7 Strategies to Help You Get Heard
If you’re anything like me or the many women I work with then one of the things you long for most from your partner is to be heard. There’s nothing like the connection that surges between you when the person you love looks you in the eye and says, I get it. Yet these simple but powerful bonding moments can remain maddeningly elusive.
Time after time, I hear from clients that no matter what they say or do nothing seems to work. Their partners don’t listen and they come away feeling more frustrated than they would have if they had just kept their mouths shut. But that kind of self-silencing only leads to resentment and disconnection. It’s important to speak up and address the things that matter to you by taking care of what you can control: how you show up.
Despite my years of training and experience as a therapist and relationship expert, the same thing happens sometimes in my marriage. It’s a standard part of what makes relationship communication so challenging: the tiniest triggers, something as miniscule as a raised eyebrow or the wrong word, can send any couple into a spiral of reactivity.
Just the other day, I ran into this all too common roadblock as my husband was phubbing, the modern phenomenon for ignoring your companion in favor of your phone. I was waiting patiently for him to join me in watching my new favorite Netflix show— a subtitled Spanish drama called “Cathedral by the Sea” (it is SO good if you’re looking for a juicy saga and don’t mind if your viewing experience comes with a side dish of extreme violence and every trauma trigger under the sun). Admittedly, my version of patience wouldn’t exactly pass the Mother Teresa test, but I was being pretty chill about it relative to me, even as I kept having to pause and restart the program, and my mandatory early bedtime was looming.
I noticed that I was starting to get huffy.
“Are you almost done?”
“Can we please watch the show now?”
“Maybe we should just forget it for tonight.”
“I’m reserving plane tickets for our trip to New Orleans, Colette. Can you hang on for five more minutes?” he replied, an unmistakable edge of frustration creeping into his voice.
Dare I say, I was beginning to whine a little bit? As unflattering as this sounds, what I wanted to say was much worse. Furthermore, my own reaction was a clue that something was going on inside me that’s probably about a little more than a Netflix show.
A little background: my husband can get pretty consumed by his cell phone in the evenings. He half jokes that I get mad when he’s on his phone, unless I’m also on mine, and then it’s perfectly okay. He’s not totally wrong, and I’ll go ahead and admit that I can be unintentionally hypocritical about phubbing. When he’s disengaged from me, I do feel ignored and worse, unimportant. I know that I sometimes do the same thing to him, but it sucks to be on the receiving end. In those moments, I’m longing to connect. I want his undivided attention. Can you be jealous of a cell phone? I’m living proof that indeed you can.
On this particular occasion, I could feel the irritation roiling inside me, threatening to come out like a steamy geyser. I noticed an urge to go into what I affectionally refer to as, What the F***? Mode. Simultaneously, I felt a compulsion to push my feelings down and pretend I was fine to keep the peace. The last thing I wanted to do was fight. I knew I needed to say something though. It’s not healthy to stuff feelings and causes way more harm in the long run. On the other hand, I don’t want to come off like a nag, and I’m not feeling super confident that he’ll hear me.
Maybe you can relate to this dilemma. You want to say something but you also don’t want to argue over minutia. You may fear that if you speak up and don’t get heard it will feel even worse than if you said nothing at all. Sometimes it’s tempting to sweep the small stuff under the rug, but that’s never a viable long-term solution.
Yet, it can be daunting to try to get through if your partner struggles to receive feedback, as so many do. From your partner’s side of the street, it can feel threatening to hear your wife is upset with you, even if it’s for a very good reason.
The good news is that you don’t have to pop off with frustration or push your feelings down into a compressed ball that sits in your gut and poisons your own internal system.
There are strategies for safe, healthy self-expression that will increase your chance of being heard. While there’s no guarantee that your partner will hear you, and by hear you I mean take it in and get it, these top tips for effective relationship communication will significantly increase your chances. Plus, you’ll feel so much better inside because you’re showing up for yourself and communicating in an emotionally mature way that invites connection:
Here are The Top Seven Strategies that will help you get heard:
1. Take a Pause
Before you say anything, stop. Take a couple of breaths and notice what you’re feeling. Make sure you’re grounded enough to express yourself and clear about what you want to say. You should be in your Window of Tolerance, Dr. Dan Siegel’s term for nervous system regulation, that means you are connected to your core self and able to be open to your partner’s perspective. It’s critical to become aware of what’s happening inside and to communicate when you have the bandwidth to do so.
2. Soften Your Start-Up
Dr. John Gottman’s decades long research on couples has demonstrated that how a conversation begins almost unilaterally predicts how well it goes. Obtain buy-in for the discussion by asking your partner if it’s a good time to talk. If he or she just got out of a stressful meeting or spent two hours in rush hour traffic, it’s probably not the best time. Elements of a soft start-up include a gentle tone of voice, eye contact (if possible), and open body language. Make it as easy as possible for your partner to WANT to engage in the conversation.
