One of the topics covered in nursing training is that of how to approach patients. Although knowing how to approach someone who’s hurting, and getting them to discuss it seems like something that comes naturally, it’s not.
There are things you do that trigger either defensiveness or openness. Your approach starts communicating a message even before you say a word.
It takes practice learning how to approach someone in a non-threatening manner. Nurses have learned the importance of how you approach someone. They know that how you approach someone makes a difference in how well they accept what you’re telling them or having them to do.
Knowing ways of approaching your spouse is important. How you approach them sets the stage for the discussion. Your approach tells them if its going to be a fight or a heart-to-heart.
Are you ‘Charging’ into them or apologizing for daring to bring it up? Both approaches have problems associated with them.
Whether you like it or not, your non-verbal behaviors and gestures signal whether to listen to you or ignore you before anything is said. You may have the exact words to say to them, yet how you did it changed the whole message from what you intended.
I was reminded of the importance of approach when a reader asked, “How to accuse your wife of an affair”. When you have to ask a question like that, it’s a sure sign that help is needed in the area of ‘approach’.
It also alerts me to even deeper problems in their relationship regarding their communication. When the two of you aren’t connected with each other, your communication is suffering as well.
This means that the two of you are only hearing and sending a small percentage of your messages. When only a small percentage of what you thought was being communicated is actually being heard, you’re not being listened to or hearing your spouse well at all.
With the human mind being the way it is, your brain will connect the fragments of messages together any way it wants to. This means that your messages aren’t meaning what you intend them to mean.
When communication breaks down, your marriage needs help. Affairs damage your marriage and communication issues make that damage worse.
If you and your spouse continue missing each other and feeling disconnected, there are things that the two of you can do. The pain that’s come into your marriage doesn’t have to ruin it.
In my downloadable video “Let’s Talk: Hurting People and Healing Questions” guides the two of you through ways of improving communication in your marriage. Rebuilding your communication is a critical part of affair recovery.
Knowing ways of connecting and getting listened to without threats or high drama is important. You can know better ways of approaching your spouse and moving past the roadblocks to communication.
Each time the affair is discussed doesn’t have to turn into a fight. Download your copy today.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
