Relationship Saving Communication Skills
We host a one or two-day training in communication and listening skills that have greatly blessed us in our marriage and other relationships. We use them to do our pre-marriage counseling; we teach these skills to the couple and then facilitate their active listening on all the key topics. We introduce these skills in our “Better than Wine: Building and Rebuilding Intimacy” Marriage conference.
We lead couples to:
1. Identify their own communication habits
2. learn new helpful ways to gain understanding in their relationship
3. Gain hands on experience to put these skills into practice
Interested in hosting a workshop?
We came to learn how to actively listen to one another through our own struggles about 7 years into our marriage when we sought marriage counseling. The counselor happened to be an instructor in Couple Communication curriculum by Sherrod and Phyllis Miller and taught it to us. He was a war veteran, a go-get-’em leader, the kind of guy who would typically want to be in control and often run you over in conversation. But! He learned that his controlling impulse didn’t work in his marriage nor in his practice as a therapist. He would say that it was natural to take control of a conversation, to talk over someone, to interrupt, to sabotage someone’s thought process, to minimize someone’s experience, to deny, to cut off, to dismiss. We do these things reflexively, naturally. We do them as soon as we can speak.
BUT, to serve someone through listening, to honor, to respect—that is supernatural. That only comes through a divine intervention of God’s grace in someone’s life, whether they recognize it or not.
This helped us understand each other; to understand one another is the goal of collaborative listening… not agreement, understanding. We learned to not violate the listening process. It is a learned skill that will help you
1. Resolve conflict
2. Make plans
3. And increase mutual satisfaction through celebrating joys and grieving losses well
a. Make the other person FEEL heard and thus loved.
b. Honor yourself and the issues that matter to you where you need to be heard and loved by listening
This program teaches that the fastest way to really connect to someone is not through leading but through following their lead by listening. The passive role of listening will actually connect you on a heart level and create the intimacy you crave.