Chapter 6

How to Communicate With Your Spouse So You Actually Connect

From Hope for Troubled Marriages by Dr. Ken Newberger

Most couples who struggle in their marriage say communication is the number one problem. It isn’t that they don’t know how to talk. It’s that their talk doesn’t lead to a connection. Learning how to communicate better in your marriage starts with a shift in what you do when your spouse is speaking.

You can learn to use conversation to connect with your spouse by learning and applying the following six skills.

1. Let your spouse get it all out on the table
2. Be a recorder: play back what your spouse just said
3. Be a mirror: reflect back what your spouse is feeling
4. Dig deeper
5. Now it's your turn: express yourself without attacking
6. Defuse the tension by agreeing with your spouse: the most difficult step

1. Let Your Spouse Get It All Out on the Table

Your spouse brings something up. Before you say a word, let him/her finish, all of it, not just the first sentence.

Watch: On Getting Your Spouses's Full Story (47 seconds)

The speaker offers three simple invitations that keep your spouse talking: Tell me more. Go on. What else? Use them until there’s nothing left to add.

This takes patience, and it feels slow when you have something you want to say. But you can’t fully understand what you haven’t fully heard.

2. Be a Voice Recorder: Play Back What Your Spouse Just Said

Now you’re ready to play it back. To make sure you heard your spouse and understood him/her, you repeat what was said, or restate it in your own words.

It sounds something like this:

So what you’re saying is . . .

You then repeat your spouse’s exact words or paraphrase them. It’s like hitting the playback button on a recorder.

After you reflect back, you end by asking, “Did I get it right?” Or, “Do I correctly understand what you just said?” You want your spouse to confirm that you understand what he or she is saying.

When that happens, you’re communicating in a way that connects.

3. Be a Mirror: Reflect Back Your Spouse’s Feelings

We often assume we understand how our spouse is feeling, but we really don’t know. Since the emotional connection to our spouse sits at the core of a healthy marriage, we have to get this right. We fully communicate when we recognize what our spouse is feeling and express that understanding.

Identifying your spouse’s feelings goes something like this: “Given what you just said, you are feeling _____ (name the emotion). Is that right?” If you aren’t correct, your spouse will tell you more precisely what he/she is experiencing, so the two of you really understand each other.

Here's a second approach. We most often read our partner’s emotions through facial expressions and body language. Close your eyes and listen. Some have observed that we read another person’s emotions more accurately when we don’t look at them and simply listen instead.

When you connect with your spouse’s feelings, you get this response: “That’s exactly how I feel.” When that happens, you’re communicating in a way that connects. (See the chapters on emotion and empathy for further discussion.)

4. Dig Deeper

Can you postpone giving your point of view just a tad longer in order to learn more about your spouse’s perspective? Doing so will help you have a productive conversation.

Skill 1 kept your spouse talking. This one takes you underneath what was said. Once you’ve played back the words and named the feeling, ask questions that get at where it came from and what it means. Here are examples:

What’s the backstory?
What did you mean when you said . . .
How did you come to this opinion?
Why does this make you feel the way it does?
How do you think this will affect you in the future?

You can also use the five W and one H questions as a basis for digging deeper:

Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?

The larger point is that the more curious you are about what’s going on with your spouse, the more you’re communicating in a way that connects.

5. Now It's Your Turn: Express Yourself Without Attacking

You may feel that showing your spouse respect is hard to do. That’s especially true if you view your mate as “sub-human,” “mentally ill,” “weird,” and the like. Such labels narrowly define who he/she is while ignoring the fuller picture. Once someone reduces others to a derogatory description, it becomes easier to disrespect them.

But we cannot accurately categorize fellow human beings that way. As Soviet dissident and Nobel Prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote,¹

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.

True, your mate may have an unflattering side, but there is a positive side as well. Same as you. Your spouse is worthy of the same respect you deserve.

a. Protect Your Spouse’s Dignity

When our spouses feel attacked, we narrow their range of responses down to one: defending themselves, which usually includes returning fire. It means an escalation of words, hard feelings, and eventually a desire to disengage.

The key to not being disrespectful is to protect your spouse’s dignity. You can criticize a behavior or an unwanted outcome your spouse created, but avoid character assassination, like you are such an idiot.

In the following video, notice the difference between starting a conversation softly and starting it harshly. (Warning: the speaker uses the “F” word once.)

Watch: Two ways a conversation can begin

b. A Better Way: I-Statements

I-statements help you get your point across without being accusatory and without putting your spouse on the defensive. Compare the following examples.

Notice that the statements on the right do not blame. Notice too that every statement on the left talks about “you,” while none of the statements on the right do. They are about “I.”

