I’m here to talk about communication problems in relationships.

Sex is the Least Private Act?

It’s not really a joke, but I did write a blog post titled, Sex is the Least Private Act.

Now why would I say that? Well actually I didn’t come up with that phrase, but the point is…

…let’s say I made love with my wife this morning and it was a total bummer. I would carry that with me throughout my day. It would color all my interactions with other people.

It just so happens that when we have interpersonal disharmony it tends to affect our energy level, it tends to affect how we show up in different places. Maybe we’re less patient or less kind with other people.

Having our interpersonal relationship really working well and having there be harmony there is so, so essential for our entire quality of life.

Solving communication problems in relationships is going to be very important.

Preventing versus Resolving Communication Problems in Relationships

Now, there are two levels at which we can address communication problems in relationships. One of those is solving those problems when they come up. That’s really important to have those skills.

And, I absolutely love being able to prevent those misunderstandings and conflicts. That’s an even more fun, more powerful level. That’s what I try to get people to reach through my programs and other offerings, online and in person.

Different Kinds of Communication Problems in Relationships

What I would say with communication problems and relationships, generally speaking, I see two different kinds of communication problems in relationships.

One of those is basic misunderstandings. One person says yellow and the other person hears orange. Or, one person says green and the other person hears blue. I’ve asked so many people, dozens and dozens of people, if they’ve ever had this experience, and I wonder if you have. Whether you’ve had the experience that you’re with a close friend of significant other and you’re just hanging out talking, and then suddenly fifteen or twenty minutes into the conversation you’re in this really yucky uncomfortable place, maybe even a fully blown out conflict. You’re wondering how did we get here?

Well, this is how it happens.

At some point in the conversation, message sent and message received were different and nobody realized that. (Talk about communication problems!) So we’re going along just fine and then suddenly this misunderstanding happens that we didn’t notice. We keep talking and keep talking, suddenly we’re really far apart from each other. That can escalate into some pretty big conflicts. I’ve seen that happen again and again.

If we can notice when it happens and start to prevent it, it gives us a lot of leverage to keep our conversations and our relationships on track.

I’m going to teach you one specific tactic that you can apply towards the end of this video specifically to help prevent those misunderstandings from happening in the first place.

The other general type of communication problems in relationships are when we can’t agree on what to do and we fail to distinguish between the action or the strategy that we want to employ, and the universal human needs, the core human motivators that are driving each person’s behavior.

Needs vs Strategies

Failing to distinguish between the needs and the strategies compounds our communication problems in relationships.

I’ll give you an example because this distinction is so important in the process that I teach which is called Nonviolent Communication(TM). Marshall Rosenberg, who created Nonviolent Communication, called it that because he wanted to align himself with Gandhi’s movement of truth-telling and compassion. The distinction between needs and strategies is one of the distinctions that sets Nonviolent Communication apart form other communication methodologies that I’ve seen.

And this is one of the keys to solving communication problems in relationships.

Imagine that I have a need for safety and protection. Well that’s a universal human need, not too hard to imagine. We all have this need for safety and protection. So let’s say my strategy, my way of going about contributing to my need is to go out in my neighborhood and get to know all my neighbors. That’s my strategy. Once I go out and get to know all my neighbors, that contributes to my need for safety and protection.

Well let’s say my neighbor has the same need, but that neighbor goes out and buys an assault rifle. It’s the same need, safety and protection, but the strategies are poles apart. What we find is that there’s never a conflict at the level of the needs. The reason being that we all have the same needs. The conflict is always at the level of strategies. The needs are universal. All human beings share them.

Other examples of universal human needs are trust, connection, creative expression, autonomy, meaning being able to chose the things that impact me or being able to choose my path in life. So these are examples of universal human needs. 

But the strategies, the ways we go about meeting those needs are not universal. That’s where the conflicts tend to occur again and again.

Peeling The Layers of the Onion: Going Deeper to Solve Communication Problems in Relationship

Another example related to communication problems in a relationship:

Let’s say that after a long week I come home and my wife greets me at the door and she says, “Hey, I got us a babysitter. Let’s go out to dinner and see a movie!” And I’m thinking, “Uh, it’s been a long day and a long week and I just want to lay on the couch for two hours.” On the surface level it appears that there’s a conflict. She wants to go out to dinner and see a movie and I just want to lay on the couch for two hours.

But let’s say that we engage in conversation and I get curious and say, “Hey, how would it meet your needs to go out and see a movie? What needs of yours would be met?” Then we start to peel the onion.

Then she asks me, “Well what needs of yours would be met by laying on the couch?”

And I have a couple of questions that I use for this exercise with peeling the onion. Actually, they’re variations on the same question.

If you had that, what would that do for you? Or, if you had that, then what would you have?

So, “If we got to go out to dinner and see a movie, then what would you have? Or, what would that give to you?” And maybe she says, “Well it would give me connection and fun.” And then I understand. I have those needs too for connection and fun. They may not be up for me in this moment, but I can relate to that.

And she gets curious too, “So, Alan, if you laid on the couch for two hours, then what would you have?” And I would say, “Well, I would have some rest.” And maybe she keeps going and says, “Well, if you had rest, then what would you have?” And I would say, “Oh, I would have relaxation and self-nurturing.”

Now she can relate to that too. What we find is that for any set of needs there may be a hundred or a thousand or ten thousand strategies. So let’s say at that moment we realize, or one of us suggests, “What if we get take-out and watch a movie at home, would that work for you?” Or maybe she says, “How about you lay on the couch for an hour and then we go out and get dinner and go see a movie. Would that work for you?” And then I get to check inside and see whether or not that would work for me.