3. Acknowledge Your Reactive Urge
Your reactive urge is the automated fight-or-flight self-protective response that’s most natural to default to when you’re upset. The brain prioritizes self-protection over connection, even though that’s not what’s best for your relationship. It takes awareness to notice your activation and choose a more intentional, mature response. When I’m irritated by my husband, the hot-blooded Italian part of me wants to complain, criticize, and protest my husband’s behavior. But if I react from this place, I probably have zero chance of getting heard and things will likely escalate. My husband is going to react to my reaction and we’ll be off to the races. But if I’m aware of my urge to pop off, I can acknowledge it by talking about it. This harnesses my observational ego (the ability to become aware of what’s happening as it’s happening) and creates a little space between me and my reactivity. When you acknowledge your reactive urge and communicate from the wise, loving adult part of you— the core of who you are—you increase your chances that your partner can hear you.
4. Stay Self-Focused
This is about you and your experience, not your partner. Instead of avoiding the topic altogether or criticizing what your partner does, express the impact that his or her behavior has on you. Avoid assuming your partner’s intentions, putting words in their mouth, interpreting their behavior, and instead, express what their behavior elicits inside of you. Use “I” statements to reflect what you think and feel. How you feel as a result of whatever’s happing with your partner is entirely unique to you. It’s filtered through your own personality, likes and dislikes, relationship history, and old wounds. Own your experience in relation to your partner. Besides, blaming will get you nowhere and will make it almost impossible for your partner to stay engaged and listen.
5. Emphasize Emotions
Your feelings are signals that guide you to what you need. Take the time to notice what you’re feeling before you say anything. Can you identify your emotions? Naming feelings can help you self-soothe and organize your experience. Try sharing the more vulnerable, deeper emotions, not just surface-level frustration and irritation. It may take a little effort to identify, but once you do, sharing vulnerability can disarm your partner and invite connection and intimacy.
6. Mention the Meaning
Try to step out of the triggering incident and see the bigger picture. It’s never just about the phone, the dishes, the mess on the floor, or whatever the micro-issue at hand happens to me. It’s always about what that thing communicates to you on an attachment level. When my husband is focused on his phone and I feel ignored, it takes me back to times I felt neglected in previous relationships. The meaning I make is that “my needs don’t matter” and “I’m not a priority.” This is an old wound getting pressed inside of me that’s far more important to tend to than whatever’s happening with my husband and his cell phone.
7. Speak the Language of Connection
When you use the language of connection, you are referencing how important the relationship is to you and reminding your partner that you’re a team in it together. Put yourself in your partner’s shoes for a moment. What would it be like to hear a complaint in the same sentence as this message: “I’m speaking up about this because this relationship is so important to me.”
So let’s look at how I implemented these strategies when I was phubbed the other night:
First, I took a pause. I grounded myself, dug into the meaning, and processed my feelings enough to be able to approach my husband and know what I wanted to say. Then, with a soft tone of voice, I gave an entirely self-focused account of my inner experience, how my husband’s behavior impacted me, and why this mattered:
“Hey, do you have a second for me to share something with you? (softening the start-up) When you were scrolling on your phone, I felt disappointed and lonely (emphasizing emotions). I found myself wanting to get critical (acknowledging my reactive urge), but I know that would probably make you defensive, and I don’t want us to get disconnected. I do really want to tell you more about why this bothered me, so we can be closer and understand each other better (speaking the language of connection). I realized that deep down I was really upset because I felt ignored. I got a message that my needs don’t matter in that moment. This takes me back to how I often felt in my first marriage (mentioning meaning and significance).”
Even though I did everything right, there was still no guarantee that he would be able to hear me. I had no idea what was really going on inside him, and I didn’t make the mistake of trying to read his mind. He seemed like he was getting frustrated with me, but in actuality, he could have been hangry, distracted, stressed about work, or something else entirely. However on this particular evening, when I said the above, he was able to hear me. I made it easier because I focused on my own experience— my feelings and the meaning I made of what was happening, rather than criticizing him for continuing to do something that drives me nuts. His attachment channel opened up to me when he heard that I was sharing this because I want us to be closer.
This led to a short but much more connected conversation that we came out of with a clean slate. After he listened, my husband shared that sometimes when I get frustrated with him, he sees a look on my face that reads like disdain (it’s not; I’m just hiiiiiiighhhhly expressive). He said it feels as if I’m silently picking on him for this one tiny thing that’s so unimportant when he does so much else right. That can make him feel unappreciated, which goes back to his first marriage.
When we took a few moments to talk it through constructively, we had a deeper and more meaningful dialogue, with a mutual understanding of how we impacted each other in this very small exchange. We felt like a team, handling conflict and growing together as a couple. From there it was easy to segue into a discussion about what if anything we could change about cell phone use in the future.
If your partner is responding and hearing you when you use these strategies, then the door to connection is wide open. You can express your feelings and needs and listen to what your partner has to say with curiosity and acceptance. You’re increasing your chance of being heard by creating a secure, safe conversation in which you and the one you love meet in a deeper place beneath the surface. This is where growth and emotional intimacy begin to flourish.