## Try your best to not exit a conversation Don't be the person who is always exiting the conversation. Yes, conversations can be frustrating. They can try your patience, make you feel helpless. However, don't exit the conversation if you can. Don't make it a pattern. Instead, express how helpless the conversation is making you feel so your partner gets a chance to adjust your approach. ## Understand before seeking to be understood Listening is a skill that doesn't come naturally to most of us. Every situation has it's own parameters and very difficult to have a consistent method to listen well in every situation. However, there is an easy test to tell if you are listening enough. If you can't articulate your partner's point of view to their satisfaction, then you haven't listened enough. Keep listening and trying to understand until you can do so before you express your perspective. ## Postpone a conversation when there is too much emotion involved Sometimes, no matter what you do, emotions will be too high. Stop yourselves and postpone the conversation to a future date. Sometimes, things are not easy to postpone, usually because a decision needs to be made. Talking ahead of time about how you are going to handle these situations is the key to enabling you to succeed in making this maneuver why dealing with a situation. Talk it out and have a key phrase or word that the person initiating the postponement can use. That way, the trigger helps the other person to understand what is being asked and what is the expected action. Always select a particular and specific time to move the conversation to so that it can never be used to avoid a conversation and the person who really wants to talk doesn't feel like the other partner is using it as an avoidance mechanism.