This article is part of a
series
on nurturing primary relationships. It
aims to help mates think, com-municate, and problem-solve more effectively. It's widely estimated that
almost 50% of US eventually marriages fail.
The actual rate is
probably significantly higher if psychological divorces and
separations are inclu-ded. That implies that many millions of couples and
families are traumatized by the decay of a primary committed relationship.
I've asked hundreds of
my adult students and therapy clients and what their main life
are.
Less
than 5% include "improve our communication and problem-solving
effectiveness" in their answers - yet when I ask about this, they usually say
"Oh, of course." What follows is based on my study of
rela-tionships and effective communication for ~45 years.
This article...
-
recaps
basic premises about effective communication
-
proposes what's
unique about
communication between primary partners,
-
illustrates common
surface communication problems between
mates,
-
hilights major
benefits of improving your communication,
-
provides a way to
gauge your present communication
effectiveness and knowledge,
-
a brief
example of a conflicted couple communicating; and...
-
links to practical
action-options (in a related
article) for better communication. .
The article assumes
you're familiar with...
Premises - See how you
feel about these ideas...
Adults, kids, and infants
communicate to...
|
|
|
-
give or get info
-
feel stimulated
|
Effective communication occurs when each person involved feels...
-
they satisfied their current
well enough,...
-
in a way that leaves them feeling
good-enough about themselves, each other, and the process between
them.
If
you disagree with these premises, what do you think causes ineffective
communication?
What's Unique About Communications Between Mates?
All people communicate to fill current needs (reduce
discomforts). Typical mates depend on each other to fill a unique set of
- including emotional and physical intimacy, so
is vital to their
partnership and their family's harmony and health.
The
roles of husband, wife, and "committed primary partner" differ from other
social roles. Most partners have higher expectations of themselves and each
other than of other adults because of their relationship's primacy. Relatives
and friends also have unique expectations about mates' attitudes and behaviors.
This is specially true if couples are nurturing minor kids together.
In
other words, couple's communication is the same as everyone else's,
except mates' needs, roles, relationship expectations, and social environments
are unique compared to other adults
Surface Problems
The American divorce epidemic suggests that over
half of typical couples can't fill their primary relationship needs well
enough. Typical complaints I've heard include "My mate...
-
never listens to me
-
blows up or shuts
down if I
argue
-
has to have
the last word
-
is too
intellectual (or emotional)
-
won't stay
focused on one thing
-
won't say what
s/he wants
-
is so
illogical / "unreasonable"
-
won't talk to
me
-
never
apologizes
-
is always
pessimistic / optimistic
-
doesn't keep
her/his promises
-
gives me
-
won't always
tell me the truth
|
-
never lets me
finish
-
tells me what
I think and feel
-
criticizes and
lectures me
-
swears and
calls me names
-
keeps bringing
up the past
-
never shuts up
-
won't look at
me when we argue
-
jokes too much
/ won't take me seriously
-
makes
everything sexual
-
repeats the
same thing over and over
-
talks down to me
-
will never get
specific (generalizes)
-
does other
things when we talk
|
Complaints like these are "communication
problems" - and each of them is a surface issue. Trying to
correct any of these permanently is often a frustrating waste of time and energy.
Discover the primary needs causing these surface problems, and seek to
fill them together.
What Do You Know About
Communicating?
Invest a few undistracted moments
in a self-assessment exercise. Start by defining a baseline:
On a scale of 1 (“I know
zero about communication”) to 10
(“I could teach a graduate-school course on
it to PhDs”), rank your communication
knowledge now: ___. Then rank
your partner’s knowledge: ___.
Say your
definition of effective (vs. “open and honest”) communication out loud now,
and compare it to
Then from 1 to 10 (consistently very effective),
rank
your general communication effectiveness with your mate recently in
___ calm times and ___ significant conflicts. Then guesstimate what ranks your partner would choose: ___ and
___.
Now see what you
know...
