How to Give Better Communication in 3 Steps

How do you change your relationship communication simply by changing the way you make requests of your partner?

I wrote a book: 6 Steps to Better Marriage Communication. In this book I talk about the 2 parts of communication: Giving (or speaking) and receiving (or listening).

The first 3 steps make up the heart of giving healthy, clean communication:

1. Overcome fear
2. Get clear
3. Ask cleanly

When you GIVE healthy communication, not only are you more clear and more clean in your communication, but that clarity also invites your partner to respond in kind.

The first step in healthy communication is to overcome fear

Why is that the first step? Because fear pollutes your communication.

You want to say, “I wanna to kiss you right now.” But then this voice of fear races in and whispers in your ear, Eek! You can’t say that! What if he doesn’t want to kiss you?! You’ll get hurt!

This fear confuses you. You want the kiss, but you don’t want to get hurt. Yikes!

So, instead you say, “You never kiss me anymore.” That feels safer. You’re not so vulnerable, right?

 

Your fear tries to keep you safe

If I could tell you how often I hear this conundrum in my office. All my new clients tell me they ask ALL THE TIME for what they want. And they never get it.

Then I ask them to tell me the scene word-for-word…and…what we find, instead of a clean ask for what they want, is this type of accusatory blame for what they aren’t getting.

Laughter is one of the best tools I know for a moment like this and so I will say something like, “If your partner said to you, ‘You never kiss me anymore’ I bet the very first thing you’d do is run over and plant the sexiest smooch on their lips ever.”

We both laugh.

Because, when I hold their fear with compassion—because we’re all human, and we’ve all done this—they see themselves from the outside for the first time. They see the ridiculousness of their hope that “You never kiss me” will inspire a kiss.

 

Love is the quickest way to overcome fear

Notice the love—I really, really want to be kissed. And I want to do the kissing. I want to get all tangled up in a wave of kisses with you—and then notice how vulnerable that love makes you.

Eek! Says that inner lizard you have that wants to protect you. That inner lizard wants to keep you safe. When your inner lizard hears you talk like this it immediately lists all the ways you could get hurt chasing this want:

• You could get rejected!
• Your partner could say, “I’m not in the mood to kiss you.”
• Or your partner could kiss you wildly, and then you could discover you don’t particularly like your partner’s kisses, and … well… what does that mean for the future of your relationship?

Your inner lizard thinks it better to keep you safe from all of these sorts of dangers.

So, it takes hold of your tongue and sends out the words, “You never kiss me anymore.” Because your lizard is unenlightened. But well-intentioned.

We want to make friends with that inner lizard and help that sweet, well-intentioned beast into the backseat where it has no opportunity to grab hold of the steering wheel…or your mouth.

Some people think that overcoming fear is getting rid of the lizard.

 

You can’t escape your “inner lizard”

My friends, that’s not possible. Fear is what kept your ancestors safe from the saber-toothed tigers and fear is with us today. No escape. Consequently, we might as well make friends with that scared little lizard.

Your lizard will always be in the car as you travel the road that is your life. To *overcome fear* is simply to SEE your fear clearly, and to ask your fear—politely, and with lots of courage—to sit in the backseat.

Overcoming fear is really about feeling the fear and going after what you want anyway. Ask for the kiss.

Step two is to get clear about what you want

What kind of kiss do you want? Do you want the kiss that welcomes you home and assures you that you’re safe? Or do you want the kiss that drags you down the hall, peeling off clothes as you make your way to the bedroom.

This is where you might get lost in the black hole of confusion. Confusion and fear are twins. They both make it hard to know what you really, truly want.

 

The black hole of confusion is filled with messages about what you SHOULD want

You’ve seen the movies. You got the message that if you’re not locked in a passionate kiss and if you don’t want to tear your lover’s clothes off…well, then you must not really be in love.

This image, of movie-love, keeps trying to tell you that you want something sexier than a safe, welcome home kiss. You get confused. “Am I really in love if all I want is a welcome home kiss and then dinner in front of the television?”

You tell yourself a welcome home kiss is boring. You begin to find fault with your partner. They’re lazy. They’re never interested in anything.

Guess what happens next? Out pops another communication gem, aimed right at your partner: “We used to be interesting people until you got boring.”

