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My wife said I don’t listen--at least I think that’s what she said.
~ Laurence Peter

Take time to talk every day.

Many spouses find it helpful to arrange a 15-minute “date” each day, during which time they devote their exclusive attention to one another.  This means cell phones on mute, TV off, text messaging off, dog taken care of, and baby asleep.  To make it work, do the following:

1. Look into each other’s eyes. Poetry and the romantic tradition hold that the eye is the mirror to the soul.  Perhaps.  It is certainly true that by looking deep into each other’s eyes, you and your partner will gain the kind of awareness of one another’s moods and feelings that engender warmth and closeness.
2. Hold hands. Just as, during courtship, the touch of your partner’s hand was a source of good feeling, so it will be now.  Physical contact is an important part of communicating feelings of affection, and hand-holding has always had a special significance for lovers.  Gently squeeze or press your partner’s hand and stroke the back of it with your thumb.
3. Ask open-ended questions.  An open-ended question is designed to get more than a yes/no answer.  “What did you do today?” and “How was your day?” are examples. They give your partner the opportunity to tell you what they did and how they feel about it-to express feelings about experiences.  It is the opposite of the dead-end question--the one that can be answered with a simple yes, no, or statement of fact- “Are you tired?”
4. Reflect back in a nonevaluative way. Just say back to your partner what he or she said to you.  Don’t criticize whatever your partner says.  Make this a positive experience.

Communication Basics

Communication is more than just talking.  One communicates not only by what one says (verbal communication) but also by what one does (nonverbal communication.)  Both are important.  And ideally, one should match the other.  Other suggestions are:

1. Express ideas clearly. Expressions such as “I like this (or that) a lot,” or “I guess I want to go” are not very precise.  To be clear, it is sometimes helpful to rate the intensity of one’s preferences, feelings, and desires on a scale of 1 to 10.
2. Honest and dishonest questions. Psychologist Charles Madsen identified several types of questions that spouses ask. Two of these are honest and dishonest questions. An honest question is one to which any answer will be accepted without provoking a negative response.  A husband who asks his wife if she would like to have intercourse is asking an honest question if she can say no without angering him.  Similarly, a wife who asks her husband if he would rather fish or go shopping with her is asking an honest question if he can tell her he prefers fishing without her taking offense.

A dishonest question has only one right answer.  If the husband is angry when his wife refuses intercourse, his question was dishonest.  If the wife is offended when the husband says he’d rather fish, her question was dishonest.

Dishonest questions are unfair and misleading.  Both partners have the right, when in doubt, to ask--before answering--whether a particular question is honest or not.  If the answer is no, no answer is necessary, since the asking partner has already decided there is only one right answer.

1. Direct and Indirect Questions. Direct questions ask for specific information and indirect questions ask for information in a roundabout way.  The wife who asks her husband, “Are you tired?” is asking a direct question if she is truly concerned about his need for sleep.  It is an indirect question if what she really wants to know is whether or not he is in the mood for sex.  In the same way, the husband who asks, “Do you want to go bowling with me tonight?” may really be asking, “Do you love me?” or “Do you enjoy being with me?”

Indirect questions, like dishonest questions, are devious and unfair.  Husbands and wives who want to improve their communication should concentrate on asking and answering honest and direct questions, avoiding the kinds that are dishonest and/or indirect.  Partners must first know what they are being asked before they can possibly know how to answer--and what the consequences of that answer will be.

Sex

Many husbands and wives are uncomfortable telling each other what they like in bed. The touch-and-ask rule can be helpful in making sexual preferences more open. The principle of touch-and-ask is that with each caress (or stroke, or nibble, etc.), an honest question is asked—“How do you like this?” or “How does this feel?”--and then answered.  In this way, each spouse becomes more aware of what is most pleasurable to the other and more comfortable about expressing possibly heretofore repressed sexual preferences and desires.

Expressing Positive Emotion

As human beings, we are creatures of emotion and feeling.  Some of us make decisions based on emotion--what we feel--rather than on reason--what we think.  There are times when, as Spinoza so aptly put it, “We want things not because we have reasons for them, we have reasons for them because we want them.”

Yet, though emotions play an enormous role in governing much of what we say and do, some of us experience great difficulty expressing those emotions. One can achieve greater facility in expressing emotion by focusing on increasing the frequency of positive expressions.  Positive expressions of emotion may be verbal (the “I love you”) or nonverbal and physical, expressed by gestures, tone of voice, facial expression, and even posture.