Communication is vitally important because we’re so dang bad at reading our partner’s mind (until we’ve been married for many years, that is). The best marriages have a great deal of communication; the worst have little or none. But every aspect of a marriage requires communication in some form. When our emotions get fired up, we are quick to make assumptions based almost entirely on our own unrealistic thoughts about the situation. Most of the time, these assumptions are partially, if not completely, wrong.

Because thoughts shape behavior, communication skills shape how you interact with your partner. Authentic communication takes practice and more practice. But simply talking is not the same as communicating. True communication in a great marriage is a tw0-way conversation. Therefore, it takes practice from both people. However, you can only do your practicing and encourage your partner to do the same. It can be tricky when a partner doesn’t want to communicate, but that doesn’t mean the partner doesn’t want to solve the issue. It takes time, patience, and even great care to develop solid communication skills; it’s always a work in progress. But you can’t master something you’re not practicing, so how do you practice communication? The following five skills are essential for a happier marriage.

I was fresh out of high school and ready to take on life. The world seemed extra bright and teeming with people, places and things to do…too many things to do. I’ve always tried to be a dependable person, but I learned that when people can count on you, they’re more likely to ask for favors. While I enjoy helping people when they’re in need, this can also become a burden, if not handled thoughtfully.

Knowing that I was someone people turned to when they didn’t feel they had anyone else they could depend on was a wonderful feeling.  But I went through a phase where I started to regret being the go-to guy. My best intentions were backfiring because I had over promised help that I couldn’t provide. I had so many obligations that I started losing track of them. And one-by-one, they began to slip through the cracks in my mind. When people started making comments about how they couldn’t depend on me anymore, it hit me pretty hard.

Everyone wants great relationships. In fact, if you’re having trouble in a relationship, you’re more likely to be unsatisfied with your life, even if everything else is going wonderfully. If you’ve struggled with finding Mr. Right, or the girl of your dreams, you may be focused on the wrong things.

So what, then, are the right things to focus on? As much as I would love to give you a long list of what I think you need to focus on in order to have a better relationship with that special man or woman in your life, I’m going to take a different approach, even though I have been married for 10 years and have never (that’s right, NEVER), had a fight with my wife. We’ve had our challenges, yet we also had a plan on how to handle them. But I’ll save that conversation for another time.

What I want to give you is a strategy for figuring out what behaviors would be considered the best practices in personal relationships. I would rather teach you how to discover this by yourself so you can use this strategy again and again, when you need to tweak something in a relationship. So let’s jump right into the strategy.