Marriage Problems - My Boyfriend Doesn'T Express How He Feels!

I am a communication and relationship coach teaching a 4-step method of communication called the Language of Peace. Every once in a while I get a question from a reader that strikes me as particularly ‘pithy.’ I’d like to share one of those with you now.

The reader wrote: “My boyfriend has a really hard time expressing how he feels or talking about our relationship. We've been seeing each other for over 2-years. I enjoy being with him but I don't think we have a future together. Is this normal?”

It struck me as an important question to answer in an article only because it is so normal. Not knowing how to express our feelings and needs is typical of the average American. I don’t think we’re ever really taught that anywhere. Even the vocabulary needed to describe our feelings is a little foreign to most people. How many of us really know the difference between blissful, ecstatic , elated, radiant, and thrilled? That’s where the Language of Peace is so helpful—the method includes lists of feelings when your needs are being met that include these. And there’s a list of feelings when your needs ARE NOT being met that includes such feelings as alienated, bored, distant, distracted, removed, and withdrawn. Looking at these lists when you’re in the middle of an upset helps you to clarify what you’re really feeling. Then it’s so much easier to talk about those feelings once you’ve got the appropriate word to express them.

The reader also says she doesn’t think that she and her boyfriend have a future together. She doesn’t say much else about this, but I’m guessing she might want to break up because her need for intimacy and connection with her beloved isn’t being met. Talking about our feelings and needs as human beings is the most fundamental way of building compassion between people. If we don’t have that we won’t feel close to the other person. However, we’re never taught how to do that, either. That’s where learning our four step method of communication can really help.

Click on this link to see a list of feelings when your needs ARE being met: http://www.harmonicinteractions.com/goodfeelingsrosenberg.htm . Here’s a list of needs when your feelings aren’t being met: http://www.harmonicinteractions.com/feelingsbadrosenberg.htm . And here’s an article on how to put them all together! http://www.harmonicinteractions.com/FourSteps.htm .

The Language of Peace can help anybody in their relationship. In the case above, the girlfriend will be the one studying our method so she will be asking her boyfriend questions, like, “Are you feeling frustrated because you’re needing cooperation around the house?” That gives him a chance to say yes or no and then to expand on how he’s feeling. He doesn’t really have to study the Language of Peace, unless he wants to, of course.

Remember, once you have twenty or thirty years of not asking people questions like the ones you’ll learn in this method, it’s going to take a bit of reading, listening to audio recordings, and participating in teleseminars to really make a new way of communicating part of who you are. But, boy, will you love who you are when you create a compassionate, loving and understanding relationship!