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COLLECTIVE
WIZDOM.COM
Real People (Sometimes Real
Names) Share Real Health
and Life Stories
WIZDOM.COM
Real People (Sometimes Real
Names) Share Real Health
and Life Stories
The Secret Equation Behind All Successful
Relationships.
By Sarah Ott and Robert Redman
After a break-up-- a bad one --I began to think about the "Why's".
Why did this relationship end? Why didn't it work?
It's a refrain I have heard countless times from countless friends, men
and women. One, a man, needed consoling about the imminent end of
his 20-year marriage. I had heard about his troubles with his wife for
almost the entire 20 years. I saw it coming-- why didn't he? And why
didn't I see it coming in my own relationship?
So, for the first time in my life, I stopped asking the same kinds of
people the same questions. This time, after about a year had gone by,
I asked the one person who knew why our relationship had ended. I
asked HIM. So, HE, and I have joined together to write this article.
Why do some relationships thrive and others die, despite both people
loving each other, both people wanting it to work. What's the secret?
When we peeled off the outer layers of the relationship we had and
the some 125 relationships we knew about personally between us, we
discovered a few astoundingly simple rules. Equations, really.
1. The Listening Equation. A friend once asked me "How long can I
expect my husband to listen to me while I am talking?". I was doing
the dishes at the time, and I remember stopping what I was doing, and
getting so rapt in the question that I accidentally dropped the plate.
You see, the friend who was asking this question is a major league
talker. I am the listener with her usually. She barely takes a breath.
When I finally get to talk, I can tell she is not listening. She's just
waiting for her next available opportunity to jump in. You know the
type.
Not that I don't adore her. It's just that she has never learned to
listen. So, when I heard her ask me the very question I had been long
wondering about her, I lost my composure and dropped a plate. Truth
does that sometimes.
Robert has had the same experience, only in reverse. He is also a
talker ( I guess I have a lot of those in my life). But his problem is that
he ends up frustrated with most people he meets. They are not
"involved" he finds himself saying a lot. They are not the kind of
people who take the initiative to start a topic, keep him entertained
with it. He often feels like he is obliged to be "on". Obliged, because
the other person is too passive.
You see where we're going with this. It's about a balance between the
giving and the receiving in communication. The talking and the active
listening. The starting of conversations and the receiving of
information. There is an equation going on.
We think this is the equation. If you are a talker, you should expect to
listen twice as long as you talk. Why twice as long? Because talkers
naturally underestimate how long they talk. They usually talk twice as
long as they think they do.
So, let's say you are a talker. You guess you've been talking about 5
minutes. You should then "yield the floor", so to speak, to your partner
for 10 minutes.
And while they are talking, you should look at them and pay attention.
Make mental notes of what they are saying, not what you are planning
to say. Why is all this important to relationship issues like
not-enough-sex, read on. Next Page
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Related Links
Ten Reasons You Should Be Glad He's Gone
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Liar, Liar-How to Tell When Someone Is Lying
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