What’s up YouTube, I’m Brad Browning and I’m going to share one very simple, very
effective tip that you can apply right now to dramatically improve the health of your
marriage.
In fact, this tip is something that EVERY married person should be using, and it’s
also something you probably won’t have thought about before now.
It’s also something that applies to all relationships, not just marriages, so you
can benefit from this tip even if you’re not actually married.
Now, in any romantic relationship, there are always going to be situations where one partner
is upset or unhappy about something their spouse has said or done.
These complaints are natural and unavoidable…
BUT, what IS within your control is HOW you address these complaints with your partner.
This is where a lot of people go wrong.
Let me give you a few common examples that you might have said to your spouse from time
to time…
“You never do any laundry!
I wish you could just wash your own clothes for once.”
Another example…
“Why can’t you ever show up on time?
You’re always late when we’re meeting our friends.”
Or how about…
“You ALWAYS spend too much on Christmas gifts!
Why can’t you ever control your spending??”
And finally…
“I hate how you always make me pick up the kids from school!”
...and I could come up with countless other similar examples, as I’m sure can you.
These are typical, everyday type grievances that most of us have said to our spouse from
time to time in the past.
Now, here’s the question…
What's wrong with those examples I just gave?
What’s the one thing that they all have in common?
If you said “they’re all hyperbolic and exaggerated,” then you win the grand prize…
that’s exactly what all of the examples I just mentioned have in common.
They use what’s called IMPRECISE LANGUAGE… they’re over-the-top exaggerations.
Let’s go back to the first example for a second… imagine, from your spouse’s perspective,
hearing “You never do any of your own laundry!”.
Is that actually true?
I doubt it…
I bet they actually put on a load of laundry once in a while, even if it’s only when
you mention it.
So, in essence, your statement is not actually true.
It’s an exaggeration.
This type of thing is human nature for most of us… when emotions are running high, we
often use this type of over-the-top “imprecise language” to share our concerns.
Now, there’s a few problems with this type of exaggerated statement.
Firstly, it’s just downright untrue… your spouse has probably done laundry every now
and then in the past, just not as often as you’d like them to.
This makes your statement factually incorrect, but also comes across as condescending and
righteous.
And it’s just annoying to hear… because it sounds like the person who’s exaggerating
is just trying to get a reaction out of the person they’re talking to.
Secondly, it’s far too easy for your spouse to refute this accusation…
After all, they only need to come up with one example of a time they did laundry in
order to prove your statement wrong.
When it’s that easy to give you an example to prove you wrong, that’s going to be your
spouse’s natural reaction to this sort of hyperbolic accusation.
After all, technically you are wrong, so you’re just giving your spouse an easy way to argue
the point effectively.
BUT… the reality is, you may have a very valid complaint, and your spouse may not be
doing their fair share of the laundry.
And there’s no question you have a right to ask your partner to change their behaviour
and help out with the laundry duties more often.
The key is to use PRECISE language when phrasing your concerns to your spouse.
Let’s take a quick look back at the original examples I gave earlier in the video, and
come up with a way to re-phrase each complaint in more PRECISE language…
Doing so is going to make your concern much less confrontational sounding to your spouse,
and it’s also going to generate a better response and be more likely to actually affect
change in your partner’s behaviour.
So instead of saying, “you never do any laundry!
I wish you could just wash your own clothes for once,” you could say, “It’s frustrating
when I have to do more than my fair share of the laundry…
Can you please help out by putting on a load of laundry a few times per week?”
And instead of saying, “Why can’t you ever show up on time?
You’re always late when we’re meeting our friends!”
You could go with, “I think our friends get frustrated when we show up late.
Let’s both make a more concerted effort to arrive on time in future.”
Or here’s another example, “you ALWAYS spend too much on Christmas gifts!
Why can’t you ever control your spending??” you could instead rephrase this as, “I’d
like to make sure we don’t overspend on Christmas gifts this year by agreeing on a
budget and sticking to it.”
As you can see, this isn’t a big change, and it doesn’t affect your ability to confront
your partner over issues in the relationship that you’re unhappy with.
What it DOES do, however, is reduce the likelihood of things spiraling into a full-blown argument
when you do have to bring up a point of contention with your spouse… and this simple change,
where you use PRECISE language in this type of situation, rather than exaggerated IMPRECISE
language, is also more likely to get you the outcome you’re looking for.
I promise this really can and does work -- I’ve seen many of my coaching clients make this
subtle change, only to see a big change in the health and happiness of their marriage
overall.
So, please give it a try yourself, and let me know how it goes in the comments below
the video.
And if you want to learn MORE subtle tips and tricks like this, I suggest you learn
about my DISPUTE DEFUSING system by watching the full free tutorial video on my website,
MarriageGuy.com… in that video I’ll share more details about the Dispute Defusing System
and how you can use it to make positive changes to your marriage starting right now.
Again, the URL is www.MarriageGuy.com.
Thanks for watching, hope you found this video helpful….
Talk to you soon!