How To Have Better Conversations With Your Partner

This easy-read article shows you ways to have better conversations with your partner about difficult or sensitive matters. Going to the next level or having trouble? Whichever starting point you are at, we have you covered.

To have better conversations with your partner require improved skills. You can obtain that through e.g. studies, practice, or guidance from a professional therapist or coach. The best is if both you and your partner join in on the improvement journey, but it is also possible to obtain improvements on your own.

In this article, you will find some good options that you have in order to have better conversations with your partner. In particular, we talk about difficult and emotional conversations. You will be pointed in a direction to find which exact steps you can take to get it better. This article unfolds a wide range of aspects of the matter and it is based on research and analysis of input from a large number of professional practitioners.

Skills

We can’t talk about having better conversations in a relationship without talking about skills. Skills in terms of being able to consistently act in a way that – at the minimum – avoids escalation of conflict. But let’s aim for more. We want to be able to have a conversation with our partner that builds trust and connection and creates the foundation for solid love. By acting in certain ways throughout a conversation, we can have the conversation develop into a valuable moment of attention and care. We can make our conversation support and develop the connection at the same time as it deals with the subject of the conversation.

So first of all, you must spot and realize that your partner is not the only one who is imperfect in communication. In order to improve communication, it is important to look at yourself and seek opportunities to develop your own skills. It is very common to fall into the trap of being focused on what your partner is doing (wrong). It is an unfortunate tendency that we humans very often have and it does not lead anywhere good when it comes to good conversations in the relationship. Keep it in mind.

Different approaches

In this article, I will point in some different directions for how to approach having better conversations in the relationship. The different directions cannot be used regardless of the situation you are in. Your choice should depend on the situation you are in and what you want to achieve. Therefore, it is important to look at your starting point before making your choice.

When you try to improve the quality of the conversations in your relationship, the goal is to be able to practice as many as possible of the various elements that influence communication in a relationship. As in many other situations in life, you can assume that before you can practice a discipline in a conversation, you must first acquire knowledge of the discipline and then you must acquire practical skills in actual conversations.

It may be that you are very interested in the concepts and theory behind communication in relationships and in that case it can be an interesting journey to get to know the concepts one by one. But it can also be a long way to the goal – being able to practice.

As I have chosen to put it here, there are four fundamentally different approaches you can take – and possibly also a number of combinations of them – or nothing at all.

Get professional help.
Google more – Risk of getting lost.
Study relevant concepts and practice improvement one by one.
Practice a structured method for your conversations.

Further down in this article, there is a more detailed description of what I mean by each of these approaches, but first, it is important to talk about what your situation is and look at what options you have and don’t have.

Depends on your starting point

How to have better conversations with your partner, depends on your starting point. If you already have very good communication in your relationship but want to take it to another, next level, there is a way or two to go. If you are suffering from miserable partner communication, there is also a way to go – and the two ways are not the same. So let’s start out by separating the one from the other.

The first thing to get identified is how you see your situation – why you are here. Pick the statement below, that fits better to your situation:

You find that the conversations in your relationship are good, but your partner doesn’t see it as good.
You or your partner find that the conversation is there, alright, but you do not connect or it doesn’t feel real or close.
Your partner says you are bad at communicating.
You think you are a bad communicator – your partner is not the problem.
You think your partner is bad at communicating and it frustrates you. Need for improvement.
You see the communication go wrong too often – but you are not completely sure why it happens.
You see the communication go wrong too often and you see a reason and you have tried to improve it, but it hasn’t worked so far.

Pause now and consider which one or more fits better to your challenge. And then, do you understand the nature of the problem or not? Does your partner agree that there is a need for better conversations? And if so, do you also agree about the nature of the problem? Or are you alone in this search for answers? Does your partner agree to the nature of the challenge as you see it?

Alone on this one

If you see yourself as being alone in this journey, you may ask if it is possible to have better conversations with your partner if only one of you improves. The short answer is yes, it is – mostly. My experience is that it is very rare that the communication between partners is perfect from one side of the table and lacks a lot on the other side. In by far most cases, there are some development opportunities for both partners. One part can singlehanded lead a conversation in either a better or worse direction, so if you are alone on this idea, I am sure you can and will find a way to move forward despite that and hopefully you will find inspiration and links below.

