Enhancing Communication: What To Do When Your Partner and You Don't Talk

Recently I have been working with a lot of couples for relationship and marital counselling. What struck me as I was reflecting upon each of the couple's and what they said in the sessions, was the sheer lack of communication and a difficulty in finding ways to enhance the same.

I know some time back I did write about the importance of communication in any relationship, however, here are some ways in which you can improve it, if you too are struggling with the same. But first lets identify some of the causes for the problems in communication that may plague a relationship.

The Reasons Why IT Happens

The IT, which is Interest Terminated, begins to happen initially when you begin to feel that either your partner is not listening to you or is not responding to what you are saying. It's gets compounded by a tendency at times to switch subjects and then later at having arguments upon the same topic despite having had common notions once upon a time.

There is a drift and a rift which build up and coalesce to make one believe that communication is impossible and therein starts the second phase of IT. This formidable second phase pushes us to plunge into work and other interests, frequently avoiding each other and any form of communication with each other. Life becomes a regimented cycle in which one goes through the motions and we find multitudinous ways of staying out of each others way. 

And then comes the final phase of IT. This is the dirty one, the real messy one. It is here that we begin to look for support outside, finding friends and confidantes who we talk to and share with, relegating our partner more and more into the space of the not needed. And this is also where we are tempted to have attachments outside, resulting in affairs and adultery.

Should You Do Something and When?

This probably is the first question you have to ask yourself before you embark on the journey of bringing about a change. Find and enlist your reasons, and do not make it about family and children. Your reasons, without a shadow of a doubt, need to be about each other,which would mean about wanting to be with each other as you value it.

Only when you want it for each other would you be able to let go and start doing the things which I am soon going to be talking about. 

What Exactly Should You Do Now?

Now that you know that you want things to be better and it is for each other and for wanting to be with your partner, then you need to start with the basics.

• Greet each other good morning and good night.
• Talk to each other in the morning before you leave for work. Tell your partner what your day is planned to be like.
• Once you get to work, the way you send texts and jokes to friends and others, send something to your wife. Most people think that you need to send an 'I love you' or 'I miss you' if it is your partner, but that really isn't the case. This is the basics so start with it.
• If you are going to get late today, instead of putting a status update on Facebook, inform your partner.
• If you like something that your partner is wearing or something that he or she has done during the day then appreciate it. It doesn't cost a thing to say a few good words, try it.
• When you are at home, instead of spending the whole time riveted to the television or your phone or iPad, spend a few minutes, 10 or 15 maybe, just sharing some tidbits from what you did. And don't forget....ask about your partner's day as well.
• Try and have some meals together.
• If going out with each other is difficult right now, then maybe plan something with friends or family. But do talk to your partner at an individual level as well so that they feel that you are cognisant of their presence. 
• If you feel your partner does not share your interests then share the thought with them, instead of harbouring thoughts around it and choosing to simply not involving them in the things you do. Let it be their choice to not be involved.
• Do not make every interaction into a confrontation. It is easy to reactive for all of us,but take a step back and sometimes try to just listen. Decide on certain types of topics for your own self on which you won't react. Sometimes there is excessive provocation, but the idea is that nice you are doing so many things for your partner,there would be some reciprocation as well.

The Verdict

So start with these basic things. Even if right now you are the one taking initiatives and bringing about changes, it is ok and it does not mean that you are a weaker person. Remember that you would be doing this for yourself as much as for the other. Don't bring in your sense of ego into this as even reciprocation from your partner would take a bit of time to start happening.

You have to be patient and give yourself at the very least 3-4 weeks and you would surely start seeing changes, not just in your own self but also in your partner and you would be well on your way to ending the impasse.  

Resolving conflicts: Making a relationship work

Two people when they are in a relationship talk and express their points of view, engage in discussions and each comes from their own individual perspective. These views do not always have to be the same or similar to each other. And when they are dissimilar or expressly divergent from each other, we find problems start to arise. This is the point at which frequently conflicts tend to surface causing people to be in disagreement with each other, leading to a host of negative experiences and expressions.

The bottom line is that relationships tend to be fragile, whether we accept it or not. This fragility tends to be at the root cause of a lot of problems that tend to permeate relationships. How this happens is rather interesting. It is not that we decide and intentionally make our relationships susceptible to misunderstandings or misconceptions or become intolerant of divergent points of view. It just so happens that unconsciously we begin to attribute meaning and intent in a negative direction, which, if we were to become more aware and conscious of or if we were to apply logic and be more rational, we ourselves would dispel and relegate to the background.