Yet the statements on the right fully communicate the speaker’s thinking and frustration without putting the other person on the defensive.

c. An Alternative to Attacking

Here is a three-part outline of how to ask for what you want or need without causing your spouse to become defensive.

1. Share what you are feeling.
2. Describe the problematic situation, not the problematic spouse. This is key.
3. Express what you need.

In all these examples, the speaker gets his/her point across without attacking. As with every skill above, when this kind of communication occurs, you’re communicating in a way that connects.

6. Defuse the Tension by Agreeing with Your Spouse: The Most Difficult Step

It goes against what you feel in the middle of an argument, which is why so few couples do it.

Agreeing with your spouse, stepping to their side, means that rather than just arguing your point, you allow room for your mate’s perspective. Negotiator Dr. William Ury explains,²

Stepping to their side may be the last thing you feel like doing in a confrontational situation. When they close their ears, you naturally feel like doing the same. When they refuse to recognize your point of view, you certainly don’t feel like recognizing theirs. . . . To break through the other side’s resistance, you need to reverse this dynamic. If you want them to listen to you, begin by listening to them. If you want them to acknowledge your point, acknowledge theirs first.

What this means is that when you and your spouse are arguing, you find some truth in what he/she is saying. You’re right on this point. Or, I agree with you that . . . The key is finding something your spouse says that you can affirm.

The following two illustrations come from audio podcasts by psychiatrist Dr. David Burns, who developed the Disarming Technique. Let’s call the first one, How Can I Agree with That?

Listen: How Can I Agree with That?

Start around 8:30 and listen to about 12:10.

The second example shows what happens when we use this technique in a setting most couples will recognize. Let’s call this second one, An Everyday Example.

Listen: An Everyday Example

Start around 13:20 and listen to about 16:46.

This skill takes practice before you get good at it. Given the potential results, it’s well worth the time.

Here are Three Tips for Agreeing with your Spouse

a. Limit the Scope

One helpful way of thinking about this technique is to limit any criticism to the context of your relationship, or to the way you relate to me. That isn’t the same as telling your spouse you’re that way in every situation. It softens the blow.

So if your partner says to you, “You are an uncaring person,” you can limit those words to mean, “You don’t care about me,” or, “You are uncaring in the way you relate to me.” You can then respond by saying, “I agree with you. I’ve not been as sensitive to your feelings as I should be.” Or, “You’re right. I can see how my remarks made you feel I didn’t care about you.”

It also helps to respond to a sweeping criticism by translating it into something concrete. You do that by asking your spouse to be more specific. For example, your mate says, “You are unthoughtful.” After asking why, you learn the statement refers to the fact that you forgot a birthday, which you can agree with.

The overall idea is to take what sounds like a criticism of you as a person and narrow its scope down to what’s going on in the relationship.

b. Acknowledge Falling Short of Your Mate’s Expectations

At the very least, you should be able to agree that whatever your spouse blames you for is true to him/her. Can you concede that you’ve fallen short of your spouse’s ideal? For example, “I agree with you. I am not meeting your expectations. I am failing to do what you want me to do.” When you acknowledge that you haven’t met your spouse’s expectations, you step to your partner’s side and lessen the distance between you.

c. Begin with the Words, “You’re Right”

When you begin with the words “You’re right,” you force yourself to identify something your spouse says that contains some truth. For example:

Use this communication skill, and you will communicate in a way that really connects.

If the same conversation keeps ending the same way no matter how carefully you word it, the problem may sit underneath the words. That’s where an alternative to traditional marriage counseling can identify what’s actually driving the conflict instead of guessing at it.

• The problem in most marriages isn’t a lack of talking. It’s that the talking doesn’t produce a connection.
• Let your spouse get it all out before you say a word. You can’t play back what you haven’t fully heard.
• Play back what your spouse said, then ask whether you got it right. Understanding has to be confirmed, not assumed.
• Similarly, name the emotion you hear and let your spouse correct you. When your spouse says, “That’s exactly how I feel,” you’ve connected.
• Ask follow-up questions before you argue your side. What you learn may change what you were about to say.
• Criticize the situation, never your spouse’s character. I-statements make your point without triggering a defense.
• Find the part of your spouse’s complaint that’s true and say so out loud. Agreement defuses tension faster than any argument.

Questions to Consider

1. When your spouse last told you something important, did you play it back, or did you move straight to your response?
2. How often do you name what your spouse is feeling and check whether you got it right?
3. Think of your last argument. What questions could you have asked before you defended yourself?
4. Which of your recent complaints attacked your spouse’s character rather than the situation? How would you say it now?
5. Take a criticism your spouse repeats often. What part of it can you honestly agree with?

1. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago. ↩

2. William Ury, Getting Past No. ↩

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