complaints

Getting your spouse to finally hear your complaints – part 5

An effective structure of a complaint: the Complaint Sandwich. The hope when expressing a complaint is that the other person will listen and make some change. How the complaint is crafted (and delivered) is important. Guy Winch, in his book Squeaky Wheel, recommends a formula called “the complaint sandwich”. The first “slice of bread” in

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Getting your spouse to finally hear your complaints – part 4

Complaints have 2 elements – the feelings and the task. When we complain, there are the feelings (upset, lonely, invisible, disrespected, underappreciated) and the desire for something to be different (share responsibilities, more time together). Often, we can respectfully share both with our spouse in one conversation. But sometimes, after thinking about it, we recognize

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Getting your spouse to finally hear your complaints – part 2

Tune into what is under the complaint. There’s a value of yours that is not being addressed. People complain because something that matters to us isn’t going as we expected. Instead of owning that unmet expectation and sharing how much it matters to us, we complain. Complaints indicate what people care about most – about

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