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Create trust, honesty and
open communication in your relationship...
"The 4-Step Formula for
Instant Intimacy and Understanding...
And a Brief Example of Its Use."
If you practice the 4 Step Formula until you can apply it even
during an upset, you will create a magic in your relationships that
others only dream about.
Kristin
Denton
MagicRelationship.com
Copyright 2007
The four steps are:
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State whatever event
happened in the form of an OBSERVATION
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followed by how you are
FEELING
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next your NEEDS which were
either met or not met by the event
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and lastly end on a REQUEST
Step one is to clearly state an
observation about the situation
(What happened) that stimulated the upset without any evaluation
(our judgments about what happened).
Our example begins with an excited husband who came home early on
his anniversary to cook a special surprise meal for his wife.
With the food prepared, candles lit, table set, wine poured… he
waits and waits and waits. His wife arrives home two hours later
than normal.
By this time the food is cold, the candles have burnt out, most of
the wine is gone.
The once happy husband is now rather disappointed, hurt and upset .
He meets her arrival like this: “I can't believe you are late on our
anniversary! Why didn't you call? All you care about is work. You
don't care about our relationship any more…”
This is an evaluation (case building) not an observation and most
likely will be heard as an attack, requiring either defensiveness or
a counter attack.
An observation may have sounded like this: “When I came home early
and prepared a romantic dinner for us and you didn't get home until
two hours after I was expecting you, I felt….”
Notice there is no judgment of
her behavior here (and yes, this does take practice).
On step two, state how you are feeling about what happened...rather
than saying what you are thinking about what they did. If you say
what you're thinking, instead of feeling, you'll only bring up
defensiveness and create arguments.
From the way the husband communicated to his wife you can guess what
his choice was: building a case.
He spent two hours gathering evidence, evaluating and judging her
behavior, thinking she had betrayed him, preparing his attack…
“You are always doing stuff
like this, only thinking of yourself. You are so inconsiderate!”
These are thoughts and they are not improving the connection at all.
Let's look at how we would've done using the 4 Steps to Instant
Intimacy instead. “… I felt worried for your safety and once I knew
you were safe I felt hurt and disappointed because I …”
Think about these two scenarios
so far. If this was happening in your home, which approach would you
want your spouse to use? The first approach or the Magic
Relationship Method?
Step number three is connecting
your feelings to your needs. This is an important step where
we let someone know what needs of ours we're trying to meet and how
that would make us feel.
This ties into one of the basics of the 4 Steps to Instant Intimacy,
that what causes our feelings is not other people, but whether our
needs are being met or not being met.
What people normally do in this area rather than connect to their
needs, is get hung up on a specific strategy, hoping that it will
meet their needs.
They start using words and phrases like; you should do this, you
shouldn't have done that, you must, have to, this is right thing to
do and you are doing the wrong …
With a belligerent tone the
husband says, “You should apologize and you should quit that stupid
job of yours!!!”
These statements are almost guaranteed to create resistance and
resentment. Even if she did either one of them, which is doubtful,
she would end up doing it with an energy they both would regret
later.
So let's see what happens when he uses the 4 Steps to Instant
Intimacy. Following up on the last statement “I felt hurt and
disappointed because I was needing some acknowledgement for how much
I contribute to our relationship and celebration for how much we
love each other. ”
Now onward to the fourth and
final step of the 4 Steps to Instant Intimacy...
...making a clear, do-able request stated in the present tense .
This can be the hardest step of all for some people because they are
being vulnerable, asking for what they truly want and risking
hearing that scary, two letter word, “NO.”
So instead of risking the no, people are often tempted to make
demands.
Angry and hurt by her lack of
apologies and no admissions of wrong doing, he presses on, making a
demand he knows will break her heart. “Either you quit your job or
I'm filing for divorce!”
At this point she is backed into one corner and he has backed
himself into the other corner, guaranteeing no one is going to be a
winner and someone is going to sleep on the couch tonight.
How could he have approached this differently using what you're
about to learn at one of our workshops?
His request would be simple since he understands that “the message
sent” (what he said) is rarely “the message received” (what she
thinks she heard).
So to try and understand what she heard he would simply ask , “Can
you tell me what you heard me say?”
I have tried both ways of
communicating; I also have the divorce to prove the first one
doesn't work so well. I also now have the best relationship of my
life.
The tools are simple, and the choice is yours.
Don't ask yourself which way looks easier. Ask yourself which way
will create the connection, intimacy and understanding you desire.
Oh, yes--at any point in this dialogue, even if the husband chose to
build a case, the wife could have used these tools to turn it round,
to give him the empathy he needed.
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