How to Communicate Better With Your Girlfriend

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Reka Morvay. I'm a psychologist. I'm going to talk to you today about how to communicate better with your girlfriend. Communication is often a problematic area in most relationships because there tend to be a lot of miscommunication and misunderstandings, standing from different assumptions make when they speak. So if you find that you have a lot of these in your relationship, and you find that you want to improve your relationship skills with your girlfriend, one of the first things that you can do is to just stop and listen, 'cause very often what women want is to be heard, and they don't want necessarily, their problems solved. They're not looking for a solution. They're not looking for you know, you to come as the knight in shining armor to come to their rescue. What they're looking for is a sympathetic ear. So the best thing you can do, you know the most basic thing you could do is to just listen. So when your girlfriend is trying to talk to you, listen to her, as means turn towards her, look at her and try to comprehend what it is that she's saying, and let her speak. Let her say her piece, and then give her some kind of feedback to you know, that shows that you heard and that you understood her. Now, this in psychology is called the technique of mirroring. So what you're trying to do is you're reflecting what she said back at her. So, basically, if she seems extremely upset about something that happened in school, or something her parents did, you know, she just spent the last half-hour, telling you in detail, exactly what happened, then you need to mirror back that "oh, I see that you're very upset about this, or I completely understand why it's so infuriating that your parent's did this thing that they did." So, do not try to offer her a solution or to give her any kind of advice, instead, first make sure that you understand what her problem was, and communicate it back to her that you understand what her problem was, because very often, and you'll be quite surprised, but very often, that's all she needs in terms of communication, is to be listened to and to be understood."