Ouch.

But we’ve all done it, right? We’ve all fallen for the confusion of the black hole that sucks us into an alternate universe rather than noticing the simple life we want.

 

Look at the big picture to get clear

You drove into your driveway tired. It was a big day. Your boss was hard on you, and there was a split second when you felt that wash of relief knowing your partner is right on the other side of that door and all you want is to be kissed and welcomed home by the person with whom you feel safe.

You want that glorious feeling of rest. Of belonging. Of safety and security.

And then a voice whispered, “That’s not enough.” You should want more.

But is the dance down the hallway of peeling clothes more?

It might be more exciting. It might be more sexy. But is it safer? Does it assure you where you belong? Is it restful?

You can be a perfectly fabulous lover and choose safe rest over excitement sometimes. Especially when you feel tired and defeated.

 

Clarity can be a challenge

Because there are other voices in your head pulling you into a black hole of confusion. Voices from your family of origin trying to keep you the same as you always were. Voices from social media telling you what you should want. Voices from your fantasy-self wishing life were…different.

Then these fears get mixed up with all the confusing voices and it’s really challenging to know precisely, exactly, specifically what you want.

And, even when you do know what you want, you realize asking for that wonderful thing makes you entirely TOO vulnerable…so completely different words pop out of your mouth.

 

Fear and confusion lead to a dirty ask

“You never kiss me anymore.” Can you hear how that accusation is the gumbo of:

• We should be sexier, mixed with,
• I’m not enough if I only want a sweet kiss then dinner in front of the TV, and then flavored with
• I’m afraid my partner won’t be attracted to me if I’m boring and all I want is to cuddle and watch TV

I don’t want your relationship communication to be flavored with the black cloud of confusion, and I don’t want it flavored with fears that you’re not enough.

I want you to taste healthy, clean communication that fosters true intimacy with your partner.

Ask cleanly is third step to better marriage communication

A clean ask is made up of the first two steps—overcoming fear, and getting clear—and then it’s framed up respectfully so that your partner can say yes or no.

Why is it important that you frame your ask such that your partner can answer yes or no? for several reasons:

1. This framework helps you to stay aware. When you frame your desire as a request that can be accepted or refused, you stay away from blame, shame, and confusion.
2. Secondly, when you give your partner a choice in what you want, you validate the individuality inside your togetherness.
3. Reason number three is that when you frame your request such that your partner can say yes or no, you invite your partner into this lovely dance of agency in your relationship. You invite your partner to choose you.

It’s reason three that scares your inner lizard. But if my partner has agency…they could choose to leave me! This is the perpetual fear of your inner lizard, so your inner lizard is constantly trying to sidestep this vulnerability.

 

Your inner lizard is afraid of rejection

You can see that your inner lizard is trying to protect you, right? It’s just uniformed. Because when you lead with fear, you push your partner away.

Every. Single. Time.

However, a request that INVITES your partner to engage with you, opens the door to deeper intimacy.

Even when you don’t get exactly, precisely, specifically what you want.

 

The clean ask that invites your partner to say yes or no has 3 parts:

1. You state your feeling
2. Next, you state your desire
3. Finally, you ask for what you want with a yes or no implied answer

Why do we need all three steps? Lets take go through them one at a time:

1. First you state your feeling

Your inner lizard desperately wants to keep vulnerable feelings hidden. Your partner can’t hurt you if they can’t see your vulnerable feelings. This is the philosophy of your inner lizard. But here’s the truth: Hiding feelings doesn’t work. You have an animal body and you communicate with your body not just your words. Your partner will *hear* your fear even if you don’t state it. You feelings slip out of every pore of your animal body. You overcome fear by naming it. Once fear is out in the open, it’s no longer polluting your language. When you make your feelings transparent, your inner lizard doesn’t have a chance to sabotage you.

2. Next, you state your desire

This step is important because it gives you an opportunity to cut through the dense confusion of that black hole. You get to notice what YOU desire. Not what your mom wants for you. Not what that fabulous person on social media tells you that you SHOULD want. Not what your fantasy-self thinks makes up a good life. This is the chance to notice what you really, truly want at this particular moment in the history of what is YOUR life. Can you see the value of noticing what YOU want? Can you see how easy it would be to ask for things you think you SHOULD want.

