Practicing Healthy Communication While Dating: A Guide
For many, healthy communication doesn’t come easily. The usual reason is straightforward—they were simply never taught. Poor communication habits are not only frequently modeled within families but also normalized in popular media, at school, and beyond. As a result, a great deal of people struggle to communicate effectively.
Whether you’re casually dating, in a serious relationship, or simply wanting to improve your communication skills, this guide will show you what healthy communication looks like (and doesn’t look like) in practice. Let’s begin!
What Makes Communication Healthy?
Communication is the cornerstone of all relationships. In fact, without it, relationships can very quickly become dysfunctional or fall apart. Some qualities of healthy communication include:
Assertive: Communicate your desires, preferences, boundaries, thoughts, and intentions directly while remaining respectful of the other person and their perspective, even when it’s different from yours.
Clear: Say what you mean—be direct and precise. Avoid vagueness, confusion, or indirectness.
Curious: Don’t rush to judgment. Instead, be open to the other person’s point-of-view and interested in why they might hold it.
Empathetic: Put yourself in their shoes. Seek to understand their perspective in depth, and show compassion for their feelings.
Present: Listen attentively to the other person—avoid formulating your response while they are talking. Be mindful of any projections or biases you may be bringing into the conversation.
Respectful: Speak calmly and kindly, even when you disagree. Avoid attacking the person’s character and focus on the issue at hand.
Communicating this way from the get-go establishes a foundation of trust and emotional safety, deepening your relationship with the other person while keeping you connected to yourself and your inner compass.
What Gets in the Way
Communication often devolves during conflict and in other situations where tensions are high and emotions are heightened. Here are some signs that communication is becoming ineffective or even destructive:
Blame and Accusations
When you’re hurt, it can be tempting to start pointing fingers or to call out the other person for what they did wrong. However, making accusations, especially in an aggressive manner, typically puts the other person on the defense or causes them to withdraw entirely.
What to do instead: Being hurt can feel quite vulnerable, and blame usually serves as a defense against that vulnerability. However, leaning into the vulnerability, while scary, allows you to maintain your connection with the other person in the face of conflict and hurt.
Rather than assigning blame, try using “I feel” statements to express the impact of their actions. For example, instead of saying, “You never care about my feelings,” you could say, “When I don’t feel heard, I feel hurt and unimportant.”
Defensiveness
When someone expresses hurt as a result of your actions, how you respond makes all the difference. If you try to justify it or explain it away, you are only widening the gap between you and the other person, creating more hurt and preventing the possibility of open, constructive dialogue.
What to do instead: Rather than trying to convince the other person you were right or that you had good intentions, stay curious about their perspective with the goal of understanding the impact of your actions. Practice active listening and validate their experience of the situation, even if you see it differently.
Deflecting Responsibility
When someone tells you you’ve hurt them, regardless of if you did so intentionally, it may stir up guilt, shame, or discomfort. Shifting the blame to the other person or to outside circumstances may assuage those difficult feelings in the moment, but it also damages trust, blocks connection, and prevents you from learning and growing from your mistakes.
What to do instead: Take responsibility for your role in the situation, even if it feels small or if others, such as the other person, were involved, too. Offer a sincere apology for actions, and be clear about how you plan to do better moving forward.
If you’re also feeling hurt, it’s more than okay to express that—but make sure you acknowledge the impact of your own actions first. Addressing your part before bringing up your feelings nurtures trust and allows for the possibility of repair.
Passive-Aggressiveness
Passive-aggressive behavior—an indirect way of communicating upset, anger, or the like—can take many forms, including sarcasm, backhanded compliments, and sulking, to name a few examples. People often resort to passive-aggressive behavior as a way to avoid the discomfort of expressing their feelings directly, or because they’re not consciously in touch with what they’re feeling.
Stonewalling can be a particularly damaging form of passive-aggressive behavior. It involves emotionally shutting down, such as through the silent treatment, giving one-word answers, or complete withdrawal.
What to do instead: It’s important to first name for yourself what you’re feeling. Is it sadness? Resentment? Hurt? Once you have an idea, express it honestly, directly, and respectfully.
If you need time before directly engaging in conflict, that’s okay—but it’s important to communicate that clearly, too. You could say, “I’m feeling overwhelmed and need some time to process how I’m feeling before we keep talking. Can we pick this up in 20 minutes? I care about you and this conversation.”
Reacting, Not Responding
You’ve probably heard the phrase “Think before you speak.” While it’s sound advice, it’s also often easier said than done, especially in the heat of conflict. Reactivity doesn’t always look like raising your voice or interrupting. Sometimes, it’s more subtle—like mentally rehearsing your response while the other person is talking.
What to do instead: Start by pausing and taking a breath before responding. As you listen, try to stay curious about what the other person is really saying with the aim of understanding their perspective—even if it’s different from yours. If you find yourself getting upset or overwhelmed, it’s okay to ask for a pause so you don’t react in a way you might later regret.
Moving Forward
It goes without saying that how we communicate with one another, especially in difficult moments, matters. If you recognize your own behavior in any of the patterns mentioned above, you’re not alone. Healthy communication is a skill—and like any skill, it can be learned and strengthened over time.
