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eMatrimony.org Supporting, Encouraging, and Challenging the WWME Community |
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| Dialogue - Guidelines Time for Dialogue Feedback Marge & Con Terr Evaluate Your Dialogue and Make it Work for You! Reprinted from the Spring, 1998 Matrimony Magazine We have found that giving each other feedback has helped us make our dialogue more useful. We encourage you to evaluate what is working in your dialogue and what could be improved. Con: Marge, I know that dialogue has made a difference in our relationship. It is that special time of day when I sit just to be with you. I focus on you and learn how you are feeling. Through years of practice, I've learned to trust you with my deepest, most sensitive feelings. Marge: Our dialogue is my time to rediscover how much you love me. It shows in the way you write to me and the things you write. It shows in the way you listen and try to understand me. It shows in the openness of your sharing. I see your concern and your warmth and I know you love me. Con: It has been a long journey to get to this place - and an exciting one. I wonder why we've been able to keep it up when so many others don't. It certainly hasn't always been easy. Even as recently as a few months ago we were struggling in our dialogue. Marge: We sure were! I felt so disillusioned for a while. It seemed like I would write about my feelings and it was almost like dropping them into a bottomless pit. Nothing came back. Con: It's true. I felt so threatened and upset about some of the things we were working through that it was hard to respond. But you told me how you felt about our dialogue. Hmmm. Maybe that's a part of what has made it work for us. We give each other" feedback on how our dialogue is working. Marge: I think that's been pretty important to us. When we dialogued about what we each hoped for from our dialogue, I was able to tell you that I needed more response from you about my feelings. It is important for me to know that you have read what I wrote and that you have some understanding of the intensity and the flavor of my feelings. Con: It wasn't easy reading that letter. I knew I was letting you down because of my own fears. I was challenged to work harder at telling you my understanding of what you had written. It made me want to try harder to ask you more about your feelings. Marge: It has made a difference to me. It brought our dialogues out of Death Valley back into the Promised Land. You told me that you needed me to talk more about my feelings when you respond to my letter. You called it "painting in the details" Con: That's what it is for me. I often get the general idea from what you write, but there are still questions in my mind. Is your disappointment like getting to the store and finding out all the good bananas are gone or is it like finding out we won't be able to spend Christmas with our family? Your words do a lot to make it clearer to me. Marge: We have used our dialogue to give each other feed back about dialogue many times over the years. We had been dialoging for just a few months when one of our friends gave us the dialogue question "How do I feel when I hand you my love letter?" I was embarrassed to admit that I was nervous. Sometimes, I was afraid you might laugh at what I had written. Other times, I was afraid you might be angry. Con: Me too. I was afraid you might think I was a wimp because I had so many fears and doubts I had never told you about. That dialogue did a lot to ease my fears. You have always done your best to listen even when I was sharing feelings that made us both uncomfortable. Marge: Imagine that - dialoging about dialogue. But then why not, it works in other areas of our relationship. Why wouldn't it work in this area too? Dialogue on Dialogue questions: What do I like most about our dialogue? How do I feel about that? Click here for a printable page (PDF, 7KB)
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