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NVC Resources on Love

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The Top Five Deal Breakers in Relationships

Trainer Tip Anyone who’s a great kisser I’m always interested in. —Cher A friend of mine tells me that everyone should become aware of their “top five deal breakers” in relationships. These are things a person decides she must have in order to be happy in a relationship. Usually, I hear people identify their top five deal breakers as strategies, such as “I want him to enjoy gardening, to be a...
Empathy Doesn’t Mean Agreement

Trainer Tip It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. —Aristotle Sometimes, people tell me that they can’t empathize with someone because they don’t agree with them. An example could be a teenager who tells her parents that they don’t care about her. Or a friend who tells you that you were late, even though you thought you were right on time....
Communicating with Children

Trainer Tip "The ways parents interact with their children contribute to shaping children’s understanding of themselves, their parents, human nature, and the world around them. A parent who takes a toy away from a toddler who had just taken it from another child, while saying, “No grabbing,” teaches both children that grabbing is okay—for those with more power. A parent who unilaterally imposes...
Nonviolence In The Face of Rape or Assault

This is an excerpt from "Accountability, Love, Shame, and Working for Transformation: Acceptance Does Not Mean Inaction": Walter Wink, in The Powers That Be, recounts the story of a woman who wakes up in the middle of the night with a man in her room, clearly about to assault her. As someone trained in nonviolence, the woman was able to follow her own thoughts and landed on the realization that...
Is Nonviolent Use of Force an Oxymoron?

What do we actually mean by “use of force” and what counts as such? Here's a template that will be unpacked in this article: "Use of force is consistent with nonviolence to the extent that we use the least amount of force possible, with the most love possible, aiming at (re)creating conditions for dialogue; that we make the choice using as much nonreactive discernment as possible, with as much...
Life-Alienating Communication

Trainer Tip "Any change in one part of your life affects all other parts." —Gloria Karpinski We have all learned patterns of speech that keep us separate from other people. These patterns can look like judgments, criticisms, and blame, and they are prevalent in our society. In each case, the speaker separates herself from the listener by preoccupying herself with moralistic judgments. She...
Defining Needs

Trainer Tip "A theme may seem to have been put aside, but it keeps returning—the same thing modulated, somewhat changed in form" —Muriel Rukeyser In Compassionate Communication, we define needs as resources that life requires to sustain itself. Our physical well-being depends on our needs for air, water, food, rest, and shelter. Our psychological and emotional well-being relies on support,...
A Focus on Needs

Trainer Tip "Judgments, criticisms, diagnoses, and interpretations of others are all alienated expressions of our needs. If someone says, 'You never understand me', they are really telling us that their need to be understood is not being fulfilled." —Marshall B. Rosenberg, Ph.D. Imagine that your wife comes home from work and you ask her to go dancing and she says, “Oh no, not tonight, honey....
Become Willing to Express Appreciation

Trainer Tip "Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do." —Goethe Many of us are reluctant to express appreciation because we think that means we are brown-nosing, or because we think the other person doesn’t want to hear from us. Indeed, if you use appreciation as a manipulative tool to get what you want, you are misusing it. But if someone has enriched your life...
Focusing on Where We Are the Same

Trainer Tip Show love to all creatures and you will be happy . . . —Tulsidas In Compassionate Communication, we believe that everyone has the same needs, no matter how they strive to meet them. Can you imagine what needs the terrorists were trying to meet when they flew airplanes into the World Trade Center in 2001? To some, it seems unfathomable that they were meeting needs. But think about...