Hi, I'm Paul Friedman. I founded The Marriage Foundation and today's topic is
"Effective Communication In Marriage" the tips and hopefully, this will be really
beneficial to you but I just want to give you a little bit of a caution here.
Some people think that all that's wrong with their marriage is communication in
fact, when I was working with couples and individuals live that was usually the
first thing that I would hear in the phone call leading up to a meeting.
Someone would say, "Our big problem is communication. Our second big
problem..." that depended on the gender but it is important, I don't want to discount
the importance of proper communication and I'm going to give you some tips but
don't think that communication itself covers everything because it doesn't and
here's like the number 1 tip. The number 1 tip, paying attention is
to speak sincerely and positively. So positively sincerely, and sincerely
positive and sometimes you may say, "I could do one or the other. I could say
something positive but it may not be sincere." Well in those cases make it
sincere. Let's say for instance that you're upset and you really want to let
your spouse know how upset you are because you think that it's up to them
to change for you which it isn't but I don't want to get into another topic and
that topic is already covered in a video on, "Am I responsible for making my spouse
happy?" And you're not, so you don't want anything to come from you that is not
sincere and not positive. Let's say you're
about to say something mean and you stop yourself which you're supposed to do and
you say instead, you know what you want to say is
but instead you go, "Honey, you're looking really good today."
In those cases, it's an imperative that you control your own mind. You make your
mind go there instead of where it wanted to and this is a very deep topic because
we're taught to speak your mind to be honest, to get it all out and all of that
is mostly wrong. In a marriage which is a very unique and special venue, you want
everything to be coming from your heart that's sincere and you want it to be
very positive and it will be if it's coming from your heart.
It's not coming from your heart if you're saying, "Man, you really mess that
up." That's coming from your ego. The heart is love, the heart is your soul. It's who
you really are and that part of you is compassionate, it's caring, it's
supportive, it's loving, it's not critical ever so that's how you'll know so you
want to be positive and you want to be sincere. That's rule #1
that's tip #1 I should say because you make up your own rules for
yourself but that's a tip that will work for the ultimate benefit of your
marriage. Sometimes we get into a discussion with our spouse about a
current topic and it's really not that big a deal when we look at it in
hindsight if you even remember it in hindsight yet so many of these topic
discussions cause bad feelings that you will remember for a day or two.
They'll linger and they'll stick with you and they pile on and with your
spouse too so you want to be very careful about what's passing your lips.
Make sure it's very beautiful, make sure it's very supportive, loving, positive, and
sincere so that's a tip #1 that I think everyone would benefit from if
they adhere to it. My suggestion is that you just try and here's how to try
it. Let's say you have something that's on your mind or it wasn't on your mind
but let's say your spouse just "attacked" you. You felt
attacked, you felt ridiculed, maybe you felt threatened, you felt pushed, you felt
antagonized whatever but you felt attacked. Don't react, there's a little
technique I call The Bowling Ball Feather Technique actually got it from a
friend of mine many years ago where you pretend to be a feather. Now imagine what
happens to a feather if a bowling ball is coming at it. The bowling ball is
coming full speed ahead and the feather is so light it just floats away so be
that feathered. Don't take anything on, don't take it personally. It's just how
they're feeling at the moment, it's not gonna kill you what they say, just relax
let it go and focus on your response which should be positive and it could be
anything. Oftentimes, the best response is to
just wait. Let your spouse get it out, get it out on the table and you don't have to
react to it. Now I have another technique I call The Buffet Table Technique and
this I'll take responsibility for I came up with this and how this one works
is where you think of a person's communication in nuggets, in dishes, in
little parts of what they are wanting to get out and they put it out on this
buffet table. So, here is this part, here is that part, here's all these different
parts and you're just waiting and watching and seeing how the table is set
and you pick the topic that you want to feast on. So you wait for something that
gives you an opportunity to respond in a positive manner and I can't think of an
example right now but you know what I'm talking about. No one ever just gives a
steady flow of negativity and when they do, you can usually pick something out
that's positive anyway, you know who was really good at that was Shakespeare.
I don't remember the play "The Taming of the Shrew" and the shrew was a very
spoiled woman who no matter what her suitors would say to her she would just
blast them. And so, one guy decided you know what, every time she says
something I'm just gonna respond in a very positive manner and he eventually
won her over and there's a good lesson in that. So I could go on with a lot
of tips but then we won't have enough video so I'm gonna stop here. If you
like this and you will like this that's my
Obi-Wan Kenobi technique. Push the "like" button but anyway, share it if
you like it if you've got some benefit from it. You could pick up one of my
books and again, I'm gonna go back to the beginning and say, look, if your marriage
is really going through it right now it's probably not communication. A lot of
us think it's communication because we're not communicating but you're not
communicating for a myriad of other reasons and you really got to get at the
heart of your marriage and get the dynamics of your marriage working again
and then the communication will be fine. So, to do that a lot of people will use
one of my books if the marriage is like on the edge, ready for divorce, you'll
probably need the course but either way and there's still a lot of videos that I
have that'll help you and there's a lot of articles that I've written. With
our positive approach from The Marriage Foundation, our positive approach to
marriage, where we see that love should be the basis that's ever-expanding love.
I really encourage you to explore what we have. Again, like this video.
Blessings to you, blessings to your spouse, and blessings to your family.
Thank you for coming by.