Explain and listen, don’t make excuses.

By Dr. Keith Witt
 / 
March 12, 2018
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Explanations can work, excuses just piss people off.

Who is your closest relationship right now?

Do you get along well all the time? Do you fight occasionally?

To those who can't think of a conflict, come on! You must have fought or been irritated at least once!
Remember your last fight or disagreement. As you and he or she struggled, were you listening, explaining, making excuses, or attacking? Probably you were doing several of these.

How about your partner? How much was listening, explaining, making excuses, or attacking?

I guarantee that the more you both listened and explained, and the less you made excuses or attacked, the quicker you made it back to love!

Life is not fair

We are all different people with different strengths and weaknesses.

Listening and explaining might be the easiest thing in the world for you.

Listening and explaining might be literally impossible for you when you cross arousal thresholds (get upset or shut down past a certain point) and enter absorbing defensive states.

In this sense, life is not fair! People have more or less opportunities or natural skills in one area or another, but that doesn't matter! We are here to be true to our deepest selves and to love each other. This means we do the work that is given to us.

We are responsible for everything we experience and do, so we need to take what we've got and do the best we can.

Luckily, humans are so powerful that focused effort in most directions yields growth and eventual success and transformation, including getting better at resolving problems with people we love.

So, in conflict, learn to focus on listening and explaining, and resist impulses to make excuses and attack.

If you practice this consistently, it will change your life!
 

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Get my FREE Art and Science of Relationships Series

I’m a licensed clinical psychologist, lecturer and author dedicated to studying, teaching, and creating transformative healing systems. I’ve been practicing psychotherapy for 40 years.
I want to give you access to the really GOOD stuff. And I want to give it to you free of charge.
Name(Required)

Program Includes:


1 eBook; "The Attuned Family"

1 School of Love Lecture Series Video

Monthly program emails containing insights and prompts, all designed to help you love better.