Scenario 1: A mother wants to talk with her husband about her children. She thinks she knows how best to handle a situation that came up but she wants to run it by her husband. They go into another room to talk. Things are going well until she explains how she wants to handle it. The husband immediately disagrees and explains his idea. The mother says she doesn’t think his idea is effective. The husband then says something like, “You never listen to me”. The mother gets defensive and acts with some criticism and the husband reciprocates. The result: the husband leaves the house and the mom stays in the room crying.

Scenario 2: A husband wants to do more activities with his wife. One day the husband says, “I want to do more things together”. The wife then says sarcastically and with contempt, “Well, I do, too, but we have kids and responsibilities; I am so busy. Maybe we could do things more if you helped more around the house”. The husband then feels upset and discouraged and says, “fine”. The husband then leaves because he is hurt and the wife is left feeling angry because she feels that she does all the work.

Do these scenarios sound familiar? In both scenarios, the main issues relate to ineffective communication and focus on oneself rather than on the other person. Have you ever tried talking with your spouse and it ended badly, despite your good intentions and best effort? We are going to talk about effective ways of communication to help your conversations and relationships run smoother.

Why is Communication Such a Struggle?

First, let’s talk about why we struggle with communication. I mean, we’ve been communicating since we first learned how to talk, so why do we struggle so much?

One thing we struggle with is that one of our mediums for communication conflicts with another. We have three ways we communicate or three communication mediums. There are

1. Verbal (words)
2. Non-verbal (body language)
3. Tone (what voice we use to say things)

Oftentimes, we try to communicate just with words. But in communication, it is important to note that the phrase “actions speak louder than words” applies here. Only 14% of our words matter when we communicate. Tone and nonverbal communication are more commonly noticed and more important when we speak, for our tone makes up 35% and non-verbal makes up 51% of our communication.

We also struggle with communication because of gender. Men and women think and communicate differently as well as desire to talk about different topics. Note: this is not an excuse to not communicate with your spouse! We can learn how to overcome these differences, and the communication that follows is beautiful.

Another reason communication is halted is because people use what John Gottman explained in his book The Seven Principles of Making Marriage Work as the Four Horsemen. The Four Horsemen are 4 ways of ineffective communication that damages a marriage; they are criticism/controlling, contempt (like sarcasm), defensiveness, and stonewalling (avoiding, ignoring).

Other things that stop communication include interrupting, threatening, forcing, guilt-tripping, providing solutions, interrogating, ridiculing/belittling, and judging.

But most importantly, NOT LISTENING. We sometimes don’t listen to our spouse, which leads me to the point of this post…

How to Improve Communication

1. Listen. We often let distractions and other people/responsibilities/thoughts/feelings get in the way of us listening intently to our spouse. And we need not only listen to what they say. We need to watch their body language and tone and need to try to decipher the real message of what they may be saying. We also need to listen with empathy, love, compassion, and acceptance, else your partner will not feel comfortable or desirous to talk with you.
2. Know One Another’s Dreams. Oftentimes, we bring things up in conversation because we have a dream/desire/need that is not being met and that we hope our partner can help us with. If you don’t know their dreams, ask your partner about why they want certain things – ask about their dreams. Note: it’s important to know your own dreams/wants/needs so you can help yourself and your spouse.
3. Consensus. Once you have listened to/understand your partner and know their dreams, we must try to help them to fulfill their dreams. We should not try to compromise, for that causes us to focus on ourselves. We must try to talk about and come to a consensus, where we decide to do what will be best for our marriage and our spouse.

All these things help us to solve the issues that are hurting us and help us and our spouse know that we can be comfortable and accepted as we communicate with our spouse.