However, the fact of the matter is that we rarely, if ever, do that. And this happens more so because we don't even realise what is happening. The point that I am trying to make here is that to bring about any change the first and foremost step is self-awareness. It is imperative that we be able to identify the errors we make in our thought processes as becoming more aware of these aspects goes a long way in ensuring that when opportunities arise we would also be able to take some steps and create measures that would keep such processes in check.

Being aware of how one's mind works and utilising that knowledge to build an understanding of the self, would also ensure that one is able to critically evaluate situations. A lot of times conflicts tend to persist also because we couldn't think clearly enough or recognise that the other individual's perspective too could have some merit associated with it. Knowing the fallacies of our own patterns of thinking and perceiving ensures that there is more of a chance that we would consider things more neutrally than from a perspective which has emotional undercurrents running through it.

Recognising our own fallibility and the fact that we too are susceptible to mistakes and errors, makes one more tolerant of others, which is another factor that can function in a protective manner against conflicts. Learning to listen to each other is an art and one that each one of us must possess. We can't always be right, however much we may want it to to be. It therefore is essential to take stock of one's own role in creating situations and in perpetuating them so that we are able to be more open to and receptive of the views of others.

Conflicts don't arise in a vacuum. They appear on account of a context and are embedded within it. The context deserves as much importance and the meaning we attach to it is contingent upon how we choose to view and interpret the situation. Taking cognisance of the role we play and being aware and accepting of it is equally important as is being aware of what the other person is bringing to the table in terms of their responses and ways of handling the situation may be acting as contributory or compounding factors in creating the conflict. Where one needs to be aware of one's own role, knowledge of what the other does also empowers in being able to cut away the impact of their acts as well as putting you in the position of being able to make them aware of what they do and the changes which if they bring about could go a long way in changing things.

No relationship can survive too long if it is festered with conflict. If you want the "happy ever after" ending then you have to work on the chinks within your relationship which includes the conflicts that adorn it. You can't run away from them...you have to face them and you have to work to tackle them. Taking a proactive approach is a better strategy than allowing things to either lie dormant or be in their full bloom. So try and work on the conflicts that you face in your relationships...it would go a long way in making life more happy and relaxed. 

When things go sour: Coping with disappointments in relationships

More recently I have begun to realize that relationships can bring with them a sense of disappointment in various forms and in all these diverse avatars that these disappointments can assume, they can leave us quite baffled and unsure of what the future holds for us. It is not just about the big things in life which become a source of unhappiness and dissatisfaction, it is in fact more about the smaller things which keep the counter running. One thing happens which gets followed by another and then another and unknowingly the mind keeps forming these interpretations about the disconnect which is beginning to plague the relationship one has with one's partner.

Why It Happens
The problem, I feel, is more about the expectations that we begin to have from each other. And the fact is that a lot of these expectations become progressively less spoken about, acting as unsaid dictums that dominate our interactions. As more time passes in a relationship, one presumes and believes that the other would and should know what we want, think, desire and feel. And so unknowingly we end up hiding more and more of our thoughts and feelings, unintentionally putting up these invisible walls which keep on making things less apparent, becoming more unapproachable to each other.

Communication, and the lack of it thereof, thus becomes the foundation for the disappointments that we face, in particular because misunderstandings, misperceptions and misconceptions begin to rein over. As numerous things remain unsaid, we form our own interpretations which can be far removed from the truth of what was intended. Expectations keep piling and remain largely unfulfilled, which gets magnified by the knowledge of what was there earlier in the relationship, and that which appears to be amiss now.

While at the same time, at the other end of the spectrum we frequently find that despite how much one may try to express and communicate, verbalizations can remain largely ignored, which happens due to multiple reasons. It could be that goals and aspirations are so divergent that they do not leave much of a common ground, or that one is not able to connect at any level which could help initiate and maintain interactions. When people start wanting different things in life, they move in divergent directions in a way that their paths don't appear to intersect at any point, making the distance appear far greater, removing the motivation to try and make things different so they somehow work.

But should this mean that we give up? Because if it does then all we would have left with us is a string of broken relationships, significant disappointments and a stark inability to trust people or a desire to be with them. So, that obviously is not an option for after all, we are all social beings and need people in our lives and we have a strong need for relatedness, for affiliation and to be loved and cared for.

