Harnessing your communication skills for the benefit of healthy relationships.

Consider the fact these are two individuals with two very different backgrounds and experiences that are coming together for one common purpose, learning how to become one and work together. By compromise, I mean be willing to be flexible, pick your battles, be open to communicate and prefer one another in order to express love to one another in a way each person needs to be loved and not the way you think they should be loved. In order words, after you learn their love language, you learn effectively communicate by speaking their language and not your own. Being Understanding deals with the idea of allowing each other to be vulnerable and open for change and transformation. Whatever is necessary to make each of you better individually and collectively. Being understanding doesn’t necessarily mean you agree with everything. It simply means you understand your partner’s love language, you understand their triggers, weaknesses and strengths and you are willing to understand how they feel what they are communicating and empathize with them, oppose to gaslighting them. Throughout this journey, I have been learning the power of improving my personal listening skills.

As a couple you should both invest in your personal listening skills in order to help you communicate more efficiently and minimize the misunderstandings. I would like to share the four types of listenings skills we need to be aware of in order to practice: appreciative listening , empathic listening , comprehensive listening , and critical listening.

Some of you may have strengths in one over the other which fine but it would be for your benefit and theirs to become aware so patience and practice can be applied when working on the weaker one. Let’s define them for the sake of clarity:

Appreciative listening is when you are listening for enjoyment. Imagine working all day getting some really good news, and you can’t wait to get home and share with your significant other. The very fact that they look forward to you sharing and enjoy you sharing about your day and what you have going on is how appreciative listening looks. It’s a expression of intimacy and allow you to both connect mentally and emotionally.

Empathetic listening skills require you to show mutual concern for one another. It’s when you are able to put yourself in the other person’s shoes in order to get a better understanding of what they are saying and how they are feeling. It’s the ability to listen and express empathy toward the person expressing themselves or their concern.

Comprehensive listening is when you apply active listening skills in order to understand what’s being communicated. It’s when you’re listening to engage and understand and not just to hear. Hearing doesn’t require mental focus but listening does. Comprehensive listening requires mental focus and intention and is important in any relationship. Perfecting this skill will make you a overall great listener.

Critical listening is a little different but just as important. When you listen to evaluate the content of what’s being communicated through critical thinking that allows you to make judgments based on the information presented to you. It takes just as much effort if not more to apply as the other listening skills. This skill helps you evaluate and analyze the message or whatever is being communicated. Learning how effective initiate these four skills could definitely make all the difference within in any relationship.