Someone on our webinar recently asked this great question:
QUESTION: "I'm not very talkative by nature so I'm not a good with communicating with my partner. Any suggestions how I could do better?"
ANSWER: Good question! The couples in our therapy clinics have definitely proven that introverted relationships have the same long term potential as relationships between extroverted people. I say this to highlight that you don’t need to change, per se.
You do, though, want to develop a way to adapt to your partner when a more extroverted quality is needed. We know that couples who last long term turn toward each others’ bids for attention about 87% of the time. I explain this a bit on the Rekindle the Spark webinar. You want to keep the number of times you bid, and turn toward, high. You can accomplish this while still being yourself...
First, you might consider going to the Gottman app store on the iphone. Take a look at the Love Maps deck/app, and maybe the Expressing Needs app. There’s a bunch of other good ones. If I were in your shoes, I’d set a reminder on my phone to open the app daily, and read the question aloud to/with my partner. (That’s just my style, but there’s many reminder methods). This will get you in the small daily habit of bidding for his attention, and letting him turn toward. That’s really all that’s needed.
Glad you took the seminar! Let me know if you guys want more fun help. We have many tools/exercises.
- Salvatore