3. Finally, you ask with a yes or no implied answer

This INVITES your partner to choose you. We all want to be invited. We want to feel like we’re being invited not shoved. Not obligated. Not coerced. Invited. Intimacy—true intimacy—lives in the invitation.

Can you feel how vulnerable this is?!

That’s why our inner lizard wants to save us from this! That’s why there’s so much dirty asking in our lives, because we’re trying to avoid this very vulnerable way of being.

But I want to tell you a secret about this kind of vulnerability—particularly with your treasured partner—it’s magnetic. When you open your heart to your partner like this you employ the magic of these things called mirror neurons.

 

What are mirror neurons?

When you see someone yawn, you’re more likely to yawn. These are your mirror neurons at work. Mirror neurons are what they sound like: You become a mirror of the actions of the person with whom you’re in close proximity.

And this New York Times article reports that “mirror neurons respond not merely to another person’s action, but to the intention behind the action.” This means your biology is stacked in favor of giving to your partner what you hope to receive.

When you have an INTENTION to connect intimately, and to make fear transparent, you make it more likely your partner will mirror that intention. This is where intimacy grows.

Of course, mirror neurons work when you’re trying to hide something as well. Your partner will—because of those same mirror neurons—get nervous feeling and hide something from you as well. I think we can all agree that hiding feelings is not the key to true intimacy.

How to ask cleanly when you want your partner to make dinner

Here’s an example of a dirty ask in Josh and Julie’s marriage.

Julie says, “We’ve got a lot to get done. You go to the grocery store. I’ll get the kitchen cleaned. Then, when you get home with the groceries, we’ll get some meals prepped for the week.”

Josh, who likes making Julie happy, heads to the grocery store.

I think we can all see Julie isn’t asking. She’s telling. While it might be a good strategy for getting things done, it’s lousy for building intimacy and a true sense of team work.

What’s happening inside of Julie? Julie feels overwhelmed. She also feels scared that her partner won’t help her.

Josh, whose mirror neurons are titrated to pick up on Julie’s cues, feels her fear. He doesn’t want to cause a ruckus, so he keeps his head down and heads to the grocery store.

 

Let’s get clear about what Julie TRULY wants

What does Julie want? She wants help from her partner. All she can see right now is the help she wants and the look on Josh’s face which reads, “Tell me what to do so I don’t upset you.”

But if Julie really let herself think about what she wants for the biggest vision of her relationship, she would say she wants a partner. A true-partner.

Julie’s secret wish is that she could come home and smell dinner cooking when she walks into the house.

 

How is Julie’s strategy of telling working for her long term?

• Julie offers no agency to her partner.
• She is teaching her partner—long-term—that she is in charge of planning. How will this go for reducing her overwhelm long-term?
• She will just get more and more that she is in charge of, right? Because she’s clearly good at the leadership and vision of what needs to get done. And she’s not afraid to call the shots.

What happens when she employs the strategy of the clean ask?

First, she needs to tell Josh how she feels. “I feel overwhelmed.” And “I feel lonely when it comes to meal-planning.”

Secondly, she needs to talk about what she really, truly desires. “I want to come home some nights and smell dinner cooking.”

Finally, she needs to serve agency to Josh by asking for what she wants in a way that implies a yes or no from Josh. “Would you be willing to share the cooking duties with me?”

 

Let’s put it all together into a clean ask:

Julie says to Josh, “I feel overwhelmed, and I feel lonely when it comes to meal-planning. I want to come home some nights and smell dinner cooking. Would you be willing to share the cooking duties with me?”

Can you feel how clean that is?

Let’s compare this clean ask to Julie’s dirty ask from before: “We’ve got a lot to get done. You go to the grocery store. I’ll get the kitchen cleaned. Then, when you get home with the groceries, we’ll get some meals prepped for the week.”

 

How the clean ask changes your marriage communication

Imagine life in Julie and Josh’s home 3 years from now if Julie continues to make this kind of dirty ask. She’s gonna be resentful, right because all the workload is on her? And Josh is either gonna be more scared and accommodating to Julie or he’s gonna begin to casually resist her demands because he wants to do things differently.