-
take this
quiz alone or with your partner,
and discuss it as you go. Answer the items out loud, or write them down;
-
notice (a) whether
(capital "S") is
your
as you answer, and (b) your
as you do.
What did you just learn? If you and
your partner could easily answer all of these quiz items, what would change in your
home and lives?
Now you know
(some of) what you partners need to learn about
effective communication. How-ever, unless you’re a
veteran, you don’t know what would
happen if you learned and applied the quiz answers to your
(inner-family communication) and your relationships.
Why
should you two invest time and energy toward more productive communications? Consider these three priceless…
Benefits
Think of several emotional, conflictual topics you and your mate
struggle with. Are there subjects
that you partners avoid, or feel “We just can’t discuss those without
fighting”? Now name topics
that you mates do communicate and problem-solve well on – i.e. you
both get your
met well
enough in a way that feels good enough to both of you. Recall vividly how
you feel when that happens.
Can you
imagine
feeling that special way discussing most or all difficult topics? Or - can
you ima-gine the communication
you two have now
gradually getting worse as you both age and your kids learn about
primary relationships from your behaviors?
Scan these common
and see which apply to your unique relationship. Consider that the
main tool you two have for reducing these is effective thinking and
communication. Reflect: has ineffective communication
each of your stressors?
| If you help each
other keep family
and
high priority and work patiently at them as
you two
can make the
first of these visions happen! |
Second,
how
important is it to you to help the kids in your life learn to communicate
effectively with themselves
and with other people? If you
rank this as “important,” do your recent actions dem-onstrate that?
Are you intentionally modeling and teaching your young people effective
communication
Is anyone else?
Third, think
of the people in your life with whom you have the most
stress - i.e. anxiety, conflict, confusion,
disappointment, frustration, boredom, and anger. If you could learn
communication skills that would consistently (a) significantly improve your
relationship with each of them and (b) convert stress into satisfaction, would you
want to learn the skills?
Status check:
Try saying your top five
life-priorities out loud now. Are...
...among
them? Are they consistently among
your partner’s top five priorities? If not, what would have to change - specifically
- for you two to give these goals high priority?
If you don't - expect no improvements in your marital stress and family nurturance
level.
Finally, Let’s look at a
brief example to make this less academic. First, read this summary of
com-muniication basics and return
here. If
control you, they’ll probably want you to ignore
that. (Typical thought stream: “Sounds boring. Do it later. Keep reading.”)
Your
(capital "S") is more apt to say something like “OK, let’s see what’s there.”
An Example
Let’s tune in on two
typical conflicted mates. When Larry says to his second wife
Penny "I'm angry that I don't have any say in our house with your son,"
communication processes occur in two domains:
A hidden
conference (thought
streams, images, feelings) among the busy
that caused
Larry's spoken sentence. His words, face, hands, voice, and body send Penny five concurrent
and...
the concurrent
reactions (thought
streams, images, associations, memories, emotions) among her
subselves, as his five messages arrive and her ruling subselves decode
their apparent meanings.
This happens every time you and your partner interact, verbally and non-verbally.
The good news is, in all situations there are two places you can improve
your communication effectiveness. The bad news: doing so can seem
bewilderingly complex, until you get the hang of it.
Each of these two
communication processes has a beginning (e.g. some subconscious and
con-scious needs in Larry), a middle (his speaking, voice dynamics,
and body signals), and an
i.e. whether his current
got met well enough or not.
His main
surface (conscious) needs in
making this statement to his wife might be: "I need you to (a) hear me now,
(b) understand that I need your help with something, and (c) be open to discussing
it cooperatively with me."
Larry’s several
primary needs underneath these might be "I need…
…to feel secure that I have some power in
my life to fill my needs;
…to respect myself by asserting, rather
than "being quiet" (and having my
sneer "You're
such a pathetic wimp!");” and “I also need…
…to feel that my feelings and needs
matter to you now."
To have this communication feel effective,
all three of these primary needs will have to be satisfied well enough, as judged by
Larry. That depends on his ruling subselves' perception of how Penny
responds.
