What is the key to effective marital communication? What are some of the most common points of contention when it comes to communication in a marriage?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Almost all marriage problems stem from communication errors. There are many possible points of contention when it comes to communication in a marriage, from how often to have sex and how to handle finances to how to raise children. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here\u2019s how to handle some of the most common marital communication problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
In modern times, our concept of intimacy has become more precise\u2060\u2014we consider it to be achieved mainly through verbal communication. Modern relationships demand self-disclosure, sharing our feelings, and being good listeners (non-judgemental, validating, and so on). We want to feel known and expect our partners to share as much as we do. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, according to couples therapist Esther Perel, the author of Mating in Captivity<\/em><\/a>, talking isn\u2019t the only (or even best) way of intimate communication<\/a> in a marriage. There are two methods of communicating intimacy, verbal and physical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Women tend to be good at verbal communication because, throughout history, they haven\u2019t had access to power. Instead, they became experts at building relationships. Even today, girls are taught to develop relational skills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, men haven\u2019t been socialized the same way as women. Men are taught to compete and perform, and to be in control, fearless, and invulnerable. For men, expressing feelings<\/a> is sometimes not only not in the curriculum, but actively discouraged. Trying to create intimacy only through talking can leave men trying to cram a language they don\u2019t speak. <\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Perel, these differences make communication in a marriage difficult when it comes to expressing intimacy. Specifically, people who value verbal communication have trouble understanding that there\u2019s any other way to express intimacy. This leads to the talker trying to get the non-talker to switch languages. <\/strong>However, nonverbal communication<\/a> in a marriage can be just as important as verbal. Not only that, but engaging only in talk intimacy can hinder a marriage in several ways: <\/p>\n\n\n\n One: Women\u2019s sexual repression.<\/strong> Men might have more trouble talking than women, but focusing on talk has negative consequences for women too\u2060\u2014repressed sexuality. If women talk only with their voices, not their bodies, they\u2019re cutting out an entire language. Single-mode communication also gives weight to the idea that women have to love someone to be allowed to sexually desire them (historically, men could like sex but women who did were immoral). Women are still trying to figure out how to be everything they want to be today, and focusing only on speech, rather than all forms of expression, only makes this harder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two: Tension.<\/strong> There\u2019s a spectrum of communication in a marriage: pure physical communication on one side, and pure verbal communication on the other. Some people hate communicating physically\u2060\u2014their body is confining. They feel self-conscious and awkward, and for them, words are much safer. Other people feel freest and least inhibited in expressing themselves through their bodies. When two people on opposite ends of the spectrum are together, there\u2019s often tension, because for the speech-preferring person, sex creates anxiety, and for the nonverbal-preferring person, sex is a balm for their anxiety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Three: Control.<\/strong> Talking, and having no secrets, doesn\u2019t necessarily lead to intimacy. In fact, it can lead to things like coercion, intrusion, and control. The person who\u2019s less inclined to communicate verbally might feel forced to share because their partner is sharing and they need to reciprocate. Additionally, pushing for details about where your partner goes and who they meet can turn into surveillance and erode personal boundaries. And ironically, knowing every detail of your partner\u2019s life doesn\u2019t necessarily even create intimacy. What time your partner left work probably doesn\u2019t give you much insight into their personality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Four: Loss of distance. <\/strong>The better you get to know your partner through talking, the less distance there is between you, and desire requires distance to flourish. <\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Perel, there are a few possibilities to working through it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, Mitch and Laura speak totally different languages, each conforming to gender stereotypes. Laura thinks Mitch is the usual sex-obsessed man, and Mitch thinks Laura is sexually inhibited and feels disgust or contempt about sex. What\u2019s really going on is this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n For Laura, sex comes with a lot of baggage. As a child, the only things she can remember her father saying about her body were comments about her breasts, and her mother always told her that boys are only interested in sex. She grew up thinking she could be pretty or<\/em> smart. Laura\u2019s lack of connection with her body has nothing to do with Mitch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mitch is completely comfortable with sex. His childhood experiences with sex were very different from Laura\u2019s. He fell in love with a girl named Hillary at eighteen. Hillary had a lot of experience with sex and Mitch\u2019s first experiences were all positive. He\u2019s not very good at verbal communication and prefers to communicate via his body. Sex makes him feel emotionally safe<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first step for Laura and Mitch was to understand that each of them speaks a different language. Next, with Perel\u2019s guidance in therapy, they communicated nonverbally, playing games like leading each other around the room, trust falls, and mirroring each other\u2019s movement. It was physical communication, but it was non-sexual, and this helped them both see their areas of resistance. Laura learned that when she doubts her own appeal, it\u2019s harder to believe that Mike desires her. Mike learned that he was dependent on another person to make sex feel safe for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nTITLE: Mating in Captivity In addition to expressing intimacy, married couples often have trouble communicating effectively in situations that involve high stakes, strong emotions, or different opinions. In such situations, both partners behave at their worst\u2014yelling at each other and sniping sarcastically, or on the other side going silent and withdrawing. When this happens, little progress is made, and resentment builds. Moreover, couples often deliberately avoid having these conversations because they are afraid they\u2019ll make matters worse. <\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler, the authors of Crucial Conversations<\/em><\/a>, failed \u201ccrucial conversations\u201d is one of the main reasons relationships fail. When people break up they often blame it on differences of opinion on important issues. But while everyone argues about important issues, clearly not every relationship ends in turmoil\u2014it\u2019s how you argue that matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From the authors\u2019 research observing couples, they found that people handle difficult conversations in one of three ways:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The researchers found that helping couples hold crucial conversations more effectively reduced their chances for unhappiness or breakup by more than half. The first step to handling crucial conversations effectively is to get all relevant information on the table.