Self Help

The number one cause of marital strife is lack of communication. The most common phrase to be said by couples that are having trouble is: “We’re just not communicating”, which then leads to: “Can our marriage be salvaged?” It is truly amazing that a relationship could be torn apart simply as a result of not being able to effectively talk to one another. Husbands and wives either misread, misinterpreted, or miss entirely what each other are saying. As a result, small issues can escalate into profound misunderstandings, embedded with hostility, anger, and blame.

Often enough, couples really do think that they are communicating, but unfortunately the message isn’t getting through. The fact is that if husbands and wives can pinpoint why they are having trouble to begin with, they can greatly sharpen their communication skills.

In many other instances, communication problems stem from differences in conversational styles between men and women. Interestingly enough, these styles can be traced right back to the playground, where little girls place a premium on talking and sharing secrets in order to make friends and be close to each other, and while little boys rely on displays of athletic prowess.

From early on in life, girls are schooled in the intricacies of intimate relationships. Studies have shown that when women grow up, they still put a premium on talking and sharing. In a marriage, wives tend to be the emotional caretakers of the marriage. Since they are more in tune to their own feelings as well as the shifting tides of their relationship, they notice and bring up problems a lot more then men do.

These studies also documented that most all women yearn for their husbands to be a sounding board or to lend a sympathetic ear whenever they have a problem. They just want someone to be there for them, preferably their partners. Men on the other hand, want action. Almost every time a problem is brought up, men will interrupt a wife’s recitation of that problem and jump right into a quick-fix solution. In addition, once a man offers a solution, he expects it to be “case closed, end of the problem”.

As you can see, both men and women have totally different styles of communication, almost to the extreme. Given such disparate styles of communication, it’s common to hear married women complain that: “My husband doesn’t care, he doesn’t love me, he doesn’t listen…” Husbands on the other hand feel that: “After a while I have to tune my wife out because she talks everything into more problems. And this talking then produces even more arguments between us.”