Communicate Your Feelings (without starting a fight): What to Say and What Not to Say to Your Partner (Mental & Emotional Wellness Book 1)

by Nic Saluppo

It’s okay to feel frustrated. It’s not okay to be mean, rude, or disrespectful when you feel frustrated.

Therefore, begin thinking in terms of what’s best for your relationship as opposed to how you can get the upper hand on your partner.

Your partner needs their perspective acknowledged and validated, not obliterated.

To make things easy on yourself, tell your partner, “I want to say something, but this is challenging for me.” Now, you’ve opened the door to a discussion. This is a huge step, and infinitely better than avoiding the subject completely.

“I’m going to share my perspective and experience. I’m not saying you have to agree with my reasons for it—I’ll be open to discussing those. However, I do firmly ask that you respect my feelings—don’t tell me how I should or shouldn’t feel.”

“When you leave without hugging me, I get the sense you don’t care about me and I feel sad about that.”

When your partner is upset with you, avoid trying to convince them not to be upset. They are allowed to feel how they feel. The sooner you stop telling them to not feel the way they do, the sooner your partner will begin working through the problem. An immediate shift from upset emotions regarding something hurtful you’ve said or done to being over it does neither you nor the relationship any favors. Those emotions will come back later, so it’s better to process them now.

Truth: Every relationship has weaknesses and areas of growth. It’s false to believe that people have healthy relationships without any effort.

Listen—it’s a good thing your partner wants to talk about how to improve your relationship. It means they want to be with you, grow with you, and have a happy life with you. It means they love you. “But,” you respond, “they should just love me for who I am.” Sure, if real life

was a Hallmark movie, your dysfunctional, toxic traits wouldn’t be an issue. But your relationship is taking place in reality, not in a movie. Every relationship has growth areas, and every, yes, every, individual in a relationship has growth areas. There’s no such thing as a relationship that doesn’t require growth.

Rather than seeing themselves as consisting of multiple parts coming together to create an entire person, they view themselves as all or nothing. Either I’m a great husband or a terrible one. Instead, view it like this: I’m great in some areas and need to grow in other areas.

all relationships evolve. Either you flow with the evolution and work through the transformational growth process,

or you fight the evolution and grow apart.

Relationship progress takes place when there’s a mutual willingness to be accountable.

Communicating is more like sailing a boat and less like a machine-cut edge. With a machine-cut edge, the machine cuts the edge once, and your product has a perfectly straight edge for life. When sailing a boat, you’re headed in a generally correct direction, but you have to continuously adjust the course. The wind and water will constantly take the boat slightly off course, and the sailor makes adjustments again and again throughout the voyage.