Glossary Term: active listening

Definition: A communication technique, often used in relationships, where an individual fully engages, understands, and responds to their partner's conversation, demonstrating empathy and respect, to foster a deeper emotional connection and intimacy.

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The Mirror Game – A Simple 4-Step Communication Skill That Can Transform Your Marriage

You know the cycle. Something happens, a tone of voice, a forgotten commitment, a moment that stings, and suddenly you’re both defending your corners instead of actually connecting. You talk at each other. You wait for your turn to explain yourself – maybe you don’t do very well at waiting.  Maybe you interrupt and talk over each other a lot. As a result, after the “conversation” ends, you both feel more alone than before.

What if there was a simple framework that could break that cycle? Not a magic fix, but a real, learnable skill that draws you toward each other instead of apart?

It’s called the Mirror Game.  It’s easy to explain and simple to implement – the hard part is remembering to do it.

SWM 131 – Tips to fight more effectively

Last week, I shared a list of ideas our Couple’s Night group had that helped build a resilient marriage. At the end of the call, we still had some time and started discussing fighting more effectively. Again, the group came up with some excellent ideas I want to share today.

Because fights will happen, I might even say they should happen.  When I come across a couple that doesn’t fight in any way – that’s a red flag.  It means one or both don’t feel safe in the marriage.  They aren’t able to express their views and opinions. 

Because if you put two people together for long enough, they will eventually find something to disagree about.

Ideally, a fight won’t involve yelling, screaming, hitting, throwing, or anything else like that, but it’s okay to quarrel.

So, today, we will discuss how to fight more effectively in your marriage so that your arguments can be a source of growth instead of damage.

Is make-up sex a myth?

I received a question recently about the topic of make-up sex.  It’s something I’ve been thinking about as well for the last year or so, so I’m glad they brought it up. Here’s the question (used with permission): Today at church, I was in the

Is it all just about sex?

I received this question a couple of weeks ago through our anonymous Have A Question page: I understand that this page is about sex in marriage and making it good. However, I have a question. Why does it seem that men see good sex as

What do you need from me

I’m a solution provider.  It’s just how I’m built.  The majority of my job is finding solutions to business problems.  Usually it’s a technological solution, but not always.  Some days I do more management consulting than IT consulting.  But, it’s not just my job.  I’m like that

Active Listening

In this week’s challenge, I mentioned active listening as a skill that people should be using, but hadn’t had a post up yet about it.  So, today I’m going to rectify that. Active listening, which I’ve also heard called Listening 2.0 or Level 2 Listening,

Learning to Talk R.I.T.E.

Last night I was at a church leadership meeting, and we were given an except from a book called Becoming a Mission-Driven Church, and it had an acronym it in: R.I.T.E. that nicely encapsulated a lot of the communication ideas I’ve written about on this