Welcome to another digital edition of Alex Answers where I answer questions that people send in about marriage counseling, family therapy, and other counseling related issues. This episide answers a question from M.N. who asks us:
“My husband doesn’t help clean up around the house, no matter how much I ask. How can I get the point across without sounding like a nag?”
I love this question because it’s very similar to what I hear from clients so often, men and women. In this episode I explain the power of including your intentions and needs in requests from your partner.
Take a look at the video and see if it’s not a piece of advice that you can make use of.
If you are interested in making your marriage as great as it can be and you’re in the Westminster or Loveland areas of Colorado, contact us at www.riverpathcolorado.com.
Transcript Below:
Hey everybody, Alex Michaud from Riverpath Counseling Colorado here; coming at you with another digital edition of Alex Answers, where I answer questions that people send in through
our website about marriage counseling or family therapy. Today’s question comes from M.M. who says, “My husband isn’t really great about helping out around the house. How can I ask
him without sounding like a nag?”.
This is a great question; it’s probably a golden question in marriage that I’m sure a ton of people out there, men and women, would love to have the perfect answer to.
So let me see if I can give you one. One of the things that I see often with couples that come in for marriage counseling with me is that people aren’t communicating at 100%. They either haven’t learned or aren’t using the skills quite right and what we like to do is give them extra skills that they
need to do it better. One of the things that I like to teach all of my couples is, “We judge ourselves by our intentions and other people by their actions” and what I mean by that is that we know what we intend to do with every communication but the other people can’t necessarily see that.
So what I like people to do is to put their intentions in their communication. I like people to say “Look, I wish you would do the dishes for me tonight so that I can go take care of the kids and put them to bed.That’s important to me because it would give us a little extra time and maybe we could be intimate; that hasn’t happened in a while”.
So the best thing about that type of communication style is that both partners really get to understand what’s at play. The husband then gets to hear “Oh, it’s not only about you
asking me to do this because you want me to do something but it’s asking me to do this so that, hey, maybe we can get the chance to connect a little bit more.” Or maybe it’s because it’s important for you to feel like I care about the house just as much as you do.”
There could be many reasons. Give this a shot; go into the next conversation you have with your husband and say, “Hey, this is important to me and here’s why it’s important to me; can you do it so we can make things work better together”.
When we approach marriage communication as teamwork instead of as competition, things go a lot better; the marriage goes a lot better and things turn out pretty great.
Thank you for sending in such a great question. I loved answering it. If you have any more questions, please feel free to email me atalex@riverpathcolorado.com. I’m taking new
questions all the time and I love to get them and talk to you guys a little bit, so feel free to reach out.
I’m Alex Michaud with Riverpath Counseling Colorado. Find Your Path, We’ve Got The Map.
The post Alex Answers: Episode 1 || Marriage Counseling Questions || Westminster & Loveland appeared first on Riverpath Counseling Colorado.
