicate about their issues, the relationship becomes easily broken. Of course there maybe some exception anyway, but it will be fair if you try to explain your situation to your partner that you’re overloaded emotionally right now and you’ll need to take some time out and relax so as not to say something that will be hurting to your relationship which may be as a result of your being emotionally overload.

The Five Do’s

1. Complain: Trying to not complain and sweeping issues under the carpet all the time will only come back to hurt you when they have aggravated enough to cause havoc in your relationship. Bringing up a complaint about a specific issue or behaviour is actually one of the healthiest activities a couple can engage in. For example, when you fail to call your partner that you will not come home on time today due to the nature of the work you’re doing in your office, you are making him or her feel that you don’t care about their feeling and that hurt so much.

2. Calm Down: In your communication with your partner, when you’re emotionally charge, you’ll need to camp down and that will take you nothing less than 25 minutes. It become more difficult to access the logical part of your brain if your heart is beating more than 90 beat per minute. You’ll need to stop the interaction before you will say something you don’t mean which hurtful to your relationship.

3. Non-Defensive Speaking: Use soft voice or try to speak with soft voice and use complaint statement like; “I feel….” instead of “You…..” you can also make use of “We” kind of statement, it’s helpful. For instance, “We need to start going to the gym.” or “We should talk about money issues”

4. Validate: Validating in a relationship is a tactic use to let your partner know that you’re interested in whatever s/he is talking about and that make your communication run smoothly without feeling nobody is listing to what you are saying. To validate another person, we must be able to listen with our eyes, ears, mind and heart. We must also be able to listen to the needs and emotions being expressed. You can even do it better by using any of these bridge phrases and words such as “And then what happened?”; “How did that make you feel?”; “Really? You’re kidding?”; “What are you going to do now?”; “How can I help?”; “Uh-huh.”; “Yes/No/Why?”; etc., to let them know you are listening.

5. Overlearn Skills: what this mean is to completely master the other eight skills even when you’re worn out, tired, angry or stressed, you will always have them available with you.

Feel free to drop your comment if you have something that you think is missing here in these 9 important communication skills. Don’t forget to click the Facebook Like Icon Below to show appreciation for what you’ve just read here.