We all want to feel seen, safe, and loved. In no relationship is this more true than with a romantic partner. In a healthy and secure relationship, we get the chance to heal past wounds, grow as a person, and find feelings of safety we may never have experienced before. On the flip side, relationships can also be frustrating, anxiety-inducing, and painful at times. One of the biggest culprits in these moments is poor communication.

If you’re looking to learn healthy communication skills, we offer cognitive behavioral therapy in Florida and therapy in Orlando. We’d be glad to teach you how to communicate with your partner and others in a healthy and assertive way. Our cbt counselors in Orlando are skilled in teaching healthy communication skills and can help guide you through how to put these steps into practice in your own life. Call today or request a free consultation to get started.

In this article we’ll be discussing tips for how to improve communication with your partner to foster a sense of safety that helps reduce critical attacks, defensiveness, withdrawal, and resentment.

1) Make it safe to feel guilty. This may seem like an odd tip, but it’s by far the most important one. Think about it, when was the last time you were able to acknowledge you had done something that hurt someone, feel badly about that, while at the same time knowing that person loves you and it’s safe to mess up? More often than not, when we try to communicate to someone that they’ve hurt us, instead of a sincere apology we either get a counter-attack or defensive explanations - neither of which help to heal the relationship. In order to create safety around guilt, the wounded person has to remain calm enough to let the other person know this isn’t an attack, it’s a vulnerable pulling back of the emotional curtain. When it’s safe to feel guilty, we naturally feel compelled to apologize, make amends, and do better next time. Without this piece, we are constantly wounding and upsetting each other without any recourse to safely talk about it, which means it’s likely to keep happening.

2) Encourage allowing anger and calmly expressing needs before it turns into resentment or blow-ups. Again, this one may seem odd. Why would you want to encourage anger? Well, anger is just a feeling that shows up in the body to let us know when we need something or when something doesn’t feel okay with us. Being able to recognize that moment and calmly communicate it with your partner is essential. The alternative (stuffing it down or bringing it up in such a vague way the other person has no clue you actually need something) is a recipe for resentment and blow-ups. This one goes along with #1 - in order to communicate what you need, your partner has to feel safe enough to not get defensive.

3) Learn to validate feelings without validating thoughts. There will be times where your partner is having a feeling that you think is stupid or ridiculous. They’ll be anxious about something that you know is never going to happen. They’ll feel down about themselves when you know they’re a lovable and valuable person. The list goes on. When your partner shares one of these feelings with you, it can feel tempting to try and talk them out of it. You look great in that dress. You’re not going to get fired. This doesn’t work, at least not for more than a second, so you can toss that method out the window. Instead, try validating their feelings without agreeing with their perspective. Here’s a few examples:

• I’m sorry you’re not feeling great about your body right now. I think you look beautiful in that dress, but I know you grew up with your mom making comments about your weight all the time, so it makes sense for you to feel insecure about it sometimes, even if the things she said weren’t true then and they aren’t true now. It’s hard to have someone make digs at you for a long time without taking that to heart.

• I’m sorry you’re feeling nervous about work. Based on everything you’ve told me, it sounds like you’ve been doing well at your job. I know I’d be nervous if my company was doing layoffs too. Even though you’ve made it through a few rounds of layoffs before, it’s okay to be nervous. I love you and I’m here.

4) Decide whether you want help or you want things done “right”, you can’t have both. If you have a particular way you like things done, you may also have a habit of being overly critical when others don’t do things your way. Your partner didn’t load the dishwasher correctly, they bought the wrong kind of toilet paper when they did the grocery shopping, or they folded laundry that you would have hung up. Let it go. Decide here and now whether you would rather do everything yourself and have it done “right” or if you can accept when things are done differently. Little criticisms here and there when your partner tries to help will only erode your relationship.

5) Talk about how you talk about things. Instead of fighting about who’s fault something is or who’s right and who’s wrong - talk about HOW you fight. Before you can resolve issues between you in a healthy way, you may need to talk about how you communicate. This means sharing your observations in a calm, vulnerable, but assertive way about how your failed attempts to communicate usually play out. Here’s a few examples:

• I’ve noticed that whenever I ask you for your help with something, you seem to get instantly angry. It doesn’t seem to matter what it is or when I ask. It seems like no matter how calm or nice I am, it’s like it presses some kind of button for you and you get really angry and defensive all the sudden. What’s that about? (Use your gentle face here, not a judgy one!)

• It seems like whenever you’re upset with me, you just avoid me. I can tell you’re upset. But then you come back later once you’ve calmed down and it seems like you want to just forget it ever happened, but that’s hard for me. I know it might be really hard for you, but I’m the kind of person that has to talk about something before I can move past it. Is there something I can do to make it easier to bring it back up once you’ve calmed down?

We can help.

If you or someone you love is struggling with healthy communication, please reach out. We offer CBT Therapy in Orlando and online throughout the state of Florida. Call today or send us your info and we’ll reach out for a free consultation to see if one of our therapists would be a good fit.