Speaking your language: how to communicate with your date
Have you given a lot of thought to how to communicate with your date and still feel like you’re banging your head against a brick wall? Have you ever felt like your date is speaking a different language? Does it ever seem to you that although you are from the same planet, you live in different worlds? If your dates tend to slip into awkward silence, followed by a vague promise to call that never happens, this article is for you. It will show you how to communicate with your date, in five easy steps.
1.Listen
Listening is the most important communication skill anyone can have, and by that we mean the ability to truly listen. Show him that you’re listening by nodding, making breath noises, and most of all, paraphrasing what he just said to show that you understand. Don’t be afraid to ask questions if you don’t understand, it will keep the conversation flowing.
2. Relax
If you want to know how to communicate with your date, you need to know how to relax. If you’re too hyper, you literally can’t focus on the other person, and focusing on the other person is what great communication is all about. Take the pressure off and remind yourself that this is just a date, not the Middle East peace process.
3. Report
Rapport means the feeling that the person we are talking to fully understands us, and is revealed through subtle body language cues. Two people who are in harmony will naturally develop the same posture, use the same gestures, and even use the same tone of voice. This is something you can do deliberately: if he crosses his arms, he folds yours a second later or crosses his legs, which has the same effect. Learn to mirror their body language patterns, but do it subtly. It sends a subliminal message that you are like him and therefore understand him.
4. Give a little
Learn the art of self-disclosure. Small, carefully timed revelations about yourself are small prompts that keep the conversation flowing, because they invite a response. The trick is to keep it light to begin with. Don’t start with weapons-grade revelations about your personal tragedies, as it will only scare him.
5. Eye contact
Too much and you’ll look mad or angry. Too little and you’ll look bored and uninterested. Try to strike a middle ground: the kind of eye contact you might make with your close friends, for example.
Put these five steps into practice on your next date and you’ll learn how to communicate with your date so effectively that they won’t be able to resist coming back for more!