Keep Your Relationship Loving by Speaking Up Sooner - 3 Tips

One of the best ways to poison your relationship is to let annoying comments pile up. At first, if your partner makes a slightly irksome comment, you may decide to ignore it. What happens if your partner repeats the same comment over and over again? Eventually, you may explode because your discomfort has been building up. Here are our three tips to avoid an explosion:

1. The first time, ignore the comment, giving your partner the benefit of the doubt; maybe they didn't mean it or they were just in a bad mood.
2. The second time, tell you partner how the comments makes you feel, using an I-statement. Example: "Honey, when you say 'you never clean up after yourself,' I feel angry. I feel like you don't appreciate my efforts."
3. As a couple, have a regularly scheduled weekly appointment to bring up issues. Start these meetings with each person expressing something they appreciate about the other person. Next, each person has the opportunity to bring up events that occurred since the last meeting that didn't sit well with them.

To make these meetings effective, each person must feel safe. To ensure this safety, we recommend that you speak with non-blaming I-statements. These I-statements usually fit into the following template: "When you [do or say....], I feel [a specific emotion]." This format tends to disarm the person to whom the issue is being addressed.

In sum, initially hold your tongue and give your partner the benefit of the doubt. If the behavior reoccurs, use non-blaming I-statement to let your partner know how you feel before you blow your stack. A weekly appointment provides a forum so that repeated, annoying comments go unaddressed for only a few days instead of weeks or months.