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Most people don't try to understand their partner, they try to analyze
their faults, according to the author of Women Can't Hear What Men Don't
Say. On a cross-Canada tour recently, California relationship counsellor
and best-selling author Warren Farrell told audiences that in 30 years of
conducting workshops, he has never heard anyone say, "Warren, I want to
remain married-my partner has such an accurate analysis of my faults." But
while both sexes desire to be understood, which he equates with feeling
loved, they also share an Achilles' heel: vulnerability to personal
criticism. "Unfortunately criticism feels like being killed," Mr. Farrell
says, "and our genetic heritage made it functional to kill the criticizer
before the criticizer killed us." The solution, he says, is "relationship
language."
One of the few arguments that Mr. Farrell ever had with his wife concerned
the bathmat. When they were first married, he kept finding it on the
bathroom floor-upside down. After turning it over for the third time, it
dawned on him that this was "purposeful activity" on his wife's part. She
informed him that the reason was "in case company comes, the bathmat will
be clean." Mr. Farrell offered to vacuum it in that eventuality, but she
explained there would be no time if company came unexpectedly. Today, after
years of researching gender-based conflict in the sexually-divided North
American culture, he would handle the situation a little differently, using
the five steps of relationship language:
1. People need to feel heard themselves before they can hear others. So
indicate you understood their best intent: "I understand you want to keep
the...