Are you trying to get heard? Do you feel ignored? Is your spouse not responding to your communication? We live in an interesting time. With one click, you can communicate with anyone in the world. It's easy, quick, and free. You even have options. If you don't want to click, you could dial, beep, page, instant-message, or Fed Ex.
You know what's killing marriages these days? Email! More and more I'm seeing husbands and wives resort to email to communicate with each other. You want to do something tangible today to improve your marriage? Stop emailing your spouse! Email is for information. But in a marriage you've got to HEAR each other. And I don't mean hear the sounds of each other's words. You've got to be able to hear the silence between the sounds and interpret the unspoken meaning of pressed lips or teary eyes. You've got to be able to hear the shapes and sounds in each other's heart. You can NOT accomplish this via email.
It's true. Your ability to communicate with the outside world has become increasingly easy. But my guess is that your ability to communicate with your spouse has become increasingly difficult.
The reason for this is that most people confuse information communication with personal communication. Technological advancements give us all sorts of options to communicate information. But how do you feel the pulse of someone's soul? How do you communicate the subtleties in your heart? You can't text message that. You can have the latest and greatest in communication gadgets, but it won't matter. Personal communication is a whole different ball game. And it's personal communication that determines the success or failure of your marriage.
I want to be clear about something; you can't do it with communication techniques either. There's no clinical communication therapy that can help you and your spouse think each other's thoughts, feel each other joy, and cringe from each other's pain. The world is filled with casualties of traditional communication strategies. If you're like most people with marriage trouble, you've been down that path and you know that it does NOT work.
Creating love in your marriage paves the way for effective communication. I'll prove it to you. Think about when you fell in love. How was your communication? Good, right? In fact, when you're in love, you communicate with the wink of an eye and you can finish each other's sentences. And yet you haven't known each other that long and you haven't learned any communication techniques.
Listen carefully. Communication has very little to do with techniques or knowledge of each other. It has everything to do with the depth of connection between the communicators. The question you should be asking is NOT, "How do I communicate effectively with my spouse." The question you should be asking is, "How do I connect with my spouse again?" Once you reconnect, you won't be sitting in silence in the basement. You'll hear the sound of the pipes from above. It'll be your spouse. You were heard.
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