How to Stop Making Your Partner Defensive

Do you say how you feel and often end up making your partner defensive? If you have trouble being real because you do not know how to properly communicate your feelings, it is important to learn how to be both tactful and authentic.

1. Always talk about yourself - not the other person. This is about how YOU feel.

-ONLY talk about yourself and your feelings.

-Connect to your feelings and how they make you feel. Communicate how you feel without blaming anyone else for those feelings.

2. Start each sentence with "I", not "You". ("I felt bad", not "You made me feel bad.")

-This is a discipline that you learn and the more you do it the more you feel comfortable talking about yourself.

-When you take responsibility for your own feelings, you open the lines of communication with another.

-Not making the other person guess is the kindest thing you can do.

3. Deliver your message in a statement form and do not wait or press for an answer.

-If you have an agenda, i.e., you need the person to agree with you, this is manipulation.

-Everyone knows when they are being manipulated and set-up. The normal reaction to manipulation is to buck it!

-If you need your partner to agree with you in order for you to feel good, you are not coming from a clear place and this communication will back-fire.

4. If you are either withdrawing or confronting, you do not know how to properly communicate.

-State what you have to say with no agenda whatsoever.

-You need to be real, at the same time as you are being respectful.

5. Authenticity is the key to real communication.

-Being tactful without being real always will make you resentful.

-Saying what you feel without being conscious of someone else's feeling never works.

-Being real always takes into account the connection. Practice being real and connecting at the same time.

Article Source: http://www.wahm-articles.com

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