Addressing Issues
Leading by Example and Following from Example:
Now you have learned how to listen to each other and validate each other, you can look at how to actually start addressing your issues. What does it mean to “Address the issues?” It will mean many things to different people. It can mean taking responsibility for your part in the creation of your problems. It could mean looking to see what needs to change, looking at where you went wrong, how and why you went wrong not just though your eyes but also through the eyes of your partner. It could mean learning to be more loving, more understanding and more intimate if that is what is needed. Here, addressing the issues means addressing the items on the lists. Taking the answers and working on them together in an organized, safe, respectful and rational way and doing all this in the safety of the “5 Minute Exercise”.
Sitting down, facing each other you can take each issue item by item and start to hear what each other has to say and what you both suggest is needed to change the situation. Each listening very carefully to what the other is saying without interrupting.
Body language is also a very important element here so never underestimate it’s power. If you get it right, it will help you both recognize the unspoken communication going on between you. When body language is positive your partner will pick up on it and respond. If your body language is negative that will also be picked up and responded to.
Positive body language means open gestures, warmth, sitting forward, good eye contact, smiling, and very importantly warm and gentle speech. Negative body language would be the opposite and is more about closed body language, no eye contact, coldness, harsh speech, distancing, stiffness, silence, passive aggressive behavior, and little desire to communicate. So what ever you want to communicate through your body make sure you get it right.
Once you are both sitting and your body language is as you want it to be, then you can start working on whatever you have agreed is your first goal.
The greatest skill will be learning to listen to each other, learning to understand each others emotions, learning how to meet each others needs, learning to validate each other and respect each other’s feelings. If these things are achieved the rest will follow.
The 5 minute exercise has a very important role here. It is your platform, so use it well. When you listen in a focused way and take your own thoughts and feelings out of the picture completely, you are then left seeing life through your partner’s eyes not your own. When listening is contaminated by your own thoughts about what is being said it will be very difficult to understand through your partner’s eyes even though this is what is needed from you at this point. When you measure what is being said against yourself it is no longer about anyone else other than yourself. This is not a wise move.
The greatest validation you can give is when you are able to say to your partner: “I now understand why you feel as you do. I am sorry, I never understood before. I never knew how to understand you and I never knew you felt this way. I will do my best from now on to understand you.” If you listen well you will reach this point and this will be a major breakthrough and this is why it is so important to master the skill.
Until then it is important to own up when you don’t understand something. Being able to say so is strength, not a weakness. Just as being able to say sorry or say I don’t know is a strength worthy of respect. Not knowing is part of the journey and using the not knowing and using it well will give you respect. It is a courageous person who can admit to their own failings and shortcomings, it is not a failure, but a success and is a demonstration of maturity.
Learning how to do this will demonstrate to your partner that you are able to be honest and open without trying to defend yourself. This in turn opens up the opportunity for your partner to do the same. If you allow your partner into the deepest parts of your soul, and they allow you into theirs, not only does it open up the opportunity for greater understanding between you, it is also the greatest expression of trust. To trust another with your heart and soul is a most intimate gesture of love. It is opening up instead of shutting down. It is inviting your partner in to your private emotional world instead of shutting them out. It is allowing your partner to see you are not perfect without covering it up.
Allowing these types of shifts towards your partner with the gesture of trust is a huge step forward. What you are able to demonstrate to your partner, your partner will be able to demonstrate back to you. If you demonstrate trust, so will your partner. If you demonstrate warmth and love so will your partner. If your goals demand this then there is no better way to start to demonstrate your dedication to reaching this goal.
It is often said that we cannot control another. We can’t control what another thinks or feels because thankfully we don’t have that power. The one thing we can control however is ourselves. We can use ourselves as an example of what we want and we can demonstrate it through our behavior but without forcing it on them. It is a technique and a good and effective one.
The way you conduct yourself will always impact on others and for this reason when you behave badly chances are so will your partner. If you get angry so will your partner, if you show trust, so will your partner. In fact if you want to change something between you and your partner one of the ways to do it is to change your own behavior, because your behavior will impact on them. Your behavior will be mirrored back to you. If you are nice and gentle with your partner, your partner is more likely to follow those behaviors than not, especially when you both want change. If you listen well and in a focused way, so will your partner. If you demonstrate that you don’t get angry, so will your partner. It is learning through example and not through trying to control and change the other. Your own behavior becomes an invitation to your partner to behave in a similar way. Hopefully what you give is what you will receive.
Expressing yourself emotionally to your partner will mean your partner also starting to express themselves back to you. You make a start and lead the way, your partner will follow. If you have fears, say so, express it. Teach your partner that it’s safe and OK to express any emotions. You don’t want judgment and won’t judge, you will listen and your partner will listen. Be as transparent as you can, if you are in pain express it, trust your partner with it. In turn your partner will feel safer to do the same if this is what you demonstrate by example. You have little to lose at this point where you are building trust and teaching your partner what you are prepared to do. It is a positive move.
Leading by example helps to reach a common understanding. Your partner will start to read you and follow you. You in turn can start to do the same. Watch your partner very carefully and where you think it might be helpful, follow it and do the same back. If your partner pays you a compliment, pay one back. If your partner speaks in a gentle tone of voice, do the same back. This is reading each other, leading and following by example and demonstrating your validation towards each other. You are quietly achieving a great deal by now, because you are learning how to dance in step with your partner.
When you do the 5 minute exercise enough times chances are you will start to change your own stance anyway from seeing only your own perspective and wanting your partner to also see purely from your perspective, to the opposite. Talking and listening will bring shifts in both of you. Each of you will start to see each others perspective more clearly and start to take a different perspective on board. The process is reciprocal.
Listening well in a focused way and dancing in tune together opens up a possibility for flexibility between you and an end to rigidness or the resistance to adapt to the other. Leading and following by example brings flexibility of thought, emotion and behavior which is just what you want if you want to be closer and know how to get there. Just read your partner and let him or her read you. You will start to communicate in a harmonious way once you are using this practice, so learn it well and use it well.
Introspection can be another very useful way to demonstrate insight to your partner. When you are willing and able to examine your own thoughts, feelings and behavior and you demonstrate this to your partner it demonstrates your willingness to address whatever issues you personally have that need addressing. You can practice this together now you are opening up a whole new world for each other. Your feelings, their feelings, your pain, their pain, your thoughts, their thoughts are all within your range of discussion once you have opened up the possibility. However you conduct yourself your partner will follow suite and so you start to become intimate again, communicate again. What cold be better? When you demonstrate introspection, so will your partner.
Your partner has given you all the information you need to make your changes. You have used this information cleverly by openly demonstrating your own willingness to change rather than you trying to change or control the other. No one has forced either of you, you both followed and lead by example and took the first steps towards change. Your partner then responded in kind. All is now going well.
However, addressing issues can also prove to be a painful process where things start to go wrong. In the next part I am going to address these issues so that you can manage them well and stay in tact. Having got this far and learning so many new strategies, I hope you will continue to address each part in the spirit it is meant because these issues can be the very ones that turn things sour if not addressed in a sensitive, safe and loving way.
Good luck…
Cherish your relationship…..
Carole