A crucial part of effective communication and avoiding defensiveness is coming into this process with an attitude. Not a bad attitude but a deeply loving one that conveys to your mate, “I like you—you're safe with me. I want you happy and fulfllled.” Mature communicators in this dialogue process abandon the need to win, debate, convince, or make a point. You are creating a dialogue with the goal of exchanging information. Each partner communicates his or her reality while the other truly listens and works through to empathy.
1.Assertively state your personal reality. Start with “I” statements that take responsibility without blaming (not “you” turn me off but I feel my desire shut down when you grab at me). Assertive communication is direct and respectful without being aggressive or passive. Risk conflict and express your core feelings and needs. Don’t get hung up on one point, but express the greater reality and what’s going on at gut-level. You are communicating information that your mate really needs in order to have a contented spouse. Share that!
Practice Exercise: In a self-aware, straightforward manner, communicate to your mate what you would like sexually on the coming weekend—what you desire and how you would appreciate your desires being met.Take the courage to assertively express what arouses you and some of your feelings associated with those behaviors. Maybe complete the following sentence: “I wish sexually that you would …” Then dialogue about your answers. Remember that you are nondefensively collecting information. Now try this: “enjoy it when you …"
2.Objectively empathize with your partners reality. Express understanding of your partner’s message with short, empathetic summaries. Go beyond the surface content to acknowledge the deeper needs and feelings. Remember that empathy is not agreeing that your mate’s reality is free of distortions or accepting that the other’s feelings are correct and true. It is containing your judgments and feelings while you try to understand his or her reality, you may speak German and have to learn some French to really empathize correctly. Be aware that you mate will not feel truly heard until he or she has felt empathy and understanding.
A note for husbands: wives especially need to have their feelings empathized with and acknowledged. My wife is like a broken record and keeps repeating herself until I have empathized with her feelings. Cathy says, '"When you jump up to check your emails in the mornings, we don’t get to cuddle and be dose." So of course I respond, “I don't think you understand how busy I am.”(male defensiveness at its best), or 'If we made love every morning, cuddling would be so much better”(male fix-it and personal agenda mode). She will keep repeating until I acknowledge, 'I’m sorry, you love the closeness of mornings and lying on my chest for a few minutes. I know you feel special, and this is connecting for both of us. I can do better. I'll try to call you and hug you more during the day too."
Practice Exercise: Ask your partner to describe a lovemaking session that was very special. Put yourself in your mate's sexual reality, and some deeper needs: variety, tenderness, competence, challenge, affirmation, fun, comfort. Use remarks such as: “What I’m hearing is ...” or “You must feel...” or “You’re needing me to...” Switch roles after the partner who is conveying his or her reality agrees that the other has understood and the empathy statements are accurate. Empathy skills are crucial to resolving sexual conflicts too.
3.Tenderly negotiate a partnership reality. Create tentative solutions. Bargain with the collected information of each reality, as both lovingly compromise. The purpose of dialogue is to mutually meet needs and resolve differences, not to win or make your point. This may mean to agree to disagree while you work on thinking an issue through more and temporarily put it on hold. It could be a behavioral solution negotiated around each mate's needs and feelings, a solution both are willing to try to implement even though it may not be balanced evenly. Few compromises are 50/50, but with dialogue and empathy with each other’s souls, it still feels like a compromise even if only 20 percent of your needs are met this time.
In your solutions, neither of you must lose your soul as you lovingly compromise. What I mean by losing your soul is that there are some things, if compromised, that will cause you or your mate to lose an important part of who you are and your deeper values. Love is patient, kind, and protective. Paraphrasing Matthew 16:26: “What does it profit a mate to gain his or her own way if the partner loses his or her soul?” The husband who gave up his request after realizing his wife would lose some of her modesty and self-respect if she gave in to his desire to videotape their lovemaking was indeed wise.
Practice Exercise: Each of you take the information you have collected and propose a tentative solution around a difficulty in your sex life. Make sure neither of you loses his or her soul, but also realize that what goes around comes around in good relationships. The 20/80 compro-mises even out over time in loving, giving partnerships.
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