(Today is a guest post from my wife Jenny! Follow her on Twitter: @JennyAcuff.)
I’m writing a book right now that is due out in April, so I’ll keep this short so I can get back to that.
There is something embarrassingly simple that it took Jon and I more than 9 years to learn. Honestly, it really took us that long. Here it is:
“Giving feedback on a dream isn’t the same thing as attacking a dream.”
This simple lesson rocked our world about 5 years ago. Prior to this explosion of clarity, when I would give Jon feedback on his dream, he would immediately feel attacked. In our marriage, there were two options for me when it came to dreaming with him:
1. Keep quiet
2. Attack
As you can imagine, that was not going to lead to very many awesome places. It wasn’t until Jon and I both matured in the way we communicated that we realized feedback is not the same thing as attack. In fact, they are wildly different. One tears down, one builds up.
In your marriage, I hope you’ll get there a lot faster than we do. There are too many fun things to do to get stuck in this pattern of communication.