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n When people express their opinions honestly, share their feelings, and articulate ideas\u2014even if their ideas are controversial or unpopular\u2014the result is dialogue, the free exchange of meaning or information. <\/p>\n\n\n\n However, in most high-stakes conversations,<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, a wife finds a hotel receipt and mistakenly thinks her husband is having an affair. The worst way to handle a touchy situation like this would be to plunge in with an accusation followed by a threat\u2014that\u2019s what most people would do. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But there\u2019s a constructive way the woman can share and resolve her concerns. To that end, the authors recommend the STATE approach, which involves five steps: <\/p>\n\n\n\n Facts set the stage for all sensitive conversations. Start with the facts alone (which are observable), not your emotion-driven story (your conclusions). For example, a hotel receipt in your husband\u2019s name is a fact\u2014you can see it. Your belief about why he visited the hotel (absent his explanation) is a conclusion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When you blurt out your conclusions, it\u2019s ineffective. You expect bad results and get bad results. Or you hold the story inside because you feel it\u2019s too risky to share\u2014tension builds up and you blow up, getting the bad results you feared. Starting with facts avoids these problems. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you simply mention the facts, the other person may not understand the implications. For example, if you tell an employee, \u201cI noticed you had company software in your briefcase,\u201d they may not understand that you\u2019re talking about a potential policy violation. You have to follow-up that observation with your conclusions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s the combination of facts plus the conclusion there\u2019s a problem that requires face-to-face discussion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The key to sharing controversial ideas is to blend confidence and humility. Express confidence by sharing our facts and stories clearly. Then, express humility by asking others how they see it. Encourage them to express their facts, stories, and feelings. Listen closely and be willing to rethink your story as more information is presented. <\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019ll get people to listen if you describe both your facts and stories in a tentative, non-dogmatic way. Speaking tentatively means telling your story as a story, not presenting it as an incontrovertible fact. For example, start with phrases indicating you\u2019re sharing an opinion, not asserting a fact: \u201cIn my opinion…\u201d, or \u201cI\u2019m beginning to wonder whether\u2026\u201d (rather than, \u201cThe fact is\u2026\u201d or \u201cIt\u2019s obvious to me that…\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Speaking tentatively also means sharing in a way that shows confidence in your conclusions, but that also suggests you\u2019re open to challenges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sometimes others are reluctant to share their paths (facts, stories, and feelings), and you need to be more encouraging. You need to make clear that no matter how controversial their ideas, you want to hear them. This is especially important if you\u2019re talking with someone with a tendency to move to silence (to make the fool\u2019s choice of not saying anything to avoid risk). When others are reluctant to speak up, try these steps:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Revisiting the example of a wife confronting her husband about hotel receipts shows how to apply the dialogue steps for discussing a sensitive subject. Instead of immediately accusing him of infidelity, the wife applies STATE steps: <\/p>\n\n\n\n \r\nTITLE: Crucial Conversations Marital success isn\u2019t determined by how often a couple sleeps together, or opinions on how to raise children, or how each person handles finances. It\u2019s determined by the quality of communication in a marriage, which determines success in all other areas of the relationship. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you enjoyed our article about communication in a marriage, check out the following suggestions for further reading: <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Sex at Dawn<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Why do so many marriages end in divorce<\/a>? In Sex at Dawn<\/em>, Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jeth\u00e1 (a husband-and-wife team) offer a surprising answer: For most of our evolutionary history, humans lived in societies that encouraged casual sex with multiple partners. According to the authors, humans evolved to be naturally promiscuous and only reluctantly embraced monogamy about 10,000 years ago when we stopped foraging<\/a> for food and started farming.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What is the key to effective marital communication? What are some of the most common points of contention when it comes to communication in a marriage? Almost all marriage problems stem from communication errors. There are many possible points of contention when it comes to communication in a marriage, from how often to have sex and how to handle finances to how to raise children. Here\u2019s how to handle some of the most common marital communication problems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":77428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,12],"tags":[452],"class_list":["post-92053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-communication","category-relationships","tag-guides","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"\nFriction Between Communication Styles<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
How to Translate<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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\nAUTHOR: Esther Perel
\nTIME: 28
\nREADS: 100.3
\nIMG_URL: https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/mating-in-captivity-cover.png
\nBOOK_SUMMARYURL: mating-in-captivity-summary-esther-perel
\nAMZN_ID: XYZ
\n<\/p>\n\n\n\nDifficult Conversations <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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#1: Share the Facts<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
#2: Tell Your Story<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
#3: Ask For Others\u2019 Paths<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
#4: Talk Tentatively<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
#5: Encourage Testing<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Example: The Suspicious Affair <\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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\r\nAUTHOR: Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, et al.
\r\nTIME: 41
\r\nREADS: 40.9
\r\nIMG_URL: https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/crucial-conversations-cover.jpg
\r\nBOOK_SUMMARYURL: crucial-conversations-summary-kerry-patterson-joseph-grenny-mcmillan-switzler
\r\nAMZN_ID: B005K0AYH4
\r\n<\/p>\n\n\n\nFinal Words<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n