Better Ways to Respond Instead of React When Your Partner Says Something That's Hard to Hear: Episode 185
EmPowered Couples with The Freemans
Aaron & Jocelyn Freeman
5.0 • 589 Ratings
🗓️ 24 August 2021
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When your partner says something that's harder to hear, do you find yourself unconsciously reacting or consciously responding? You see, a solid partnership is where both people are safe to open up about things, even if it's hard to hear sometimes.
So if you're committed to being the best partner you can be, then you want to master the difference between reacting and responding.
In this episode, you'll hear:
- The exact difference between reacting and responding
- The deeper source of why you react to your partner when you don't love what they're saying
- 6 examples of better ways to respond to your partner, so the conversation stay constructive rather than destructive
Relationship Resources:
- Schedule a Couple's Session with us HERE. You will finally overcome that recurring challenge in your relationship, so you can experience more joy and less frustration.
- Read our newest book, The Argument Hangover
About Us:
We're The Freemans, your go-to couple for authentic and actionable relationship advice. Send us your relationship questions for the show with a DM on Instagram. As you listen to the episode, tag us on an IG story and let us know what you loved.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Empowered Couples podcast. We're here you get modern, non-boring relationship |
| 0:05.4 | advice for you and your partner to communicate like pros, fight smarter, and stay on the same team |
| 0:11.3 | no matter the challenge that you face. I am one of your host, Aaron Freeman. And I'm Jocelyn Freeman, |
| 0:15.6 | but you all just know us as the Freeman's. And this episode is about better ways to respond |
| 0:20.7 | instead of react when your partner says |
| 0:23.6 | something that's hard to hear. |
| 0:25.4 | Yeah. |
| 0:25.7 | And I'm sure you, when reading that, go, yes, my partner sometimes says things that I don't |
| 0:30.9 | like hearing and I could get better at responding rather than reacting. |
| 0:40.4 | And this, you know, was really kind of one of the main themes from yesterday's couples workshop. We had our in-person couples workshop in Arizona. |
| 0:45.5 | It was amazing. Couples were so willing. And yes, there were real challenges. You know, for many |
| 0:52.8 | couples, I mean, the last year and a half has been especially hard on |
| 0:56.1 | relationships. |
| 0:58.1 | When you said willing, I think you meant willing to have the conversations that were the most |
| 1:05.1 | important as a part of the exercises, specifically around communication. |
| 1:08.9 | And willing to go beyond where they were normally challenged. |
| 1:11.8 | Like the takeaways of like, I realize I normally would have done this, but then this |
| 1:17.0 | exercise helped me do this. |
| 1:18.4 | And this is one of them, right? |
| 1:19.9 | So many people kind of said in their shares, you know, it's hard to not react when my partner |
| 1:26.3 | says something that's hard to hear or it's also |
| 1:30.2 | hard to acknowledge their emotions when it's related to something i did yeah and i think what we found |
... |
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