What's Really Going On...
If you were Penny,
what would your surface (conscious) thoughts and needs be now? I'd be
thinking "I need to learn how upset Larry is. Is this a crisis, or
what?", and "Is he blaming me?" I also might need to decide
something like "Should I talk further now, or take the roast out
of the oven?"
Other subselves
are reacting, mostly below Penny’s conscious awareness:
-
Her
pronounces
acidly "See? You're a totally worthless wife, woman, and mother!"
-
Penny's
feels
a surge of worthlessness ("Oh! I'm a terrible person!");
-
Her
and
moan together "Larry's going to leave us!";
-
Her
says
anxiously "We must make Larry feel better: we need him to like us!"
-
Her
subself announces firmly
"Well I need to protect my son, and at times, I don't like the way Larry
treats him."
-
Her
subself blazes "How
dare he accuse us of being a bad wife? Shut up, you stupid Critic!"
-
Penny's
sneers
amidst the din "Larry is so weak and needy – he’s always
complaining about everything!"
-
Her
says "Now,
now, everyone; let's have that delicious piece of chocolate cake!"
-
Penny's common-sense
subself (or Self) says "Wait, everyone! Let's ask Larry to explain what
he needs."
-
Her
and
team up
to report dispassionately to the crowd "Every
time we dis-cuss this topic with Larry, we feel misunderstood and unheard,
and get into a fight. It never gets resolved."
-
Penny’s
says "Look,
that's a really expensive roast. Get it out of the oven now, or it'll be
ruined. We can talk to Larry over dinner."
-
Her
yells "Roast,
shmoast; let's get out of here!" And...
-
Penny's
Self feels totally overwhelmed,
saying "What a circus! This is too much to sort out."
- Penny's body reacts automatically to all
this uproar - her heart rate and blood pressure increase, her breathing
gets shallower, glands emit hormones, some throat, stomach, and back
muscles contract, part of her skin sweats, and her thinking "feels
scrambled." Some of these somatic responses upset her subselves
too.
This all happens
in less than two seconds. Penny is only vaguely conscious of this welter
of thoughts, feelings, and images going on, and of the mosaic of needs that
each of her subselves has at this instant. Larry has no clue at
all. His inner family probably has a similar "circus" going on, though
little is visible externally. Some of his subselves are on high
alert to see what Penny does.
Does this seem
realistic to you? Think of the last time you began to have a disagreement
with your partner (or anyone). Did your thoughts "feel scrambled"? Do you
think your mate felt that? Notice a major implication: if there are three,
five, or twelve people involved in some "situation" (say a normal family dinner), the number of
subselves reacting to each
other internally and mutually becomes mind-boggling.
Now what do
you think causes ineffective communications? Recall: effectiveness
has to do with filling each person's
well enough
for now. This is true between any mix of kids and adults. What might help Penny and Larry sort all this out and fill their
main primary needs in a way they both felt good enough about? I suggest three
things: Both mates…
being aware of
(a) who comprises
their
of subselves, and (b)
who
them in general, and in
spousal conflicts;
being able to
their
Selves to lead their respective teams of subselves; and both mates…
knowing (a) the communication
basics
you just read, (b) the
from Project 2; and
(c) the answers to the
quiz you took above.
Recap
This article is one of a series on maintaining a mutually-satisfying primary
relationship - with or without prior kids. If offers perspective on effective
communication between mates. The article
-
recaps
basic premises about effective communication
-
proposes what's
unique about
communication between primary partners,
-
illustrates common
surface communication problems between
mates,
-
hilights major
benefits of improving your communication,
-
provides a way to
gauge your present communication
effectiveness and knowledge,
-
a brief
example of a conflicted couple communicating; and...
-
links to practical
action-options (in a related
article) for better communication.
Next,
review...
+ + +
Pause,
breathe, and reflect - why did you read this article? Did you get what you
needed? If not, what
you need? Who's
these questions - your
or
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