What Can We Do
Ensuring that one is able to overcome the disappointments, particularly those that happen on a regular basis is of paramount importance. The key to doing so is to be able to remind yourself of the reason why you first and foremost are a part of this relationship. There was a reason why you decided to be with your partner, even if that reason was your family or a small thing that seemed important then, and it is not that that reason has seized to exist. The reason may have undergone some changes and modifications, but it still persists and being consciously aware of it is a necessity.

All relationships do bring with them challenges and getting bogged down by the smaller things is not an option. Instead this would be the time to buckle up and become strong internally, to face the problems head on and tackle them. And integral to this is remembering that we could be misinterpreting things or sometimes even exaggerating them in our minds, and we may in the process forget to give our partners the same chances that we would give any other individual. We make the cardinal mistake of expecting them to be super humans at some levels, not needing second chances in life, which is not the reality of things.

We need to be able to start ignoring some of these smaller things that come along our way and recognize  that it is the bigger things that are of greater value and so long as we are all working towards the same end, things would be fine eventually. And if it is so that the ends are divergent, then we would need to sit down together and try to find a middle path, one that takes us in a mutually agreeable direction and helps give a sense of satisfaction.

So to sum it up, disappointments are going to come along our way and there is no way that we can run away from them. But being weary of the reasons that can cause them and ensuring that we do our bit in taking care of them is what is really needed.

Talk to me: Bridging the communication gap in relationships

The cornerstone of probably any relationship is communication and its importance cannot be emphasized more in a romantic relationship. As we work in our clinical settings as mental health professionals, frequently we come across individuals with problems and challenges in their relationships with their partners. And more frequently, these problems stem from a basic compromising of the channels of communication that probably existed once upon a time.

How one goes from talking about everything to not being able to talk about anything appears to be a mystery to us when we are in the midst of such a situation. But the answer can also be rather simple. The fact is that frequently we just start to experience that we cannot share and express openly what we are truly feeling and thinking and this difficulty is further compounded by the fact that one does not feel understood. It's as though I'm talking in English but you seem to be hearing Spanish and responding in German!

These disconnects usually happen because we are not able to listen to each other and give each other the space to be able to say things freely. Tolerance levels seem to vanish away, as though they have been banished into the dungeons and every communication starts becoming a tug-of-war. Not just that, suddenly one starts to compare to others around, feeling that there are those that exist around us who probably value our opinions more and give us a sound listening ear. And this too becomes another source of chaos as one's partner can begin to feel a sense of insecurity that what if one develops a significant emotional attachment outside of the existing relationship.

And now that I write this it does seem quite complicated. A simply concept of communication when it goes amiss can create such havoc in one's life. It's just about talking...talking to one another...listening to one another...sharing with one another

Frequently the advice that one gives couples in such situations is just this..."Why don't you try and listen to him or her. It may just work because it seems to me that he or she is trying to get your attention here". So try, it may seem a real tough ask, but do try. Try to listen to your partner, without butting in with your expert opinion about what it should be or shouldn't be like and see the difference. Some complex problems can have a simple solution, which is not to say that there aren't many more complicated communication related problems that may exist around us. But lets try and do our small bit here and may be, just may be, things could be different.

It takes two to tango: Making relationships work

We would all want to believe that being in a relationship would be easy, something like second nature to all of us, the way we can probably tap our feet to music. And when we are actually in the midst of one we recognize that it really isn't that easy. It fact, relationships are complex and complicated, akin to tango - a dance form requiring perfect synchronicity, a degree of elegance and poise, with an inherent musicality and playfulness that needs to be associated with it.

And it's the same with relationships. They too involve two individuals who need to match up to each others' rhythm and pace, work in sync with each other, trying to find the right degree of coordination and balance.

The essence lies in the need to be in consonance with each other, working up a symphony in its harmonious complexity in order to make things work. Traditionally, women have been seen as the beacons working to bring about changes and adaptations to make things work in a relationship. But with the growing changes in the Indian society along with the changes in the roles that women play, this view is also undergoing a significant transformation.

No longer is a relationship seen as the sole responsibility of the woman. There is an acknowledgement of the need for both individuals in the relationship to try and make things work together, to understand each other, to build a knowledge of what each one likes or dislikes, needs or desires, is motivated or driven towards, and to support each other through the challenges and difficulties that life brings forth.

Relationships are a dance...tango...so dance away to the music of life together with your partner...but the key word is together...