Maybe I realize, “Oh, I’ve got tomorrow off. I can get all those needs for down time, relaxation and self-nurturing met tomorrow,” and I have a genuine shift. “Yeah, let’s go out to dinner and see a movie.”

Again, for any set of needs there may be ten’s of thousands of strategies.

We get to connect human to human at the level of needs and only then go into strategies. I go into more depth on this in the second video in a free video training series that you can access at BlackbeltCommunicationSkills.com where I talk about the most overlooked insight to resolving and preventing conflicts in relationships.

In terms of communication problems in relationships themselves, often it’s this failure to distinguish between the needs and the strategies and the way that we stay connected to only the strategies. That’s where the conflicts happen.

Sustaining Difficult Conversations for Breakthroughs in our Communication Problems

I want to give you a couple other tools that are really powerful and really useful for preventing and resolving conflicts and communication problems in relationships. These are a type of request that we can make of each other.

Generally speaking there are two kinds of requests. One is an action request (also known as a “strategy request”). “Would you be willing to close the door?” “Could you get me a glass of water please?” Those are actions that people could take that would contribute to our needs and hopefully their needs too.

There’s another kind of request: I’ll call them connecting requests (and I get these terms from Marshall Rosenberg). It’s the connecting requests that I’m going to focus on right now. There are two connecting requests that I have seen work miracles.

The first one is, “Can you tell me back what you heard me say?” Now if you remember earlier I was talking about basic misunderstanding when we’re talking and talking and then one person said yellow and the other person heard orange and suddenly the whole conversation is going in different directions and we didn’t notice that we didn’t hear each other. This can help prevent that.

“Can you tell me back what you heard me say just to be sure that I’m being as clear as I would like to be?” So one person says, “I really value trust. I’m wondering if you could repeat that back, just so that I can be sure that you’re really hearing what’s important to me.” And the other person says, “You’re calling me a liar!”

The first thing that comes out of my mouth is, “Thank you, I’d like to try again. I really value trust.” And they’re able to hear it a second time. Simply having that person repeat back to us what they’re hearing help us to confirm whether or not message sent and message received were the same.

With the second connecting request I’m basically asking for the other person’s honesty. There are so many ways to ask this. “I wonder how you feel about what I just said.” Or, “What’s coming up for you now that you heard that?” Or, “Where are you at right now?” There are so many ways to ask it. Just, “What’s going on for you in this moment?” That’s the second connecting request.

I teach a larger class called Sustaining Difficult Conversations, where we focus on these two connecting requests to solve communication problems in relationships. What we find is that with those two connecting requests, we can sustain a difficult conversation and keep it moving.

Communication Problems Case Study: the couple that had been married 27 years

I’d love to give you an example in which a couple made great headway in short time around solving communication problems in their relationship.

This is a true story. It happened several years ago. I was at an event. Over a hundred people were at the event. I was teaching Nonviolent Communication all day. There was an extended lunch break and a couple came up to me and asked if I would work with them during the lunch break. So I had 90 minutes to work with this couple over the lunch break.

We sat down at a table and I took a sheet of paper and I wrote down those two requests. A: Can you tell me back what you just heard me say? B: How do you feel about that, or what comes up for you?

I had the sheet of paper in between them. I said, “OK, the two of you are going to have a conversation…

…except that after everything you say I want you to end it with A or B.”

So part of my role was to hold the space, help reflect back what the other person was saying if the person asked to reflect back was too triggered to do it in the moment, or if they weren’t clear what the other person was saying. So I had my role, to keep the conversation on track, but basically they had a conversation with each other, ending with just those two requests.

Now keep in mind, and I didn’t share this originally: the context is that this couple has been together for thirty years. They’d been married twenty-seven years, and they’d been in couple’s therapy for twenty-five years!

I had ninety minutes with them and this is what I chose to do:

…just have them have a conversation with each other using these two connecting requests.

After the ninety minutes were up and I said, “OK, so how was that?” They both exclaimed, “Oh! it was so hard. It was like slogging through the mud. I mean it just slowed everything down so much! But, we got farther in that conversation than we have in twenty-five years of couple’s therapy!”

On the one hand I was delighted. On the other hand I wasn’t very surprised. Those two connecting requests can be so essential. They can be the lynch pin, the thing that really holds it together, for sustaining a difficult conversation (and ultimately for solving communication problems in relationships).

Conclusion

Just to recap the things that I’ve covered with regard to communication problems in relationships.

I highly recommend preventing misunderstandings and conflicts rather than only dealing with resolving. And you can learn the skills to do that.

The other is that, generally speaking, we have misunderstandings or we have disagreements on the strategies we take… how we’re going to meet our needs. If we can separate the strategies from the needs, get clear on the needs and connect at the level of needs, now we see each other human to human. Now we can trust that each other understands each others’ needs. Now we can collaboratively, co-creatively explore what strategies we can come up with to meet all the needs.

I gave you some exercises for peeling the layers of onion to go deeper and deeper with universal human needs. So, “If you had that thing, then what would that give you?” Or, “Then what would you have?” And you keep asking that question and you go deeper and deeper and deeper.

Lastly these two connecting requests, “Can you tell me back what you just heard me say?” And, “What comes up for you when you hear that?” Asking for the other person’s honesty is that second one. With those two connecting requests, we can keep the conversation moving.

Those are some of the ways in which we can prevent and resolve communication problems in relationships.