By demonstrating improved conversation skills when you have a conversation with your partner, it may be an inspiration to join in on the journey along the way. Also, some of the concepts – if you are not already familiar with them – will open an opportunity to ask questions to your partner that may open up conversations about valuable matters that you haven’t had conversations about before. Asking questions and listening with genuine curiosity, interest, and patience are very strong tools for having high-quality conversations even with someone who is not skilled.

However, having said that, it is probably always better to be together on the journey, so make sure you check out the section further below about that.

Your partner has poor communication skills

If you are longing for better communication and you find that your partner really sucks at this, then you are not the only one! It is very normal that we can see the problem (-to us) our partner is having. Less normal that we see our own insufficiencies just as clearly. It’s part of humans’ imperfection and it is ok, as long as we embrace that it goes the other way around obviously.

When couples get assistance from a therapist and one of the two believes that mainly the other is the source of the problem, then it is mostly a misperception and the problem has in fact a root in both parties. We have a problem.

Really, the best advice is to stop thinking about who is the cause, but rather modify your thinking to be that we have a communication issue and we are looking for ways to improve our communication. Maybe one of you just has to carry the largest part of the work and that may be ok.

Together on the journey

You may or may not have involved your partner in your ideas at this time. You may or may not feel confident that your partner will join in on the journey of having better conversations and better communication. Maybe you are already both reading these lines. Otherwise, you have hopefully realized that being together on this journey is probably the better approach and now you are ready to involve your partner in the idea.

You know better how to involve your partner. I will just as a general recommendation suggest that you – without any blame – say that you feel a need to improve the communication between the two of you and that you would be very happy if your partner could take it as a new experience together and walk into it with open arms, just to make you happier in the relationship. Or something. However you put it is up to you, you probably know how to go about it.

One way to go – Professional assistance

All this about building skills in better communication is not easy. That is why training in having good conversations in a relationship is something that many choose to get professional help for.

Going to a couples therapist or coach for personal training is expensive, but it can be a faster way to achieve some improvements in communication. And if communication is very deadlocked, it may be the only way out for some couples. That is why I would also mention this option as the first path to follow in order to have better communication.

Obviously, you can try to find out if there are any free or subsidized options available to you where you live. There may be public or charitable organizations, very much depending on where you live.

From my own personal experience, I would also caution that there is a surprisingly large proportion of couples therapists out there who fall into one of two categories: 1. The therapist does not have sufficient knowledge to be able to help effectively. 2. The therapist is more concerned with getting more sessions (revenue) than creating effective and quick results for the client couple. So, just be careful when choosing your therapist.

Another way forward – Study relevant concepts

But the article here is mostly about two other ways that you can look at to get better communication with your partner. Let’s continue with path number two.

When we have a conversation, we do a lot of small actions that we mostly don’t think much about. The specialists have divided the things we do into small parts and identified them as concepts and described them in words. It makes it possible for the rest of us to talk about each small part of a conversation separately, which is very practical when we want to learn how our communication can improve.

In another article here at FIMAB, we have collected and structured a number of concepts that experts have pointed out we should work on if we want to improve the conversations in our relationships. There are about 50 concepts mentioned in that article and it can give you good and relevant knowledge for your learning journey. There is a link to the article further down.

You can consider these concepts as practical basic concepts in communication in a relationship and you can use them as a guide in the work of having better conversations with your partner. The concepts can also be used individually to challenge yourself.

A warning should also be issued here NOT to use the article and concepts to focus on your partner’s inadequacies. It is better if both of you focus especially on your own development based on your own ability and capability. You can then avoid adding another conflict to your relationship.

The third way to go – A structured conversation

Many couples around the world have found great benefits and great joy in using a structured conversation model to develop and improve their communication.

A structured conversation can appear to be artificial and strange to use – perhaps especially in a personal and emotional conversation. But the fact is that many couples have had very good help with their communication using a structured conversation model.

With such a thing, you jump straight to the goal: To have better conversations and better communication. The fixed structure contains a fixed order for what to do and say. When you follow it, you are led by the hand through a series of steps that ensure that the conversation gets a higher quality – often from the very first attempt.

Through practical application of the model, the couple can quickly improve their skills and they will typically gain more skills over time. Skills that you can use in your communication in many other contexts, both within and outside the relationship.

For these reasons, a structured conversation model is a path that I would recommend over the previous two. However, it is not for everyone because it is difficult or impossible to use a structured conversation model if both parties do not agree to do so. Here at FIMAB, we have written another article about such a model and we have also made an assessment of the quality of the model. Links below.