5 Rules of Feedback Everyone Should Master in Relationships
Lessons learned from our 15-year relationship journey.
Have you ever found yourself stuck in a hamster wheel of being judgmental and receiving negative responses from your relationships?
The way we give and receive feedback can either make or ruin our interactions, be it with our spouse, friends or colleagues.
How to properly establish this communication channel?
If positive feedback is very simple.
With negative feedback, things become much more interesting.
It’s about inevitable criticism.
Typical phrases that feedback in most couples starts with:
- “This is a bit off, let’s try it a bit differently” — “Then do everything yourself!”
- “Leave! Let me do it all by myself!”
- “Oh, that’s it, I can’t do anything, can’t you do it?”
- “Here you go again, doing everything wrong”
- “When will you finally do it?”
Feeling the negativity already?
In this lies a big part of the answer to the question — “how to fix this?”
We often focus only on what we DON’T like.
Negative emotions are always stronger. They’re more persistent, remembered longer.
We forget the good. Forget to praise each other.
Even for the tiniest things.
What are the main components of good feedback?
They’re here and applicable not only to marital relationships but to any relationships, including work.
1) The most fundamental — have a conversation only when calm and sober.
If you see that one of the conditions is violated — postpone the conversation.
“Postpone” — an important keyword. Not “forget”, but “postpone” — talk tomorrow, the day after.
The sooner, the better.
2) The simplest way to start — if you’ve heard some information from your spouse — always let them know!
A simple “uh-huh”, “okay”, “I heard you” etc.
The main thing — do not ignore.
3) It’s normal to not hear something sometimes.
Don’t be shy to repeat your words.
Even two, three, four times in a row!
IT’S NORMAL!
There are a million reasons for this — water noise, kitchen hood, being in a different room, sometimes work can distract.
4) Focus on the positive. Perhaps, the hardest part.
LOOK FOR IT! Even if it seems it’s not there. The truth is, it always exists.
It’s just a matter of our perspective.
Your spouse constantly doesn’t do what you ask?
Is it really so?
In practice, we don’t notice progress, efforts. We only value the final result.
If a person tries to do something, they succeed at the beginning 1 time out of 5.
Imagine such a sequence of events: didn’t do → didn’t do → didn’t do → DID → didn’t do.
Yes, a person can receive positive feedback when they did what was asked.
But on the NEXT TIME, when they again for some reason couldn’t…
They are immediately accused with full force that they AGAIN didn’t do it. And NEVER did.
Completely devaluing all the partner’s previous efforts.
Then such a person may think: then why bother at all?
It’s thanks to such trifles that people can’t break the cycle of negativity in the family.
5*) Voice the positive components.
A point with an asterisk. Twice as hard.
Typically necessary if the partner hasn’t mastered “focus on the positive” on their own.
Yes, it may sound childish.
From the category — if you don’t praise yourself, no one will.
Collect data about the positive outcome, use them as arguments in a dispute.
For example:
“You say that I never do this, but this week I’ve told you about it at least twice. Remember?”
Speaking from our personal experience,
We’re a non-drinking family, so we skipped the first point.
With non-intentional ignoring, and loss of control at multiple repetitions — we lived with it for almost 10 years, with periodic scandals.
Only after relatively recent events, when we finally started to FOCUS on the positive — serious shifts began to happen.
First personally for me, then I helped my spouse to master the same path.
She didn’t manage as quickly, but eventually, she was able to master it too.
Many called our relationship ideal before.
But now, it’s an absolutely new level.
Thank you for reading!
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