Episode 14: How Many of the 6 Essential Relationship Skills Do You Have?

In this episode of Lucky in Love, we break down the six essential skills that can make or break a relationship: emotional regulation, mental flexibility, vulnerability, impulse control, perspective-taking, and effective communication. Learn why these skills are crucial for building trust, resolving conflicts, and strengthening your bond with your partner.  How many of these skills do you have?

Takeaways

• You need to be using the tools and skills for a stable relationship.
• Emotional regulation helps manage feelings and responses.
• Perspective taking fosters understanding and reduces resentment.
• Vulnerability is essential for building trust and connection.
• Mental flexibility allows adaptation to changes in the relationship.
• Impulse control prevents actions that could harm the relationship.
• Effective communication is crucial for preventing misunderstandings.
• Each skill can be learned and developed over time.
• Children learn relationship skills by observing their parents.
• Identifying strengths and weaknesses in these skills can improve relationships.

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Transcript

Kari Hoskins (00:00)
Hey there, friends, welcome back to the podcast. Before we jump in, could you take just a second and please give me a five star rating or leave me a review? It would mean so much to me and it would really help me out. So thank you in advance. Okay, so let's jump in. Today we are talking about the six essential skills that you need to build a happy and lasting relationship. When most people think about relationships,

tools and skills aren't really words that I don't think tend to come to people's minds. But in reality, if you want to have a relationship that is stable, healthy, and fulfilling, you need to be using the tools and skills that I'm gonna be talking about today on a regular basis. You and your significant other both bring your own like romantic histories, your own personality, temperaments.

your values, your dreams. And when these things compliment one another and are compatible, it definitely makes it easier to create a happy and satisfying relationship. But even with all of those things working in your favor, there are still some skills I think that you really need to be using in order to have a successful and lasting relationship.

So you guys, these are individual skills, meaning they're skills or abilities that each person in the relationship either has or doesn't have. In most relationships, what I see is that one partner has a few and the other partner has different ones. And then they just kind of, you know, do their best with what they've got and they make it work. But what I would like to encourage you to do is try to identify which of these skills that you have

and which ones you think you might need to develop more. If you're having a reoccurring issue or issues in your relationship, or if you are in a relationship where you're kind of unhappy, maybe you are even considering breaking up or getting a divorce, I would also like you to consider identifying the skills that your partner might need to work on as well, because it could help you find some clarity around why the issue is continuing.

or why it keeps coming up. And for those of you who have children, I just want to point out really quickly that your kids are watching you and they are learning or not learning in some cases, these skills by watching you and your partner or spouse. So I think it's important even if you are super, super happy in a relationship to keep that in mind because you want just to kind of be aware of what you're teaching your children about relationships. So

The purpose of today is really just to give you an overview of these skills and to get them onto your radar. And then later on in the season, I will be doing an episode on each of them individually to teach you more about them and how to develop them and use them in your relationship. Okay, so here are the six essential relationship skills. Skill number one is emotional regulation. Emotional regulation.

is the ability basically like to manage your emotions. If you don't have this ability, you will literally be at the mercy of your feelings all of the freaking time. And let me tell you, I used to be that person. And if you don't know how to regulate your emotions, you probably feel deeply affected by everything that your partner or spouse does or says that you don't like.

If you are missing this skill, your relationship may feel a little bit like a roller coaster ride to yourself and maybe even to your partner because you're unpredictable. Or some people, you know, sometimes will describe it as walking on eggshells, again, simply because you don't know how to regulate your emotions. And so your partner or spouse doesn't know how to predict how you're going to respond or react to certain things. And by the way, that is really, really unnerving for a lot of people.

I do hear people say all of the time, well, I can't help how I feel. You guys, this is absolutely not true. In fact, how you feel is one of the very few things that you actually have 100 % control over. And like I said, later on in the season, I'm going to be teaching you how to manage your emotions and teach you how to control them. But...

I really struggled with this in my 20s and early 30s, but once I learned how to regulate my emotions, it was literally a game changer. It not only positively affected my romantic relationship, but it impacted in a really positive way every other relationship in my life, including with my daughters. So this is an essential skill, I think.

because it helps you respond or react to things that your partner says or does, or just frankly, things that come up in your life in a more thoughtful way instead of a destructive way. So I wanted to give you three signs that could indicate that this is a skill that you need to develop. Sign number one is that you often say things you don't mean to your partner because you're feeling angry, hurt, or sad.

Sign number two, issues or problems feel very big or dramatic. And sign number three is you often feel the need to apologize to your partner or spouse for overreacting to something that's happened or maybe overreacting to something that they've said or done. Of all of the skills that I'm talking about today, this one will literally have the quickest and most profound impact on you personally.

