Communication in Relationships-1

I asked a group of friends and a couple of people on my WhatsApp contact list about issues that they felt were important in relationships. After receiving various comments and votes from them, I concluded on writing on communication in relationships, because this kept on recurring.

I chose the topic because I found that after over 12 suggestions, most of the other important issues in relationships could also be largely linked to communication issues. Besides, I decided on this topic because I want to believe that my last relationship ended based on communication issues, so this should hit home with me.

As we all know, relationships aren’t for kids. It is for two people who meet each other and are ready to work towards perfection. So, I’d be talking to people who are ready for serious long-lasting relationships here and not the “let’s see how it goes” geng.

Communication is basically about having an idea, decoding it into a message, and relaying it to the receiver through the right medium. Thankfully, I’ve been taking courses on communication in the past few weeks, and I have learned that there is communication and there is effective communication.

The effectiveness of communication lies in the ability of the receiver to get the message that the sender is trying to pass across. If your audience or receiver does not get the message that you intend to pass across, then you have not communicated.

Communication in relationships goes beyond talking or saying things that you think your partner likes to hear or stuff from the movies or books. For effective communication in relationships, openness and vulnerability are very important.

I believe that most times, in relationships, people have communication issues because to an extent, society through social media or books or movies has influenced us so much that we get into relationships with “over the rooftop” expectations of our partners.

Sadly, it is bad enough that sometimes we have unrealistic expectations, but then again we fail to communicate those expectations to our partners and end up flunking it.

So let’s use the analogy of examination in school. Imagine you never sat for a test or exam and never saw the exam questions, but you end up seeing scores on your report card. How would that make you feel? It doesn’t make sense right?

Well, it’s the same thing that some of us do to our partners. We mark and score them for exams which they never sat for or saw questions. Imagine your teacher marking you right or wrong on a blank sheet of paper. You never saw the questions, talk more of answering them, yet you’re being graded.

I’d give a practical example. You get into a relationship with the expectation that your partner gets you surprise gifts every once in a while, but it’s been 5 months of dating and Mr right has not mysteriously sent flowers to your office or sent you a “get dressed by 7 pm, I’m taking you out for dinner” kinda text, and at this point, you begin to “cancel” him.

According to your grading system, he is failing and he is not loving you right. Meanwhile, Mr. Right doesn’t even know that you had expectations like that. He sees your “aww! I love you too” replies to his good morning and good night texts and in his mind, you are having a perfect time. You do not effectively communicate your expectations and you’re getting the wrong type of feeling yet your partner in turn does not know. Of course, this could be crippling to the relationship.

While this example may hit close with some people, I also understand that these examples may be far fetched for some others, but you get the point. You have expectations or standards of your partners, yet you haven’t communicated effectively. He/she can not understand what you need because they do not live in your head, so if you want a progressive relationship, you would need to learn how to express your thoughts better.

While writing this, I discovered that the issue of communication is way too broad to be covered in one blog post, so here is just the tip of the iceberg. Be on the lookout for the rest of this post.