The absence of communication is a death wish on marriages.
A licensed therapist’s explanation.
Although many believe the biggest downfall of a marriage is due to infidelity, there are a number of smaller, less obvious reasons a marriage will start falling apart. Good relationships, over time, will start eroding due to many smaller issues that form together and become one huge problem. Absence of communication is deadly. Once a couple stops communicating with each other, the foundation of partnership and friendship take a backseat to both parties drifting apart.
Couples that have been together for a long time, and communication has slowly become less active than in the past, start taking each other for granted and often become bored of the relationship. The assumption that each believes the other knows exactly what they are thinking is taking each other for granted. I would venture to say that 99% of people have no abilities in ESP and the gradual or unconscious assimilation of ideas, known as osmosis is just not going to happen!
Why Communication Disappears:
There are many mistakes that couples make when it comes to communicating with each other. This goes beyond simply talking out your issues, it’s turning an entire conversation into a shouting match. This usually happens when there is a problem that was never addressed when it first happened and has been allowed to fester. Each person believes the other does not care about their feelings, have ignored the entire situation and now civilized conversation has gone right out the window.
Some couples, by nature, are highly competitive so when it comes to a normal conversation, it’s turned into who will win the argument. You will start building arguments in your head, highlighting the crucial points so when a conversation starts, it goes into automatic mode and the war begins. Many times, you will hear about 10 seconds of what your partner has said before you have formulated the counterattack and are simply waiting for your partner to take a breath so that you can seize your moment of opportunity to attack. This is done without listening to anything else the other person has said. When I get couples that come in for a first session, approximately 75% of them cannot tell me what their partner JUST said because they weren’t listening, they were planning their defense, or their attack.
When you start believing that your needs and wants are more important than your spouse’s, your communications are going to be solely based on what’s best for you and that’s it. How can any couple have a constructive conversation if one side is in it for themselves alone? Once these thoughts start taking over, couples will start going their own way and doing things on their own and the relationship takes a back seat to individual needs very quickly. Everyone needs some alone time and to have their feelings and thoughts considered, but when it becomes the substance of the entire relationship, something needs to happen to stop the madness.
How To Step Back And Save Your Marriage:
First, let me say, that a majority of couples who stay together in marital bliss DO talk about everything that bothers them. This is not the problem; it is actually a strength. However, these couples also are able to not take things personally and they tackle the problem as a TEAM, they don’t attack each other.
If you have read through the above and you can relate to these situations then you know your relationship has a serious absence of communication. If this sounds familiar, then it really is time for both of you to seek marriage counseling or couple’s therapy. If you truly want to repair your broken marriage, both of you must work with a professional counselor to help pull things back together. Trying to repair things on your own has already shown not to be effective, and without help your marriage could easily head toward divorce, or worse, a lifetime of these arguments that I described above. A couple’s therapist can help you find communication that will bring back that team work and get your marriage back on track. All of this can happen in a relatively short period of time when both parties are willing and able. Once both of you understand the true purpose of communication, you might be pleasantly surprised to discover small problems will just disappear.