You may have asked your spouse questions about the affair. You may have overwhelmed them with your questions.
Asking questions is thought to be a good thing, yet doing it the wrong way will come across as nagging and be ignored, rather than answered. So… how do you ask questions that get results?
How to Ask Questions that Get Results <<– listen to the audio here
Hi, this is Jeff Murrah with Affair Recovery Radio. I’m glad that you’re with me today. On today’s show, we’re dealing with a topic that I think will be of great benefit to many of you, and that is how to ask questions that get results.
You may have asked your spouse questions about the affair. You may have been overwhelmed, at times, at their responses. And at times, they may have been overwhelmed with all your questions.
Usually, asking questions is thought of as a good thing. Yet doing it the wrong way will come across as nagging and be ignored rather than answered.
Many times you yourself may have been ignored rather than answered when you’re asking questions, or your spouse may have felt like you were nagging or coming across in a negative way. That begs the question, how do you ask questions that get results. That’s what we’re going to be dealing with today.
My answer is ASSKKK. That’s the acronym for what I’m going to go over. The second most powerful word in the English language, is “ask”. Just ask. I’m going to go over those.
1. The A, stands for getting their attention. This is a basic starting point. If you do not get their full attention your question is not going to be taken seriously or it’s going to be totally ignored.
As part of getting their attention you need to make eye contact. Make sure the television is turned off. Remove any other competing distractions. You may even want to go so far as to touch them, make sure they are tuned in.
If you try asking questions before you have their attention it’s going nowhere. By making the eye contact, removing the distractions, and even to go so far as touching them, it sends a clear signal to them that your question is important.
The first thing you want to do is get their attention. And this amounts to getting them tuned in to the channel that you are broadcasting on. This is imperative.
2. This is where the SS comes in. Once you have their attention you want to speak and give space. Those are the two SS’s. Speak and space. This sounds very elementary, but the simple details often make all the difference as to whether or not something is listened to or not.
Speak your one question. After you speak your one question then wait. So many spouses, when you are hurting, you just bombard your spouse with question after question after question after question. You’ve got to stop that. You want to ask one question at a time and then wait for their answer.
Give them space to answer. Machine-gunning them with a series of questions is not giving space. I know some of you probably want to not only have all your questions answered, but you feel very nervous when there’s this dead silence. A lot of times you start asking questions as a way to fill the space.
You’re going to have to stop that. By doing that you’re actually creating a train wreck out of the situation and making it a lot worse. You’ve got to give them their space in waiting for the answer.
Repeating your question is a way to short-circuit the results. So after you deliver your question, or ask it, and you give them the space, don’t keep repeating the question. Unless they ask.
If they ask that’s one thing, but if they don’t, don’t keep repeating it. Because each time you say it it has the effect of watering down your concern a little bit more.
Each time you ask that same question it waters it down more until they don’t take you seriously. They know that you’re not listening to them.
3. Now the K’s. There’s several K’s in here. The simple way of looking at is keep it. And by keep it, this refers to number one, keeping your questions simple. The simpler the question the more likely it is that you’re going to get a clear answer. Keep it simple.
Another part, keep it open-ended. And keep the conversation going. By keeping it open-ended, when you ask questions that can be answered with a simple yes or no, those are the options they’re going to go for. Those yes or no questions, those are referred to as closed-ended. The open-ended are the ones that you can’t answer with a simple yes or no.
With open-ended questions they have the effect of keeping conversation rolling. Whereas the closed questions tend to stop conversation.
When you’re trying to get your spouse to talk you want to keep the conversation going. Asking questions that give them outs or ways to stop things, they’re going to take that option any time that you give it to them. So for that reason you want to make sure your questions are open-ended and you want to keep the conversation going after they respond.
This does not mean nagging. This mean following up, clarifying, things such as that.
Conversation is a two-way street. It is not just you preaching at them or giving them a lecture. It is a give and take, a back and forth experience where when they respond you can build on that response.
As you go through this give and take you’re going to need to continue using your open-ended questions to keep your conversation simple and to keep the conversation moving.
This whole idea of keep it, keep it, keep it will help you in terms of your questions and allowing the conversation to develop into something more than just one word answers.
These are some simple guidelines that you can put into place to ask questions that get results.
I encourage you, it may help if you go ahead and practice these things. The sooner you implement it, the sooner you’re going to see results.
So I encourage you, go ahead after you listen to this podcast, this radio show, to practice this. These are things you can put into place right away and I encourage you to do that.
that you have. I may not be able to get to them right away, but I will get to them and answer your questions either on the blog or in a future radio show.
If you want to know more ways of opening up your communication, I share others in the “Affair Recovery Workshop”. In this downloadable program, you’ll find out what to ask, how to ask it along with ways of regaining lost intimacy.
Best Regards,
Jeff
