How To Improve Marital Communication By Simply Using "The Honey Jar"
Posted: Wednesday, October 21, 2009
by Peggy Ferguson
Peggy L. Ferguson, Ph.D.
When your relationship needs some emotional energy and romance there are some simple steps to take to begin to revitalize it.
You may be sensing that you are drifting away from your spouse or that your marriage is becoming lifeless and operating on automatic. If you have stopped having fun together and think that you just don't have anything to talk about, you can do something that rekindles that spark.
Consistent and effective communication helps make your relationship resilient to common relationship problems. Your relationship can be revitaized by improving your communication. Good communication can go a long way to restoring your positive feelings about each other. When you step up your communication efforts, your sense of partnership can be restored. Interest in each other can increase?all of which can go a long way in preventing marital discord, infidelity, and dissolution.
And who could not benefit from improving one's ability to listen? The need to feel "heard" and "understood" can feed that self-reinforcing pattern of circular arguing and fighting. Compulsive attempts to be understood pretty much eliminates your ability to listen to the other person. As s/he becomes more and more demanding, communication behavior gets progressively worse. This is a self-perpetuating pattern, assuring that the longer it persists, the more likely that neither will feel "heard" or "understood".
A structured or semi-structured communication exercise, like "The Honey Jar", can reduce some of the anxiety or awkwardness about changing up an interaction pattern. It can feel less threatening or stressful to use a communication exercise. With neutral topics, you don't feel pressured into bringing up "touchy" subjects. You can practice "risking" in a non-threatening way. Setting aside a regular time for communication and not allowing anything to take priority above it, makes it a "sacred time". Use of a "sacred time" creates a habit. A habit of sustained effort to communicate leads to improvement. Start communicating again today by using The Honey Jar.
The Honey Jar is a couple communication exercise that assists couples in starting neutral conversations. It consists of sentence stems, printed individually on cards, that are randomly selected for conversation. Topics include a range of subjects. Partners can talk about themselves and the relationship in ways that feel less risky or less threatening.
Copyright (c) 2009 Peggy L. Ferguson, Ph.D.
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The relationship resources available on the website of Peggy L. Ferguson, Ph.D., are available at http://www.peggyferguson.com . You can also sign up for Dr. Ferguson's Newsletter there. "The Honey Jar" is available for purchase and download at http://www.honeyjarcommunications.com Peggy L. Ferguson, Ph.D. is a therapist in private practie in Stillwater, OK, and a writer, trainer, and consultant.
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