COMMUNICATION IN YOUR MARRIAGE


The quantity of information may be right, but if the QUALITY is violated, there is still a chance of the message being misread. If you intend your message to be sarcastic (ie by putting a certain inflection into your voice) but the recipient does not pick this up, the entire message may have unhappy consequences. I know of a friend who walked past an article of clothing in a store, which she found to be particularly kitch. She sarcastically raved about it to her friend, who missed the sarcasm, and bought her the outfit for her birthday! The aim is not to make assumptions about how the other person feels about a particular idea, unless you know for sure how they feel.

Another sure-fire way to confuse the message we are sending is to send a contradicting body-language message. For people who know one well (children or husbands) the body language is usually the message that takes precedence. I learned this the hard way, as my children never listened to me. The reason, someone told me, was because I was always too nice when I gave orders. They were so busy listening to the tone of my voice, that they never took me seriously. Once I matched my body language with the verbal content of my message, they began to take me more seriously.

And why, do you think, the woman whose husband sends her flowers for the first time in their forty year marriage, throws him out, suitcase and all? She is not used to such behavior, and therefore mistrusts it - she probably thinks he is having an affair. Your clients must be careful of changing their non-verbal manner of communicating too drastically.

I want to finish up this article with a quote from a person called William James, who said "No more fiendish punishment could be devised, even were such a thing physically possible than that one should be turned loose in society and remain absolutely unnoticed by all the members thereof."

I shall continue my next article by beginning with the idea that "one cannot not communicate", and then talk about issues like context and punctuation.

Please remember that in my January 4 article, I wrote of a number of web-sites specifically related to marriage issues. Till next time, then....

The copyright of the article COMMUNICATION IN YOUR MARRIAGE in Counselling/Therapy is owned by Bronwen Schoombie. Permission to republish COMMUNICATION IN YOUR MARRIAGE in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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