Communication Skills

Did you know that 48% of couples legally married get a divorce?  Some of them get a divorce before they reach their fifth year of marriage.  This percentage is even higher for couples that don’t get married but decide to live together.
Is it possible to achieve true togetherness in married life so that two are joined together to become one?  Many people today are surprised to hear that a couple is truly happy and that they feel their married life is fulfilled.  They are even more surprised with couples who have been married for a long time.  On the other hand, it does not surprise anybody if couples after 6 months or a year decide to separate or get a divorce.  It is looked at as if it is something natural because it happens so often.  Nobody ever questions why it is happening.

Those of us interested in finding a solution to this problem are trying to dig deeper and find out why people are getting divorced and why it is happening so early in marriage.  Marriage, as an institution, is under attack by those people that regard power, money and sex as the basis for human life.  A prime example is the media.  Their messages promote divorce, infidelity, abortion, cohabitation, and promiscuity.  Through these external forces we receive the message that all these things are normal, acceptable and expected.   So it is logical that the majority of couples go into marriage thinking: “if this does not work, I’ll get a divorce”.  Aside from these “external forces”, we have also found that the lack of communication has a major effect on marriages not working. Communication is the basis of all social life.  If spouses do not communicate, inevitably they will eventually stop having a relationship.

Dating is a period of intense romance filled with both verbal and non-verbal communication.  When you are in love you are attracted to everything about your partner, nothing ever bothers you. In a way this lack of objectivity creates false expectations in couples and when they get married it creates the biggest crisis in communication.  They find out that in reality nobody is perfect and then it becomes hard to say “I love everything about him/her” or “nothing bothers me”.  When you are missing a button on your shirt, arrive home late, leave clothes on the floor, have fights about family, etc. things begin to change.   True communication begins to diminish.  Everything, even the smallest detail, starts to bother us and we do not like anything about our spouse.

Where is the thread that kept us together?  How did it break?  In the lack of communication.  Our spouse’s values are not recognized anymore and we do not look for the right moment to say things.  Instead of respecting each other and having an open and transparent relationship we start being aggressive with each other. Peace at home and the communication you had are gone.  Family relationships suffer when:

• we do not say things with love
• there is no tolerance and we do not understand what our spouse is trying to say
• we try to desperately change our spouse’s behavior so our expectation of marriage comes true
• we become defensive
• we do not feel accepted. 

Sometimes there are brief reconciliations which usually do not last long because we continue to make the same mistakes.  We continuously criticize our spouse and we complain using language such as: “YOU NEVER HELP ME”, “YOU ALWAYS LEAVE EVERYTHING ON THE FLOOR”.  Additionally, we are no longer loving, we are not kind and we never say “I love you” to each other.

When this does not take us to a crisis in the relationship or a divorce it drives us to a false tolerance which is unhealthy for the relationship.  It is not healthy because each person lives a separate life and tries to get away from the true reality about the marriage.   Each person closes their heart and does not spend even one minute of the day to talk about the relationship. 

To have good communication in marriage is not easy.  It is an art that we should practice constantly so it can develop fully and we can take advantage of it.  Communication is an act of openness toward one another which means sharing with no boundaries.  In other words, to give and take.  In this give and take, listening is 90% of the communication, because we all desperately need to be heard.  If you want to find new healthy ways to communicate with your spouse, give yourself a day with “Renovacion Conyugal”.

Evaluate Your Relationship
Articles of Interest
--- Forgiveness
--- Communication Skills
--- Time for Sex