For me, I know the biggest impact it made for me was that I felt way more emotionally stable and in control than before I had learned how to regulate my emotions. So skill number two is perspective taking. Now this is actually hard for a lot of people. Perspective taking is the ability to see things from another person's perspective or point of view, right? Like to see where they're coming from.

even if you don't agree with it. And that's the key there, even if you don't agree with it. People who naturally are just like empathetic, meaning they're able to identify with or relate to other people's emotions. If you're one of those people, you probably already do this because empathetic people tend to have an easier time perspective taking. And they just kind of naturally do this throughout their lives. But if you're someone who isn't particularly empathetic, this may be a struggle for you.

If you don't have this skill, it can cause problems in your relationship because it creates the I'm right, you're wrong dynamic, which is like pretty much the exact opposite of a fun, fulfilling team-like feeling within the relationship. Being unable or just like downright refusing to see something from your partner's perspective can also create a lot of resentment in your relationship. And that is, again, not something that we want.

And it also makes finding common ground and compromising really challenging. Using this skill, what it does is it tells your partner, hey, I care about you. I care about you enough to try to see it from your perspective, even though it's challenging, even though I don't really understand it. Perspective taking does not mean that you agree with your partner's point of view or their logic.

it quite literally just means that you're making an effort to try to understand it. So a while back, there was a situation where my husband made a decision that was very hurtful to me and I was really, really upset. The thoughts that I had about his decision were creating really crappy feelings. I felt devalued and disrespected and just really hurt. And at first I kind of like was...

just happy being unhappy. I was really miserable and I just wanted to be upset. But then I realized it was going to create like a lot more distance between us if I didn't at least try to see it from his perspective. Now I spent about an hour driving just like around our neighborhood trying to wrap my mind around his decision and I couldn't. So I finally asked him why he had made this the decision that he had.

and he laid out his perspective, his logic, and I did do my best to understand. And on one hand, I could kind of see it. I could see like from his perspective, why it made sense. But even though it made sense, I still thought that his decision put somebody else's feelings before mine, which felt terrible. And I know that wasn't his intention. I know his intention wasn't to hurt me, but it still did. And so what we did was,

We sat down after the situation passed and we just had this conversation about it. We kind of processed what we were thinking, what we were feeling, and we were able to come up with an agreement on how we would handle it if a situation like this came up again in the future. But had I not been able to regulate my emotions, had I not been willing to try to see things from his perspective and ask him about his perspective,

I'm telling you guys, it would have created a wedge between us and that is not what I wanted and it's certainly not what he wanted. So generally speaking, people tend to fall into one or three categories with this skill. Either one, they're willing and able to look at something from their partner's perspective. If that's you, yay, keep it up. Or category two, they're able to look at something from their partner's perspective. They have the skill, but they just don't want to use it. Or three,

the idea of looking at something from their partner's perspective doesn't even occur to them, which means they lack this skill completely. So I want you to think about yourself. Which of those three categories do you fall into? And what about your partner or spouse? Is this an area that one or both of you could use some help in? Skill number three is a vulnerability. Vulnerability is the willingness to open up.

share your true self with someone else, your partner specifically, your thoughts, your feelings, fears, insecurities, your hopes, your dreams, your aspirations. It is one of the essential skills because it really, in all honesty, is the only way to build trust in a relationship. And it's the only way to deepen your connection and maintain a healthy relationship with your significant other. Without vulnerability, your relationship

is not only going to like feel flat, but it's also going to feel, I call it like one dimensional. There's not much depth there. So I love Brene Brown and she says, staying vulnerable is a risk we have to take if we want to experience connection. And you guys, let's be honest, the entire reason why we get into relationships is to feel connection with another person. So vulnerability is definitely a struggle for a lot of

because it involves letting your guard down and being authentic. It involves letting your partner into your inner psychological world, even if it means that you might get hurt, you might be rejected, criticized, or misunderstood. Now there are some people who are naturally more vulnerable than others. And honestly, like some people start out vulnerable and then they get hurt so much that they stop, like they take, you know, several steps back.

But whether it comes naturally or not, it is definitely something that you can learn how to do. The key to a long lasting, intimate and satisfying relationship is that you have to practice vulnerability consistently throughout your relationship. So you're still practicing vulnerability in year 12, just like you did in the first six months of your relationship. Because without doing this, your relationship will no longer feel fulfilling.

you will have a lot of emotional distance and your sex life, if you even have one, probably won't be very much fun or satisfying. So I do see this a lot in long-term relationships. Couples are open and vulnerable, you know, with each other in the beginning, but then as time goes on, you hurt each other and you don't take the time to repair the small things. And then eventually there's so much resentment built up that you kind of have like zero desire to be vulnerable at all.

