Communication in Relationships
Love and Relationships (Part 3): Communication in Relationships
If you want the answer to all the questions posed in Part 2, you’re in luck, because there’s one answer to all of them. Communication. Communication doesn’t mean “talking.” Communication means attention, clarity, and allowing for lack of clarity.
Attention is the work you do before the talking begins. What is it that you want? Now what it is that you really want? Now, without any bullshitting, what is it that you really REALLY want? For many, the act of finding out what they want is an exercise in near-futility, it’s something you must practice doing, paying attention to the desires spilling out from your core thoughts and yearnings. It requires you to quiet the mind’s rapid fire of worries and reactions to the world, focusing on what’s coming from within. Inside each of us a purity of intent and desire, and while it’s scary to engage that, doing so is key to building a loving relationship.
I don’t mean things like “I wanna go to the ballgame on Saturday.” I mean, actual desires, yearnings, driving forces in a life that shape every action. Deviations from these wants create resentment, regret, and guilt. You cannot get away from these desires, they act on your every waking and sleeping moment. These are things like “I will die without regret,” or “I will be a conduit of virtue,” or “I will love fully, unabashedly, and completely my one great love,” but can even get as simple as “I will protect myself and my loved ones from destruction.” Attention is the real work of communication, because it’s life work, work you’ll never truly complete. I’m calling it “attention” because that’s what it is, you’re paying attention to yourself, the world around you, and how the two of you are relating and connecting together. Ultimately, the desires you have are always there, but only by paying attention will you be able to leverage them and attain them through your relationship.
Clarity is more simple, it’s the effort you put into translating your desires into words and concepts someone else, namely your partner, can understand. The other important component of clarity is accuracy. Don’t say “I want some kids,” say “I want enough kids, born at appropriate intervals that will allow them to have a healthy relationship with each other and with us as a family.” If that’s what you truly want, then by God say that, don’t worry about whether it’s right or wrong, put it out there. Many people I think feel ashamed about being specific or detailed in their desires, they’re afraid they’ll be judged by their ideal hopes and dreams. A loving partner, however, is there to help you attain those dreams, to be part of them, and to make them even better than you imagined.
The third, and perhaps most important component to making a relationship survive, is allowing for lack of clarity. It is absolutely impossible for you and your partner to interpret correctly 100% of what the other is saying. The loss of meaning fluctuates wildly, but even when all elements are perfect, lost and misinterpreted information can account for perhaps 99%. There are two things that can cause problems to quickly escalate if no attention is paid to this lack of clarity.
The first is complete ignorance, one or both partners will assume they are interpreting everything correctly, but instead be interpreting either the opposite from an intended meaning or something completely random. They’ll get immensely confused, upset, or both, and be ready to take drastic action based on the new information they’ve gleaned from their partner.
The second, more destructive path is a feeling of betrayal. It will be obvious to the couple that miscommunication is occurring, and they’ll be angry that either they are giving the information adequately and it is not being received adequately, or that it is being received perfectly but not being sent clearly. It’s a relatively ridiculous situation for an outsider, but it’s a living hell when it’s happening to you. When the very medium of expression is under doubt, it’s difficult to express or do anything. The solution is to not get upset when it’s happening, be forgiving, realize that the other person isn’t doing it on purpose, and take a few moments to calm down.
Through a meaningful relationship, one can grow and learn in ways unattainable through any other means. You learn more about yourself, you learn more about your lover, you learn more about people beyond your relationship, and all that learning leads to better understanding of the world around you and your place in it.
In the next post on this topic, I”ll be talking about the very important issue of freedom in a relationship, how to juggle responsibility with independence and authority.
POSTS IN THIS SERIES:
Love and Relationships (Part 1): An Introduction
Love and Relationships (Part 2): The Phases Leading to a Meaningful Relationship
Love and Relationships (Part 3): Communication
Love and Relationships (Part 4): Independence vs. Relationships
Love and Relationships (Part 5): The Couple’s Accountability System
Love and Relationships (Part 6): Finding the Right Person
Love and Relationships (Part 7): The Clueless Lover
Love and Relationships (Part 8): The Relationships Virgin
Love and Relationships (Part 9): Don’t Give Up!
August 16th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
[...] Love and Relationships (Part 3): Communication [...]
August 16th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
[...] Love and Relationships (Part 3): Communication [...]
September 23rd, 2007 at 6:20 pm
You use roughly 1000 words on your advice on communication; yet you’re ideas become convoluted with useless text unrelated to your message. If you want to maintain your audiences’ attention, I suggest you cut stuff out and get to your point.
September 23rd, 2007 at 11:45 pm
One of the most important aspects of communication isn’t to put emphasis on brevity. We’re not selling fast food or a 30 second commercial on the latest cell phone. We’re talking about how to better communicate in relationships. It’s an important topic that a shorter article isn’t going to communicate properly. We’re not worried about maintaining audience attention. The right audience that wants this information will not care if the article is 100 words or 2,000 words, as long as they may gain some insight from reading it.
Ms. Wu, if you didn’t quite grasp how the article may help people with their communication, please let us know what we can do to better explain our points. It’s all about sharing information and helping each other learn.
December 31st, 2007 at 1:11 pm
[...] Love and Relationships (Part 3): Communication [...]
January 3rd, 2008 at 12:01 pm
[...] Love and Relationships (Part 3): Communication [...]
January 14th, 2008 at 11:13 am
[...] Love and Relationships (Part 3): Communication [...]