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Communication & the Fallback Girl
Communication continues to be one of the difficult things in the world for me. It is the one area of my life and relationships in which I feel I’ve made little progress. As such, it causes me much frustration, and I recognize that the frustration itself may in turn actually keep me from making progress. A vicious cycle.
Where it all began
Perhaps it comes from that whole childhood business of feeling unimportant and learning at any early age that there was no point in trying to communicate because communicating only brought dismissal and ridicule. Still, since effective communication is essential for successful relationships, it is something that I have got to overcome.
What is communication really?
All of this really hit home when I was reading Part 2 of Mr. Unavailable & the Fallback Girl. In Part 2 NML discusses communication. She uses this definition of communication from Wikipedia:
Definition of ‘communication’: The exchange of thoughts, messages, or information, as by speech, signals, writing, or behavior. [Source – Wikipedia]
The truth of the matter is that the definition itself gave me hope. Why? Read it again. “…by speech, signals, writing or behavior.” Well, hot damn! I’m not as bad at this as I first thought. Seriously, I can communicate in writing til the freaking cows come home!
When we think of communication, we think of a couple of things. First, as NML points out, we think that it all has to be positive. Second, we think that communication means we have to sit down and discuss. But, the truth is, not all communication is verbal.
Fighting the good fight
Reading that was like a gift from heaven. Really! It means I don’t suck as much as I thought. I do communicate, I can communicate. I just have issues with one aspect of communication…the verbal kind.
Don’t misunderstand. I know I’m not all healed. I recognize how important verbal communication is, and I realize that I still need to be able to communicate verbally, and there’s a lot of work to be done. I’m just not in as bad a place as I first thought.
Thoughts?
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Brad K. August 21st, 2008, 8:13 am
LisaQ, Men and women think and communicate differently. I have been told that women are smarter, they can discuss emotions and feelings in an intelligent fashion. Men communicate in well-placed grunts and pokes.
So not only do you want to brush up on communication skills, but there are two dialects to learn.
Then there is this curious twist. Mention a problem, and women expect to receive emotional validation (“I know, sometimes I just can’t get him to understand me.”). Men try to solve the problem (“You need feedback. Use a journal and think of this as a self-directed training class. Record your goals. Record your issues, list your plans to address them, write in your reviews of how things went. Repeat until you meet all your communication goals.”).
IFrom a Dear Abby column quite some years ago: When there is a breakdown in communication, there is nothing you can do to change what your partner hears or understands – he listens as he happens to be listening at the moment. But you can change how you express yourself. At times you just have to try different ways to make the communication happen.
Oh, and louder doesn’t work. Speak loudly, and they just hear your voice. Speak softly and they hear your words. Allow for competing noise and hearing loss. Speaking softly is great practice for toddler tantrums – they have to quiet to hear your words. Yell at a tantrum, and you raise the energy level and spur the yeller into greater efforts. Keep the voice level even or lower, and you increase the odds of communicating. Besides, few people are able to listen when they are emotional or tense or acting out.
Honey August 21st, 2008, 1:55 pm
I am much better at writing than speaking, as well–the BF knows this, and we have exchanged e-mails or letters on serious relationship issues on several occasions (whether as preliminaries or follow-ups to in-person communication). We actually worked out a system (and have it in writing somewhere) for dealing with problems in a way that lets each of us incorporate our preferred communication style.
The key is letting the other person know your preferred style BEFORE you have a huge issue…otherwise, like you, I’m left kind of cowering and feeling silenced in the face of someone raising their voice. The BF has a tendency to raise his voice and knows I can’t deal with that constructively at all, so he is trying to pay attention and not do it. Sometimes he doesn’t realize he’s doing it (especially if he’s frustrated about something that has nothing to do with me and is just venting–he’s not yelling *at* me, but I have a negative reaction just the same) but it has definitely improved over the course of our dating life.
Hope this helps!
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Diva's thoughts August 21st, 2008, 8:38 pm
Sometimes, I have the hardest time communicating. I think it largely depends on who I am attempting to communicate with because most times I have no problems. Hmmmmmmm….
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lisaq August 22nd, 2008, 5:54 am
I definitely realize men and women communicate differently BradK. Thanks for your input.
I hear you Honey! It absolutely does help! Sounds like a great system!
Yep, Diva. Me too. I can tell my girlfriends and even my daughters anything, but put a man in front of me that I care about and yikes!
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Jinksy August 22nd, 2008, 7:55 am
The fact that you are at least skilled in the form of written communication is awesome in itself. I know way too many people who cannot articulate their thoughts well on paper or in person.
In order to help change that, I’ve known some people who write down what they wish to verbally express, and they attempt to communicate this orally. This doesn’t work for everybody.
The problem that I think most of us have with verbal communication is confidence. That’s why its easier to leave someone a note than deal with them directly. If you are unsure of what type of response you may get, you cannot rebut or respond with confidence.
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lisaq August 23rd, 2008, 8:51 am
Thanks Jinksy! I like the idea of writing down what I want to express verbally. I think it’s a good technique. And I think you’re probably right about confidence being one of the things that keeps us from verbalizing…
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