6 Steps to Being a Great Sharer

Last week, we learned how to listen in 6 Steps to Being a Great Listener. This week, we are focusing on how to share with our partners.

We all want to be listened to. We want to be seen and heard. We want our feelings to be validated. We want our experiences to be understood.

Yet, when we share, we hear this:

“What are you talking about?”

“I don’t follow you.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Stop blaming me!”

“I can’t listen to this shit, again!”

“What the f%&k?”

And these words hurt. We want to be accepted. Not rejected!

Sharing our feelings can be very difficult and vulnerable for us. Depending on our upbringing and/or family of origin, we might have learned early on that no one cares about us. So, when we’re finally in a loving relationship and share our strong feelings, we expect our partner to treat us the way we were treated by the people from our past. We automatically begin to treat our partner as if they are someone else from our history, rather than a person who is actually in front of us, the one we fell in love with and who loves us back.

We go into our sharing, already expecting to be hurt, therefore our defenses go up and we have the need to prove our innocence by making our partner a guilty party. And it’s so upsetting to us that our emotions flood us, which makes it difficult for us to stay focused when we are sharing. Our voices can get loud. We can start crying, as if we’ve already been hurt.

Before we know it, we are no longer sharing with our partner a specific event, but our lifelong emotional trauma. Which can leave our partners feeling confused, disoriented and understandably upset.

Here are 6 Steps to Being a Great Sharer.

STEP 1: KNOW WHAT THE F*CK YOU WANT TO SAY

Before starting the conversation, you need to know what you want to share. If you don’t know what you’re trying to say, then your partner doesn’t know what they’re listening to.

Ask yourself:

What happened?

What am I feeling?

What do I actually want my partner to understand?

What do I need from this conversation?

Once you can answer the questions above, then you are ready to share.

STEP 2: START WITH WHAT HAPPENED, NOT POINTING A FINGER

Describe the specific behavior or event rather than making a judgement about your partner’s character, intentions, or motivations.

Instead of: “You don’t give a shit about me.”

Go with: “When I was telling you about my day yesterday and you started looking at your phone…”

Sharing observable behavior gives your partner something concrete to respond to. Character attacks give them something to defend.

STEP 3: OWN YOUR FEELINGS, NOT YOUR PARTNER’S BEHAVIOR

Now tell them about your internal experience.

“…I felt dismissed and unimportant.”

Rather than: “You made me feel dismissed and unimportant.”

The distinction I’d emphasize here is owning your feelings and not your partner’s behavior:

“I feel hurt” is owning your feeling.

“I feel like you don’t care about me” is owning – and interpreting – your partner’s behavior and making a judgement about it.

Your partner can disagree with your interpretation of their behavior. It’s much harder to argue with you about what you’re actually feeling.

STEP 4: TELL THEM WHY IT MATTERS

Give your partner the story underneath the feeling.

“It mattered to me because I’d been waiting all day to tell you about it, and I wanted to feel like you were interested in what happened to me.”

This is where you’re giving your partner access to your experience, rather than simply giving them a complaint about them.

A useful formula to use: When [Insert an event, e.g., observable behavior] happened, I felt [Insert your feelings] because [Insert why it mattered].

STEP 5: TELL THEM WHAT YOU NEED

Don’t make your partner guess – or worse, ‘read your mind’ – about what would make things better.

Just Tell Them!!!

Ask for something specific and doable.

Instead of: “I need you to care more.”

Go with: “When I’m telling you something important, I’d like you to put your phone down and give me your attention for a few minutes.”

Or

“I don’t need you to fix this. I just want you to listen.”

A need isn’t the same thing as a demand. You’re telling your partner what would help you feel connected.

STEP 6: SHUT UP AND LET THEM RESPOND

You’ve said your piece. Now resist the temptation to keep building your argument. Give your partner room to process and respond.

Avoid:

“Well? Aren’t you going to say something?”

“See! You’re doing it again!”

“Why can’t you admit that you were wrong?”

“I knew you wouldn’t understand.”

Good phrases to use:

“Take your time.”

“You don’t have to respond right away.”

Or simply say nothing at all. Giving them silence and space allows them time to catch up emotionally.

Sharing your feelings is not about assigning blame. You can tell your partner that something they did hurt you without deciding why they did it.

You can ask them for something different without making them a bad partner for not having done it before.

You can be completely honest about your experience and still leave room for theirs.

Have questions? Send them my way. 

Until next time, Artur

ps. Did you know that in addition to being a Couples Therapist, I'm a Certified Life Coach? I offer Relationship and Sex Coaching to individuals and couples worldwide. Coaching is not psychotherapy. It's a different modality that allows me to work with people beyond the boundaries of psychotherapy. To learn more, check out my website.