It has been said, "I know you think you know what I said, but I'm not sure whether you understood that what you heard is not what I meant".
One of the most terrible mistakes that we can make in our relationships is to make assumptions when we don't understand where the other person is coming from. I talk a lot about communication because I have worked so hard at it in recent years. It is something that I was not taught from my parents, but something that I, as an adult, decided I needed to work on for the sake of my future. It sounds so simple: 'just ask the darn question', right? But for some reason, it's so daggone hard!
We, at our most basic, unevolved state, want to assume we know what people's intentions are towards us, and the truth is that when we use 'Reflective Response', we are wrong in those assumptions ninety percent of the time. I had a therapist tell me this once, and I didn't believe her, so I started using Reflective Response just to see if I could prove her wrong, and I'll be damned if she wasn't right! Reflective Response is when you repeat back to the person that is speaking to you, what you think they just said. For example, Person #1: 'I would like to go on a retreat trip somewhere, all by myself someday'. Person #2: 'Are you saying that you don't want to go on vacation with me?'. Person #1: 'No, I'm not saying that at all, I'm just saying that someday I would like to go on a retreat all by myself, like a mental health vacation'. Do you see how an assumption could have turned a molehill into a huge mountain, so to speak, or created resentment, just in that simple conversation, without the Reflective Response of 'Are you saying...'?
The results that you get when using Reflective Response make you realize exactly how hard it is for all of us to say what we are really feeling. Assuming wastes time, it wastes our lives away with misunderstandings, when we could be using that time to instead, to grow closer. Effective communication isn't a trait that we are born with, it is a learned skill.