Marriage and Communication
Communication is key in a marriage and without it, failure will occur. You must open up to one another and allow the flow of communication to enter and bring out situations that is bothering you both. You can do this by inviting your spouse out to coffee or another place that is not your home.
You will be surprised to see that your spouse will listen to you better when it is not at the usual place where he or she continues to ignore or even pay the least amount of attention to you. This includes restaurants, coffee shops and even going out for ice cream. Why not? Then, you will have your spouse's full attention for communication.
How do you expect for your marriage to last if you cannot communicate effectively enough to alleviate any issues that you are currently involved in? Making effective communication to work in a marriage is a daily task that needs to be done each and every day. For without proper communication, you will be setting yourself and your marriage up for failure as time goes on.
Make sure you make the proper intent to continue the communication flow moving freely in your marriage. You will be surprised on how effective this works to your benefit.
This is an effective technique that can be used to allow you and your spouse to open up to each other and allow yourselves in to better any circumstance.
There are several ways of communicating effectively in a marriage that include, writing a hand written letter, creating dates with your spouse and take them out to another place for communication and a simple telephone call(s) during a regular workday will allow the routine flow of communication to open up more freely.
You will be surprised to see that your spouse will listen to you better when it is not at the usual place where he or she continues to ignore or even pay the least amount of attention to you. This includes restaurants, coffee shops and even going out for ice cream. Why not? Then, you will have your spouse's full attention for communication.
How do you expect for your marriage to last if you cannot communicate effectively enough to alleviate any issues that you are currently involved in? Making effective communication to work in a marriage is a daily task that needs to be done each and every day. For without proper communication, you will be setting yourself and your marriage up for failure as time goes on.
Make sure you make the proper intent to continue the communication flow moving freely in your marriage. You will be surprised on how effective this works to your benefit.
This is an effective technique that can be used to allow you and your spouse to open up to each other and allow yourselves in to better any circumstance.
There are several ways of communicating effectively in a marriage that include, writing a hand written letter, creating dates with your spouse and take them out to another place for communication and a simple telephone call(s) during a regular workday will allow the routine flow of communication to open up more freely.
HOW TO GET YOUR SPOUSE TO HEAR TO YOU
As of recent, I have had a series of private phone sessions with a person who was quite frustrated with her marriage. Listen to how this person described the situation at hand. You may be able to relate to it.
This person stated that they felt trapped in their basement while trying to communicate with their spouse via Morse Code. They said they were banging on the pipes trying desperately to be heard. They would bang on the pipes and wait for a response. Bang and wait…bang and wait…bang and wait. But each time they finished banging, there was silence. No matter how hard they banged and no matter how long they waited; their spouse never heard them.
Are you trying to get heard in your marriage? Do you feel ignored and pushed aside? Is your spouse not responding to your communication at all?
We live in interesting times and with one click, you can communicate with anyone in the world. It’s quick, easy and free. You even have other options. If you don’t want to click, you could even dial, page, beep, instant-message, or even use Fed Ex. This is so true. The ability to communicate with the outside world has become increasingly easy. But my guess is that the ability to communicate with your spouse has become increasingly difficult to achieve.
This happens because most people confuse PERSONAL communication with INFORMATION communication. Advancements in technology has given us all sorts of options to communicate with information. But how do you feel the pulse of someone’s soul? How do you communicate the subtleties and emotions in your heart? You can’t text that. You can have the latest and greatest in communication gadgets, but it won’t even matter. PERSONAL communication is a whole different game. And it is PERSONAL communication that determines the success or failure of your current marriage situation.
I’ve been reminded of a scene from a Broadway play. A man and woman happens to meet on a train and engage in a polite dialogue with each other. Both of them were headed home to New York after a day in New Haven, CT. After further discussion, they learned that they were going to the same building on Fifth Avenue. To shock you even more, they discovered that they had the same daughter and lived in the same apartment complex. They finally discovered that they were husband and wife.
Do you know what is killing most marriages these days? It’s EMAIL! I am seeing husbands and wives resort to email to communicate with each other, more and more. If you want to do something tangible TODAY and improve your marriage? STOP EMAILING YOUR SPOUSE! Remember that Email is for INFORMATION. In a marriage, you have to HEAR each other out. And of course, I don’t mean only hear the sounds of each other’s words. You have to be able to hear the silence between the sounds and interpret the unspoken meaning of teary eyes or pressed lips. You have to also be able to hear the shapes and sounds of each other’s heart. You can NEVER accomplish this via email alone.
Let’s be me clear about something, you also won’t be able to do this with communication techniques either. There is no communication therapy clinic that can help you and your spouse read each other’s minds, feel each other joy, and cringe from each other’s pain.
Today my 5-year-old son came to me with a bruise on his leg. He was crying and I could see that it was black and blue. He said, “Daddy, I can you give me a band-aide?”
I responded, “But it’s not bleeding.”
He said again, “Daddy, can you put a band-aide on it?”
I realized that my son’s perspective was that when something hurts a band-aide usually makes it better. Even if it’s just a bruise and not a cut on the skin.
So how does this come to play does with communication in a marriage? Because most people will think that if spouses aren’t hearing each other that communication techniques will automatically solve the problem and it would go away. But that’s like putting a band-aide on a bruise. It’s just the wrong solution to shoot for.
Communication techniques can definitely help colleagues transmit gathered INFORMATION clearly. Communication techniques belong in seminars that teach sales and negotiation. But you’re not trying to make a transaction with your spouse; you are just trying to renew a troubled relationship. I can almost guarantee you that your problem is not clarity, it’s the concern that comes with it. Ironically, communication techniques sometimes give people clarity that they don’t care what their spouse thinks or feels. They “got it,” but “it” doesn’t matter to them anymore.
So, how do you get back to the place where you and your spouse can care again?
This is one of the things that’s unique about the Marriage Fitness approach to repairing a relationship versus traditional counseling. Most approaches to marriage success preach communication skills. But communicating effectively will NOT create love in your marriage. In fact, the correlation is the opposite. Creating love in your marriage paves the way for effective communication. I’ll prove it to you.
Think about when you fell in love back in the day. How was your communication then? Great, right? In fact, when you’re in love, you finish each other’s sentences and communicate with the wink of an eye. Yet you haven’t even known each other that long to have learned any communication skills or techniques.
And then, years later, after getting to know each other inside and out, while employing psychologically tested and proven communication strategies, and taking into account all the differences between Venus and Mars, you still can’t get through to each other.
Listen very carefully: You need to understand that communication has very little to do with techniques or knowledge of each other. Although, it has everything to do with the depth of connection between the communicators.
The question you should be asking isn’t, “How do I communicate effectively with my spouse.” The question you should be asking is, “How do I connect with my spouse again?” Once you have reconnected, you won’t be sitting in silence in the basement. You’ll hear the sound of the pipes from above, and It will be your spouse. You were heard!
If you want to learn how to connect with your spouse again, subscribe to my FREE report, “7 Secrets for a Stronger Marriage” and get my FREE marriage assessment. CLICK HERE to subscribe. It’s FREE.
