Sharing your feelings
By Tussy Afam-Obi
Tuesday, April 24, 2007

According to Chuck. T. Falcon, close, trusting relationships with others help you avoid depression after life stresses and help prevent illness, speed recovery, and promote longevity. But a bad relationship can cause depression and make your life seem like hell. Unfortunately, men with bad tempers cause a great deal of the stresses women face today. Find out how you can improve an angry man. In the best relationships, the partners calmly and tactfully talk about irritations, disagreements, and conflicts without blaming each other and then problem solve, negotiate, and compromise.

Occasional arguments with yelling can feel good when it unearths important issues and leads to problem solving, but it often results in hurt feelings, sabotages problem solving so that problems become chronic, damages trust and closeness, and may lead to a partner feeling very justified in lying or deceiving by omission. Instead, develop a confiding relationship of sharing feelings, not just facts, and receiving acceptance, understanding, and emotional support from each other. Research shows sharing feelings is much more important to closeness and happiness in relationships than the sharing of facts.

Problem solving skills
Establish regular problem-solving sessions to avoid angry arguments. Many couples do well with one session each week, but some need them more often and others may need them less often. Choose a time when neither person feels tired and when you have plenty of time to problem solve without distractions. Both people must accept criticism and try to learn from it.

Write down any agreement you make in order to avoid arguments about the terms later. If you fail to find solutions to several problems, you can often make contracts trading one improvement for another (I will do ..., if you do ...). To hold a problem-solving session or calm down a heated discussion or argument, take turns listening quietly while the other person explains feelings and viewpoints about the problem issue right down to the last detail. During the other person's turn to speak, the listener may speak only to ask questions that help clarify the speaker's perspective.

Try to focus on the early stages of upsetting conflicts or arguments, even what was going on before the problem began. Couples can easily blame each other and become frustrated again in discussing the escalating argument, when both probably acted in negative ways.

The conditions before the argument and the early stages are generally more understandable and acceptable and may suggest triggers and early actions or decisions that led to later escalation. In problem solving and in angry arguments, define problems in very specific, observable actions (actions, words, tone of voice, and facial expression). Both of you should try to eliminate the communication problems listed in the box. After each session of problem solving, evaluate your skills using the questions listed below:

Avoid these communication problems
•Yelling
•Insults
•Blaming and trying to make the other person feel guilty
•Avoiding issues
•Getting off a subject before you exhaust it or find a solution
•The attitude "I'm right and you're wrong"
•Bringing up old resentments or the past
•Using personal knowledge of sensitive issues to hurt the other person
•Manipulative communication to get what you want (such as deceiving, crying,
•Pouting, sulking, or lying) nagging, demands, and ultimatums
•Overgeneralizations (such as "You never ..." or "You always ...")
•Too many interruptions
•Cross-complaining (responding to a complaint by bringing up your own complaint)
•Mixed messages (giving two contradicting impressions, perhaps one verbally and one nonverbally)
•Dominating a conversation
•Too many questions
•Assuming that you know what the other person thinks or feels and telling them, interpreting their "true" wishes or motivations, or psychologically analyzing them
How is your problem solving?
•Were we logical and calm?
•Did we listen well?
•Did we define problems and solutions in specific behaviors?
•Which communication problems above were we guilty of?
•Were we both willing to compromise?
•Did we brainstorm and evaluate a number of possible solutions?
•What should we do differently next time?