10 Communication Mistakes to Avoid {Tips from a Marriage Counselor}
Are You Making These Communication Misktakes in Your Relationship?
Do you think to yourself, “We don’t know how to communicate“? Feel like you argue in circles, never resolving your differences? Sick of feeling unseen and unheard?
Good, healthy communication is a skill. It’s like a muscle that has to be toned through exercise. It requires intentional effort and practice and guess what? It’s something couples can learn how to do.
How often do you cut each other off, talk over each other, name call, or smirk at your partner’s comments? How many times do you create circular conversations that go nowhere?
In your intimate relationship, you will have differences of opinion. In fact, I hope that you do. That means that two unique personalities are visible. That’s a good thing.
But, how you navigate your differences matters.
Skills You Can Learn Through Marriage Counseling
In couples therapy, marriage counseling, or relationship counseling, we help couples see their own intimate communication dance. This includes learning about who tends to lead, follow, control, be aggressive or passive, pursue or distance, shut down, withdraw and so much more.
In fact, below is a chart that highlights skills we help couples avoid along with teaching them what they can do instead to help make their intimacy dance more fluid, connected, and loving.
10 Communication Skills for Couples – Mistakes and Solutions
| Avoid This… | Instead Do This… |
|---|---|
| Talking over your partner | Be quiet while they speak |
| Blocking your partner’s ideas and feelings | Ask them what they think and feel, then listen |
| Name calling | Manage your anger, take a deep breath |
| Blame and Shame | Practice personal accountability |
| Bringing up old wounds and random issues | Stay focused and stick with one topic |
| Belligerency (“You’re the problem, not me”) | Remember it takes two to tango |
| Sarcasm or hostile humor | Say, “I feel really angry right now” |
| Eye rolling, sighing | Take a break, then come back to talk more |
| Personal criticisms | Focus on the problem, not on character |
| Using words like “always” and “never” | Say “sometimes” or “this happens a lot” |
Center for Intimate Relationships ©2020 All rights reserved.
You can see that these communication skills are not complicated. Anyone can learn to strengthen and improve them. Over the years, we’ve seen thousands of couples in therapy. Every couple comes in with their own unique story that needs some form of guidance and healing.
As couple’s therapists, we use charts just like the one above to provide concrete tools for you to draw from, homework to practice and new skills to learn. Your therapy sessions help you practice these skills so that you can bridge the divide between you.
Let’s consider the story of Harriet and Kirby.
Relationship Counseling with Harriet and Kirby
Harriet and Kirby came into therapy because they were at odds in most subject matters – sex, money, parenting and work. They felt deep marital dissatisfaction but weren’t ready to call it quits. They knew that they loved each other but didn’t know how to manage their differences.
We met weekly. Harriet expressed feeling overwhelmed by their work and parenting schedule, changes in her body after having kids, overall exhaustion on most days and missing the “little things” Kirby used to do for her to make her feel special.
Kirby talked about his stress around being a father due to how he was raised, numbing out each night with social media, feeling like he was always “in trouble” with Harriet and that he didn’t do anything right by her standards. He also said their sexless marriage had him feeling like less than a man.
Both partners came from high conflict families. As kids, they were the “parent pleasers”, in an attempt to keep their parents from fighting even more.
They carried this into adulthood. They tried to please too many people – bosses, external family, the kids, friends, neighbors, the school community, church members – leaving nothing left for their own relationship. They worked to please everyone but each other.
Each felt weary, bitter and resentful towards the other.
Those hard feelings showed up in their poor communication style.
They exercised behaviors from the “avoid” column above. With the guidance of therapy, they learned how those behaviors kept them stuck in a negative cycle.
After about 12 sessions, they started to connect the dots. They saw how their upbringing influenced their interactions with each other.
In fact, they got so good at seeing their own negative pattern that when caught up in it, they would name it themselves! “We’re in it again”, they’d say.
Except this time, they had communication tools to get out of that awful cycle.
With enough practice, that cycle showed up less and less as behaviors from the “Do this Instead” column showed up more and more.
Rather than get heated quickly, like their parents did, they practiced slowing down, conscious breathing, responding (Do Instead) not reacting (Avoid).
They focused on connecting instead of winning.
They lived for 10 years in a dissatisfying marriage. Through marriage counseling and commitment to the homework, they improved their marriage in just six months.
Healthy Communication With Your Spouse or Partner
Healthy communication skills are available to you too. As you can see, the skills are not mysterious or complicated. They are not vague or abstract.
They are concrete, tangible, do-able behaviors that you can start to practice right away.
Far too many couples fail to get the right help that can transform their relationship. With simple behavior changes, you can stop suffering year after year in an unhappy marriage and start to feel alive and happy again.
If you find yourself stuck in a negative cycle and can’t get yourselves out of it, consider working with a marriage counselor or couples counselor who has experience and can offer you research-based tools to support your relationship health.
Hashtags:
#communication
#connection
#avoidmiscommunication
#couplestherapy
#intimacy
#carolynnaristone
#myintimaterelationship
#intimacyinsiders
#relationshipcounseling
#relationships
#marriage
