One of the biggest problems that couples face in a relationship is the ability to communicate effectively, honestly, and empathetically. Problems that arise have many different ways of being handled and your solution might not be your partners solution. Being emotionally intelligent in a relationship means that you are able to dial yourself into the emotional status of your partner. This requires you to use one of the four pillars of neurolinguistic programmingsensory awareness, or simply making full use of your senses to collect information and make an informed decision on how to act.

Observe Without Evaluating

When using sensory awareness when communicating to your loved one, its important to observe and collect information using all your senses, but without evaluating the information being collected. Your fears, your assumptions, your beliefs, your wantsall of these can taint the information being collected. Just as a scientist makes sure that his experiments are objective and repeatable by other scientists, so should you remain objective when using sensory awareness to observe the situation. What you are doing when you are observing is carefully noticing things that are different with your partner. What they say, what they do, what they look likeall of these things you are observing, without making any conclusions as to why these changes are taking place.

Evaluating the information being collected is particularly bad because of the way we make assumptions. We have an egocentric thought process and we tend to think of ourselves first before others. Therefore when we make assumptions, we tend to base those assumptions off our worst fears or we inject ourselves into that assumption, when in reality, it has nothing to do with us at all. By keeping evaluation separate from observation, we can weigh the information objectively.

Communicate Your Findings

Because we never really know what our partner is thinking, the only way to understand them is by connecting to them with the power of communication. Let them know the changes you observed and express your genuine concern. Have them explain themselves and focus on listening and asking questions. You will find that your level of connectedness with your partner will increase by using this method.