Awhile back I read a very interesting blog post that was built around the worst thing you can ask a woman you are dating or in a long term relationship with:
How was your day?
I started to think about this even before I continued reading the post, and you know what, I thought – “that’s kinda true”. When you are asked this particular question, you often don’t even know where to begin. As women, we store every detail of every occurrence in our brain somewhere so we could start anywhere! I’m sure you’ve noticed, sometimes the next thing after this question is asked is a big sigh and something along the lines of “gosh, where to I start?!”.
You see, at the end of a day, when a woman is asked “How was your day?”, she makes a choice in that moment to either divulge every detail of the highs and lows, wins and losses or scratch all of that and just say “fine, how was yours?” This may seem polite but if left at that for weeks or months, it can cause a woman to build up resentment against the question. Once a couple discovers this question is not getting the results they want, there are many ways it can be approached. One of the things you can do is have the man start to ask different questions. Warning: it’s going to feel super, super weird in the beginning but you will get hooked on the depth of the answers over awhile.
Here are some examples:
When did you feel loved today? When did you feel lonely? What did I do today that made you feel appreciated? What did I say that made you feel unnoticed? What can I do to help you right now?
Re-read my warning above because I know these might be awkward to ask at first. And no, you don’t need to ask all of these questions at once (gosh, that would be communication overload) ☺ You both need to be committed to wanting to break through that uncomfortable feeling that arises around the “How was your day?” question and realistically, you may even continue to ask that question here and there. However, you will also have the other more specific questions to balance out your communication. Some days you might even prefer a super light conversation at the end of the day and that’s what it’s there for.
COACHING EXERCISE FOR YOU
If you are in a relationship, try these questions out. You may want to preface the first time with sharing a statement like, “I was thinking it would be fun and interesting to ask each other a variety of different questions when we see each other at the end of the day….” Try them out one at a time and see which one leads to the most varied answers and then keep going. If you are single, try this out on friends. You could actually use it as a bit of an experiment – you could ask “How was your day?” to one friend and one of the above questions to another friend and see what types of answers you get. It will be very interesting to see the variety in responses. Plus, this will give you practice for when you do find your lucky significant other!
I’d love to hear your thoughts so be sure to leave a comment below.
To your authenticity,
Love, Christine