My Husband and I Created Three Communication Rules that are Working :)

A great thing I’ve learnt in a relationship is that communication, talking openly to each other is VERY important.

Not long ago I attended a lecture on creating a successful business. During the lecture several successful businessmen shared their failures and listed things they’ve learnt from their failures. Lecture was useful and interesting, but there was one thing that especially caught my attention. One of the speakers stated out how communication with a potential customer was important. He said that in order to create a good product one should not just imagine what the customers would consider as an ideal product, but to ask and figure out what potential customers think about it themselves in the first place. So, his business rule No.1 was “ASSUME NOTHING, ASK EVERYTHING”.

And then I realized that this works as well with the relationships. Usually the lack of communication and faulty assumptions are the reasons people get offended, are worrying and have fights. If we talk through the things that bother us we often find the answer to our worries and are able to make necessary decisions in order to improve our relationships.

At the very beginning of my relationship with my husband I had a trouble with getting offended to things that later turned out to be the ones that do not deserve any special attention. Of course, this had something to do with my emotional state and psychological maturity, but it also had a lot to do with the habit to assume things and not talk about it. Not always is it easy to “read” and know before-hand how the other person feels and what exactly s/he meant. When we realized this, we created several principal rules that help us communicate and go through the rough moments:

1.Always remember that we love each other and never want to hurt one another deliberately. When misunderstanding happens one should try to be strong enough in order not to get offended and be upset, but rather try to find out what was actually meant by the other person by acting in the certain way.

2.Always remember that YOU love this person, and if due to some circumstances you’re not in a good mood at a given moment and the other person irritates you, try to control yourself and not to take it out on your partner. Try to keep calm and notify the other person that you had a rough day, you’re stressed out and about to collapse emotionally.

The third rule may not be applicable to all couples, but my husband and I are the couple that prefers telling everything to each others – we have no secrets from each other, only if it is a pleasant surprise. 🙂 Nevertheless, sometimes when something unpleasant happens to us we are not ready to talk it through right away. We need some time to think it over, leave it for ourselves, and only later are ready to discuss it. So, given this, the rule No. 3 goes like this:

3.If one of us is not ready to talk about an issue at the given moment, the other should not push things forward, there is no rush. At the same time the partner who has the trouble should remember that the other is still worrying and waiting for him or her to talk.

Of course, it is always easier said than done, and sometimes it happens when the rules are forgotten by one of us, still, these rules help us to make the right decision when we are emotionally tense and are not able to think straight. Besides, we both are sticking to the belief that we should always start with ourselves, that is why when one of us breaks the rule, the other does not go immediately pointing it out and complaining, but tries to be patient and stick to the rules him or herself. The violation was not intentional, and soon the other partner comes to his or her senses, and that is when a calm and quiet conversation is going to fix it.