Speed is important in many sports such as track, football, basketball and car racing. It is important in a variety of work situations, such as a doctor doing emergency surgery when time is of the essence.    However, when it comes to relationships, speed is often a hindrance.

Effective communication requires partners to slow down their pace.  Most of us have not learned how to communicate effectively, which basically means to express oneself to make it easier for the other to listen and to listen so the other person feels significant and accepted.  What usually happens instead is that one person starts to speak and the other internally reacts to what the other is saying and thinks about what he wants to say.

I see couples speaking to each other back and forth at the speed of light, without anyone being receptive to the other.  The goal of each partner is to be heard, but the problem is no one is listening; so the back and forth tennis game continues with neither partner experiencing the satisfaction of being heard.  There is a cost to listening to the other person during conflict.  The cost is that you have to (for the moment) give up trying to be right or understood perfectly correctly or change the other person’s opinion.  Our ego does not want to pay this cost.  However, the benefits far outweigh the costs.

In one of my past articles, titled “The Amazing Benefits of Feeling Your Feelings,”  I talk about an experience I had that as soon as I felt my feelings, I had instant bio-feedback that my pulse slowed down along with feeling calmer.  Similarly, when partners of an intimate relationship slow down enough to feel their feelings, they are less likely to react and more likely to “endure” their experience long enough to be better listeners.

Slowing down means letting go of the resistance to what you are experiencing

It means experiencing your tension long enough to make sure the other person “finishes his turn.”   Instead, what is far more common are people resisting their internal tension of hearing the other person’s opinions, feelings or negative feedback and the response is some immediate action to reduce the inner tension.  These responses include but are not limited to interrupting, yelling, withdrawing and reverse blaming.

Slowing down allows for the person expressing to be vulnerable while the other can listen and even look for agreement

For example, if a wife says, “You haven’t been paying attention to me at all,” the husband can say, “That must be frustrating.  I know there are times when I have not been paying attention.”  It could be that when she says her complaint, he is thinking of times that he has paid attention.  He could have quickly gotten defensive and said, “Not true, just yesterday I paid attention to you when…”

The problem there is you have two people being vulnerable at the same time.  One is emoting and speaking about herself and then the other emotes and defends himself.  This can become a very quick point/counterpoint kind of exchange that can literally go on for weeks, months, years and even decades with nobody winning.  However, the slowed down response where the husband feels his discomfort about her negatively skewed expression and still listens as well as finds a way to agree- leads to listening and a deepening exchange.  Enough of those constructive exchanges often leads to major improvements in relationships.

Slowing down allows room for the other person to feel heard

As the listener slows down long enough to feel his feelings and make an empathic, understanding response, the expresser feels that caring and attentiveness and becomes calmer.  This can lead to more effective expressing because as the partners slow down and calm down, the right words come out that make it easier to listen effectively.

So, slow it down. Let the facts not be totally correct, hang in there while you are being misperceived and let it be the “expresser’s ” turn.  Your turn is coming and it will come quicker if you listen so that the other person can experience the calmer feelings of being understood.