Good communication is only half the battle when it comes to solving your relationship problems. The other half is negotiation, and this is the technique which seems to be getting the best results in research work on relationship therapy. It obviously helps your negotiation if you are also communicating well when you do it. Be specific, keep to the point, avoid closure, remain flexible, don’t mind-read and don’t blame. However, there are some more things to remember when it comes to negotiating, some of which I’ll talk about here.
Convert Your Complaints Into Requests
As with the process of communication, the first principle of negotiation is to work on the future rather than the past. All complaints are by definition placed in the past, and the first thing to do is to change that by converting them into requests or wishes. For example, if a woman says to her partner ‘I hate you coming in so late from work’, this could be put the other way around as ‘I would like you to be home earlier from work.’
I hope that it will be clear to you that the second, positive, future form of words is much more likely to get a positive response from her partner than the first one. Almost all complaints can be re-worded in this way, giving the partner the possibility of falling in with the request, rather than arguing or saying ‘You are always complaining.’
Make The Requests More Specific
The next skill that is necessary in trying to negotiate is to make the request more specific. For example, if you say to your partner ‘I would like you to be more positive to me’, that is a bit difficult for him/her to interpret. It isn’t clear where, when or how you want that more positive response. It has to be more specific.
For example, if you say ‘I would be much happier if you would back me up when we are in George’s company’, this is more something that your partner can clearly understand, relate to and do for you.
Your request may be a lot more practical than that. It may be that you want to say ‘I want you to be more helpful around the house.’ Again this is too general, and it would be better to say ‘I would really like you to help with the vacuuming.’ The more specific a request is, the easier it is to understand and to act on, and the easier it is to be sure whether it has been carried out when you come to assess how the new regime is going.
The Emphasis Must Be On The Future
The previous two examples are both quite good from this angle. They are both ‘future orientated’, and therefore possible to be part of a negotiation. The alternative is to say ‘I wish you hadn’t been so unsupportive to me when we met with George the other week.’ This is quite specific, but it is in the form of a complaint, not a request. There is nothing that your partner can do about it, because it is already history. All he/she can do is apologize and promise to try to do better the next time you meet with George. Similarly the question of doing the vacuuming is much less easy to relate to if you simply say that ‘You never help me with this task.’ Again, if you put it in the form of a complaint, all that a cooperative partner can do is promise to do better. The trouble with this is that promises like that are easily made and then broken. A request for future help or support is more easily responded to and more easily monitored by you.
No comments:
Post a Comment