If you are withholding vulnerability as a way to punish your partner, I need you to know that you are hurting yourself just as much, if not more, than you're hurting them. Whether or not you are good at opening up or whether you are withholding on purpose, the good news is that you can learn how to be more open. If this is an area that's particularly challenging for you,

I recommend the book, Loving Bravely by Alexandra Solomon. I was first introduced to her work on another podcast I was listening to by Esther Perel. She does a fantastic interview and I was so intrigued that I went and I bought her book and so now I highly recommend it. So skill number four is mental flexibility. Mental flexibility is also called cognitive flexibility and

It's the ability to shift your thinking or your behavior to adapt in a circumstance, a situation, or to your partner. Most people don't even realize that this is a relationship skill, right? Adaptation is a relationship skill, but it is. If you have this skill, you're definitely going to enjoy your relationship way more, and so will your partner. If you have a hard time adapting when things don't go as planned or when they don't go,

your way or when your significant other has a different way of doing something than you, you probably need to work on this one a little bit. All or nothing thinking, black and white thinking, these are other indications that you could spend some time developing the skill. Maybe your partner comes home and says that they want to quit their job or uproot the family and move somewhere like super far away or maybe something as simple as changing dinner plans.

can trip you up. Because if you don't have mental flexibility, wrapping your mind around any of these scenarios is going to be challenging, right? So navigating and dealing with unexpected changes can be even more emotionally challenging because you don't have mental flexibility. If you find yourself feeling disappointed, frustrated, or angry on a regular basis than I would,

just encourage you to check in with yourself and see if maybe being a little bit more mentally flexible could benefit you here. So the bottom line is this skill helps you as the individual roll with the punches without becoming angry, frustrated, or resentful.

All right, skill number five is impulse control. This is the ability to pause and think before you act or speak, especially in emotionally charged situations. Again, this is like another one of those skills that most people don't even think about when it comes to relationships. But this actually involves three of the skills that we've already talked about, emotional regulation, perspective taking, and mental flexibility.

This skill is important because reacting or responding without thinking things through, you guys, it can definitely cause very big problems in your relationship. Stopping yourself from acting out of really intense feelings like anger, frustration, or even like temptation and like thinking things through is vital if you want your relationship to run smoothly, you want a relationship that doesn't have a lot of drama.

This is an essential skill because it helps prevent you from doing something you're going to regret. It helps prevent hurtful behavior like seeking validation outside of your relationship or inappropriate texting with someone other than your significant other or saying something in the heat of the moment that you wish you could take back. Impulse control is needed if you want a relationship that feels safe for yourself and feels safe for your partner.

And if you don't want to be arguing all the time over stuff that you've done impulsively, then you definitely need to work on this skill. I honestly think this is a selfless skill because instead of giving into your urges and your desires, you take a second, you pull back, you think things through for the benefit of yourself, your partner, and your relationship. Now, last but not least, skill number six,

my favorite, effective communication. This is another big one. There are so many facets to communication, but here's the deal. Effective communication involves literally all of the skills that we've just talked about today, but it happens to be its own skill entirely. But if you have all those skills that we just talked about, it makes this one a lot easier.

So you can think about communication as being made up of two dimensions. There's the relational dimension and the practical dimension of communication. And you need both dimensions in order to have a successful and fulfilling relationship. The relational dimension is the ability to talk to your significant other about anything and everything. You have the ability to communicate about what's going on in your head and in your heart. This dimension is also about

being open and listening and trying to understand your partner or your spouse. It includes the way you talk to your partner, the words that you choose, right? The way that you listen to them, speaking to them with kindness and respect, not talking down to them or in a crappy tone of voice. This aspect of communication creates a foundation of trust.

And without this type of communication, you will be living like roommates. And trust me, I work with people who are living like this, and this is one of the big key areas that we work on. The second aspect is the practical dimension, being able to communicate clearly and effectively to prevent misunderstandings, Miscommunication, which happens to be one of the leading causes of conflict, as you can imagine, in relationships. So...

Being able to articulate what's going on in your head, your perspective is also part of this. Being able to listen to what your partner is saying and asking questions to make you understand what they're saying is another part of this. Saying what you mean and not speaking in such vague terms that they have to guess or fill in the blanks is a part of this. So if you lack this dimension, there's probably a lot of misunderstanding, miscommunication, and frustration in your relationship.

So on a scale of one to five, I love scales, how well do you and your partner communicate? What things are easy for you to talk about? What areas of your life may need to be talked about more? These are just some questions that I'd like you to reflect on in terms of communication. Okay, so those are the six essential relationship skills that you need to have a strong, healthy relationship that is going to last.

Which ones do you think that you're the strongest at? Which ones could you spend a little more time developing? And what about your partner? Like which ones are they good at? Which ones might they need to work on a little bit more? So as I said before, all of these skills that I mentioned today are things that you can learn. And I am going to be talking about each of them. I'm gonna be giving you some ideas of how to develop them and how to use them in your relationship over the next few months. So please stay tuned, because I'm super excited.

and I know that it's going to be really helpful and useful for you and your relationships. Okay, my friends, that is what I have for you today. I hope that you join me next week.