How would life change in their house if Julie says, “I feel overwhelmed, and I feel lonely when it comes to meal-planning. I want to come home some nights and smell dinner cooking. Would you be willing to share the cooking duties with me?”

Can you imagine a day when Josh has dinner cooking when Julie opens the door after work?

We tend to go for efficiency. Julie wants to get this week’s meals planned. She takes the shortcut: the dirty ask, and she and Josh do it her way.

And, while it might be more EFFICIENT in the short term, this strategy is crippling their long-term relationship, not to mention, Julie will never open the door to smell dinner if she does it this way.

If what Julie truly wants is to have Josh choose to make her dinner, then Josh needs agency in their relationship.

 

How the clean ask can make your date nights more exciting

Jayden and Amber have been feeling rather blah about their date nights. They want to spice things up.

They’re having coffee together on Saturday morning and Jayden says, “Whatcha wanna do tonight?”

Amber puts her hands on her mug to warm them, “I don’t care. Whada you wanna do?”

“I don’t care either,” says Jayden. “I just wanna be with you.”

They get lost in the cycle of “I dunno, whatcha wanna do?” Round and round they go, with no one voicing a preference.

 

A different kind of dirty ask

This is a less dangerous, but still a frustrating dirty ask strategy. The Total Abdication. Can you feel how—contrary to Julie who sees every detail and wants to control every detail—that Jayden and Amber have the opposite struggle to contend with: no one has a strong preference.

The “I dunno’s” stunt your intimacy because your relationship gets boring. For your relationship to stay vital, you need to feed it. Think of a fire. A fire dies if you don’t feed it. But, if you keep it fed, you create this fabulous bed of coals that really put off heat.

If you or your partner suffers from the “I dunno’s,” your challenge is to clue-in to what you actually want. Yes, you want your partner to be happy and you can go with the flow, but wouldn’t it be nice if you also took a turn leading your relationship by stating a clear desire?

What will happen to Jayden and Amber 3 years from now? They won’t have any exciting memories to flavor their relationship. Their relationship won’t have conflict, but it will lack vitality and simply fade on the vine.

 

Agency is a powerful tool to create intimacy in your relationship

To fix this, both Jayden and Amber need to feed their imaginations. What do they enjoy? Do they want to start watching caper films? And take a deep dive into that genre? Or do they want to explore their artistic selves? Maybe they want to try taking a drawing class together?

If you’re suffering from “I dunno,” do something. Anything. You will either enjoy it or not enjoy it. Either way, you’re waking up your desire so that you can communicate more clearly next time.

At least this will inform the future “Whatcha wanna do?” and Jayden can answer with, “I dunno, but I’m sure I don’t wanna watch a caper film.” Now they have something to draw them together.

Agency is a powerful tool to create intimacy in your relationship. Are you offering your partner agency in your relationship? Are you owning your own agency so that you show up as a fully fleshed out human in your relationship?

I’d love to invite you to buy my book: 6 Steps to Better Marriage Communication so you can explore how your communication is helping or harming the intimacy in your relationship.

Here’s how to pick which dirty ask to work on:

Identify a dirty ask that might be a pattern for you.

• Do you like to control the details, like Julie, so your strategy is to TELL what needs to be done, rather than ASK for help?
• Or are you more a person who might be uncomfortable with conflict, so your dirty ask strategy is to hint at things rather than state your desire boldly.
• Maybe you realize you have a completely different dirty ask strategy. What do you notice about the way you keep feelings and or desires hidden so that you don’t risk getting hurt?

Gently notice where you’re dirty ask strategy follows the formula: You MUST love me the way I TELL you to love me. Notice how this isn’t intimacy. This is control. Offer yourself compassion: We all want to maintain control when we’re scared. And intimacy can feel scary. Compassion for yourself and your partner is a great way to heal this tendency.

I also invite you to investigate where your dirty ask strategy is more about abdicating control. “I dunno. Whatcha wanna do?” It understandable to fear conflict, but when you avoid conflict so much that you disappear as a person…that isn’t intimacy. Then you become more and more a shell of a person. You don’t show up. So there’s no person there to be intimate with.