Vanessa Marin rediscovered a communication rule from her book Sex Talks: don't ask questions that aren't questions. Instead of asking vague questions, state what you actually want. She uses an example of telling her husband 'I want to spend time with you' rather than asking if he's going to work late again.
Chapters
I just rediscovered one of the best communication hacks. We gotta talk about it. It's actually from my own book, Sex Talks, but I had kind of forgotten about it. It's a book about sex, so you don't necessarily think communication habits, but because sex is such a tricky topic to talk about, there's actually a whole chapter at the beginning of the book that sets these golden rules for communication that are very helpful in talking about sex, but also really helpful in talking about anything in your life. So I was recording the audiobook. I was reminded of how great this tip is. So let's dive in and take a look.
Okay, here's that chapter I was talking about. Building the foundation for your sex talks, the golden rules. And this tip is actually in one of my husband's sections. He has a whole little thing on communication hacks. Here's the tip. Don't ask questions that aren't questions. So he gives the example of back in the day when he was working a consulting job. If he was working late, I would ask him, hey, are you almost done with that? Or are you going to be home soon? And he would think that I was asking this simple question. So he would respond something straightforward like, no, I have to spend a couple more hours finishing this project. But I would be hurt because what I was really wondering about was that I was missing him and I wanted him to spend more time with me. So I didn't really set him up for success there. I'm asking this question, but it's not actually the question that I want to answer. So we learned through this example to. To stop asking each other questions that aren't questions. If there's a specific ask that we have of each other to just make that ask, like, hey, I want to spend some time with you.
Did this make you realize that you are asking questions that aren't really questions? Let me know in the comments and make sure to pick up a copy of Sex Talks, because there are a ton of other great communication hacks in it.
