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  Family - Weekend Effect

Communication – The Games We Play

Jack & Karen Baker

No matter what our occupation and interests in life, we all have tools to help us. There are computers, pots and pans, mechanics tools, safety equipment and on and on. On the Marriage Encounter Weekend, we are told about tools to help us with building and maintaining a healthy, loving relationship. The five tools offered in the presentation titled “Keeping Our Relationship A Priority” are:
- Constant attention to our communication,
- Attention to our sexual relationship,
- Prayer for each other, including couple prayer,
- Journeying with others, and
- Reevaluation.

The following article about Communication is the first part of a series about the five tools of a close and loving marital relationship.

On the Weekend, you were encouraged to develop good communication through observing non-verbal communication, listening with our hearts, risking and having trust in our spouse, and sharing deeply with one another. Yet, there is more to communication. We can use all of the above qualities and still find we have gaps in how we relate verbally with one another. Sometimes we unknowingly play games with our communication. For instance, there are times when one of us is thinking about a topic or issue and then attempt to engage our spouse in that topic only to find we are starting in the middle of our thoughts and our spouse has no idea what we are talking about. Or, how about talking to one another from separate rooms? As our voices rise to be heard, we find that the raised voice is misunderstood as anger and hurt feelings and angry words may result.

One of the biggest challenges to every day conversation from this Helper and Thinker duo comes from not being clear with one another. One of us, usually the Helper, hesitant to be too direct, will say something like, “The garbage needs to go out” The Thinker, in his earlier days might say to himself, “Sure does, if she wants me to do it she will probably ask”, and go about his business. The Helper who doesn’t want to rock the boat will wonder why the Thinker did not get the hint and take the garbage out and begrudgingly gather the garbage and take care of the chore herself. After years of this “game” we finally learned that each of us must be clear about what we are saying and state our expectations. The above scenario might now more often be said as (Helper to Thinker). “I would really appreciate it if you would take the garbage out”. The Thinker might respond with, “Sure, I’m going that way anyway”. Or, if the Helper falls back to the old pattern of, “The garbage needs to go out”. The Thinker could check out the message by saying, “What I hear you saying is you would like me to take it out.” From the Helper, “That would be nice, thank you” One secret to this response is the tone of voice. A sarcastic sounding pitch of the voice can undo all the good that checking out the statement can make.

This example is just one of the many “games” most of us play with the communication in our marital relationship. Perhaps you can think of others. Hopefully, your awareness of “communication games” has caused you to look at positive changes you can make in your relationship.

We leave you with a dialogue question: Name a time that I realized I did not communicate accurately with you. How do I feel about that?

Click here for a printable page (PDF, 8KB)