Listen Up

LISTEN UP!

A new survey reveals the secret to a happy relationship

By Chrisanna Northup, Pepper Schwartz and James Witte from The Normal Bar with contributions from Reader’s Digest Editors

Results of an online global survey to discover what people do in important aspects of their relationships have been revealed in a new book, The Normal Bar. More than 70,000 people from around the world completed an average of 100 questions. By grouping the responses, the authors gained insights into what’s normal for the survey-takers, and how their results compare to others. Read on to learn more.

Roxana, 37, and Constantin, 33,  both from Bucharest, Romania, have been married for ten years and have one child, a boy aged seven. “We talk about anything and everything,” says Roxana, “be it about the child, family, money, work, sex.” They check in with each other during their busy workdays. Says Constantin, “I make time to send her a text message or an email to ask how she is.”

Such easy, frequent communication paves the way for their successful marriage, they both claim.

The global survey results showed exactly that point. When we asked people to name the most fulfilling thing about their relationships, communication was top of the list. The team found that both sexes said communication was the thing they valued most – and people in unhappy relationships said it was the No. 1 thing they were lacking. These results indicate that communication is a big deal, and this is true worldwide. Respondents in almost every country surveyed said that communication was their biggest relationship issue. Only the French disagreed, putting affection first, communication second.

We all need to be not only heard, but also understood. We all need someone with whom it’s safe, fun and meaningful to talk to – and someone who we can trust to give us honest but also compassionate feedback, who will listen and really “get” us, and vice versa.

Many couples have work to do, however, before they can achieve this kind of communication bliss. When homemaker Sandra, 39, from the Netherlands noticed that her husband, John, 40, a financial advisor, talked less and less, preferring to watch television or check his email even while she talked to him, it really annoyed her. “Whenever I told him something he seemed completely oblivious to it.” She knew there was something wrong at work, but he wouldn’t say much about it.

Last year she suggested they seek help, and they agreed. Only when they went to a marriage counselor did Sandra learned that her entrepreneur husband had been hit hard by the global economic crisis.

Says John, “I always tried to shield Sandra from my business worries. I never realized that that in itself frustrated her. Now I always tell her what is bothering me. Our relationship has improved immensely.”

Says Sandra, “I’m really glad we took the step to seek help.”

It’s not just about swapping information but about coming to terms with each other, finding common ground. As Oleg, a marketer in Moscow married to Maria, a fashion designer, for nine years, says: “Do we have quarrels? Well, yes, though it does not happen as often now as before. You know, we figured out some rules: everyone has his own voice; we search for a conclusion to satisfy both of us.”

Communication between partners is the gateway not only to important emotions but also to physical compatibility. If you want something more – or less - from your partner, then you need to feel free to express that desire, and you need for the message to be accurately received.

Who communicates best, men or women? You might think it would be women. It’s really too close to call, especially because so many people think they communicate well. For example, more than 90% of both men and women who completed the poll rated themselves as good to great communicators. But when we asked women if they consider their partners to be good communicators, about one out of three said no way! And one out of four men said that they are very dissatisfied with their partners’ communication skills.

Couple communication is complex and involves physical, emotional and verbal cues that many of us have difficulty sending and receiving. Here are six tools to help you learn how to communicate better and create your own “new normal”.

1 High Five
The High Five has the power to dramatically change the quality of your communication and can bring harmony even to troubled couples. First step: settle down together in a quiet, comfortable room where you won’t be disturbed. Agree to listen with full attention and not interrupt. Step two is learning, understanding and respecting what your partner needs in order to be happy. Each of you should think of the top five activities, passions or interests that you individually require to be happy – not including each other or children. Share your list with your partner and talk about it. These lists are non-negotiable – you can’t negotiate what makes an individual happy.

In step three, each of you writes down and prioritises the top five things your partner could do to make you happier. Describe your No.1 request to each other. Without arguing or criticism, negotiate a deal through trade-offs or compromise that will honour and meet the other’s request. Follow the steps for each of the other four requests on each list.

