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Practice:  Create a safe space for each other.


(This approach isn't how you normally talk to each other.  That's kinda the point.)

  1. Set aside all agendas other than to create safety and feel comfortably connected.  (Your separate agendas may find an audience after you've established a sense of connection that feels safe for both of you.  But the agendas are not the focus of this practice.)

  2. Eliminate distractions.  Pick a private space, set time aside, turn off your devices, sit facing each other as close as feels comfortable, agree on a duration for the conversation (at least 20 minutes).

  3. Start by acknowledging the things you appreciate about your conversation partner and about the relationship.  To find common values, tell your conversation partner why the relationship is important to you.  Listen with appreciation as they do the same.

  4. Value judgments are very effective at ending dialogue and undermining curiosity.  Judgments demonstrate a closed mind.  To understand your conversation partner and set them at ease, please accept their experiences and needs without resistance, without trying to change them, to the extent of your current capability.

  5. Acknowledge to yourself your own vulnerable feelings.  Ask your conversation partner if it's OK to share them.

  6. Ask your conversation partner about their vulnerable feelings in the process of creating safety.  Listen for understanding and connection, and occasionally say back to them your felt-sense about their experience.

  7. Speak to each other about one topic at a time.  Listen for understanding and connection.  It's not a debate or a competition.  It's an opportunity to learn something about how your conversation partner experiences the situation and about how it feels for them.  This part is how you open the door to their willingness to understand you.

  8. Create agreements (boundaries) with your conversation partner about treating each other with patience, acceptance, kindness and compassion, especially when you feel angry, aggressive, pessimistic, or overwhelmed.  If you haven't yet gotten to kindness and compassion, please step away for a few moments until you regain your composure before seeking connection again.

  9. If you feel triggered or angry or overwhelmed, admit that by saying, "I'm feeling [ triggered | angry | overwhelmed ].  Let's take a break so I can compose my thoughts about my feelings."  Then, express how you feel and what you want from a place of self-responsibility and deeper understanding.

  10. Take a break anytime you need to step away until you compose yourself, breathe more easily, and feel ready to resume a collaborative conversation with the intent to connect rather than control.




Respecting the Other Person's Self-Sovereignty vs. Behaving as if You're Entitled


If you want your partner to change a behavior, your responsibility doesn't end by complaining or telling your partner what to do.  If you respect their self-sovereignty, you must offer them sufficient motivation to change their behavior.

What's sufficient motivation?  That's entirely up to them.  So ask them and listen.  Negotiation is appropriate.  Complaining about what's "fair" is ineffective.

(If any part of you is thinking, "If they loved me, they would ...", please consider a helpful practice for inquiring into the truth of your belief.  It will help you return to a peaceful state and find openness to your conversation partner's experience.  See The Work of Byron Katie:  Loving What Is.)



Guiding Principles in Respectful Communication


  1. Conflict usually happens at the level of strategies, not at the level of needs. 

    If I want my partner's needs to be met in this situation, they're more likely to want my needs to be met.  Then, the strategies we adopt together will be win-wins.


  2. Is my intent for this communication 1) to relate or 2) to control? 

    Unmasking the Intent to Control by Susan Campbell, PhD

    "Every communication has an intent behind it.  Most of us do not pay enough attention to this hidden intent — in ourselves and in others — especially if the intent has something to do with control — like trying to control an unknown outcome or trying to mask one's anxiety about feeling "not in control".  In my research, I discovered that almost 90% of human communication comes from the (usually unconscious) need to control." 
    —Susan Campbell, PhD


  3. I am 100% responsible for discovering my own needs and meeting them, in partnership. 

    My conversation partner has sovereignty over their own motivations.  If I want to know what it will take for them to make the change I want in their behavior, I will ask them and listen.

    "Entitlement" means believing my responsibility ends when I voice a complaint or give my partner instructions.  Entitlement is treating my partner as a prepaid resource, not as a self-sovereign person who is fully in charge of their own values and motivations.  (Parenting patterns may have set unfortunate, unconscious expectations that surface without warning until we befriend those patterns within us and retake conscious direction over our relationship dynamics.) 

    If I respect my partner's sovereignty over their own motivation and I don't pressure them with disapproval or threats, they will more likely feel respected as a separate person.  Someone I treat with respect will more likely trust me and want to help me get my needs met.  Acting entitled to their compliance just because I need it ... not so much.


  4. I'm here first to listen to and understand my conversation partner's desired experiences in this challenging situation. 

    The key that opens the door to me getting my needs met in this situation is for my conversation partner to feel safe from my value judgments and to be graciously heard or held or helped by me, as THEY choose.


  5. Kindness and respect open doors and hearts.


  6. Complaining or venting frustration at the other person closes their ears and their heart. 

    Behaviors motivated by fear and entitlement are ineffective ways to get my needs met.

    If my partner feels safe with me, they can more easily listen from the heart, with vulnerability. 

    To the extent I come to the conversation with armor on, expecting a conflict, so will they.


  7. I can't bully someone into cooperation. 

    I'm 100% responsible for discovering my own needs and meeting them, in partnership. 

    I can respectfully ask my conversation partner to 1) hear me or 2) hold me or 3) help me.