Sounds easy? It is. And it’s also surprisingly effective, as long as you speak and listen carefully, negotiate honestly and make a real effort to reach and honour a mutual agreement.

2 Listen and don’t speak
The easiest communication tool is to listen to what your partner says. This may sound simple, but listening well requires focus and openness. One of the main complaints of both men and women is that they never have their partner’s undivided attention. If the other isn’t listening, how can you tell if you’ve been heard?

One corrective model is the Imago therapeutic method, which slows down conversation and ramps up communication. It includes an exercise in which one person speaks his or her mind and the other partner listens. Then the listener recaps what he or she has heard. This is either ratified or corrected by the speaker. Once both partners agree the message has been correctly heard (the content of the message doesn’t have to be agreed with), the listener gets to speak. This goes back and forth, giving each person a chance to speak and listen well.

The Imago method worked for Hungarian couple Martha and Zoltan, who have been married for 18 years. One of their problems was that Zoltan, manager at a big company, felt he could not talk about his job issues at home, so he closer to a young woman in the office who always listened to him. This led to an affair.

To try to save their marriage, they visited a therapist, who guided the couple in the Imago method. After a couple of months using this tool, they were able to listen to each other and talk honestly. Now the couple plan their day to have time to talk with each other. “We learnt our lesson,” says Martha. “We must hear and understand properly what the other one wants to say.”

3 An inviolable talk time
Make a daily date to really talk. Any time of day will do. If you both wake up early, talk in bed or over coffee. If you can unwind together – just the two of you – after work or after dinner and if you make that your daily ritual, it will serve your relationship well. The point is to reserve time each day to share your thoughts, experiences and feelings.

Jeanne and Pascal, a French couple in their 50s who have been together for ten years, make breakfast their talk time, before Pascal leaves for work. They also go for walks together a lot. “There’s always a time that we talk – it’s important,” says Jeanne. “When I feel we’ve lost contact with each other, I tell him. It happens when we’re both working especially hard.”

4 Don’t just think it – say it
Another simple communication tip: when you think about something positive, don’t over-analyse it or hold back. Instead, share it with your partner. If you think he or she just said something smart or touching, say so. Sharing your thoughts with each other will almost always promote a better emotional connection.

5 Time-out avoids saying or doing hurtful thing
Your mother may have told you to “never go to bed angry”, but when it comes to your relationship, that’s not always the best advice. It’s often more constructive to let your feelings cool down before you talk than to address the problem right away. Make an appointment to talk the next day, and don’t speak until then. After this break, you’ll be less likely to yell at each other or be defensive or cutting.

6 Stop the madness: consider counseling
To break the negative cycle that’s been allowed to seem normal, stop reinforcing negative behaviour.  But what if you’re already down at the bottom of the spiral? If communication has become excruciating and counterproductive, then you need a third party to help you work through this.

      Mariana, 29, a teacher at a Bucharest school, had been married for eight years o Bogdan, 31, a mechanical engineer. After dinner each night, Bogdan worked on his computer. Mariana, on the other hand, wished they could do something together. Every attempt at dialogue ended the same way, in an argument.

      The couple was on the brink of divorce when they began seeing a marriage counselor at the end of 2010. Slowly, they began to talk to each other, and became more open and willing to share their interests and desires. Says their psychologist, Roxana Olaru, “You could see that they both wanted to save their relationship.”

      Over ten months, Mariana learned to be less critical and Bogdan to talk about what he thinks and feels, and they have remained a couple.

      Find a good relationship counselor or marriage therapist. Nobody wants to live with a normal that is joyless, hurtful and depressing, especially when a new and better normal is within relatively easy reach.

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To see how your relationship compares to others, The Normal bar interactive survey is still available at its website, normalbar.com. The survey covers specific areas, such as money, family, communication, sex, affection, love/romance and trust/infidelity.