Assistance for Positive Marital Communication
There are many psychological strategies for helping couples learn to disagree in an agreeable manner. Let’s examine some of these.
Try to pick times to discuss problems and differences between the two of you when you are not fatigued, under pressure or distracted by other things. For example, discussing financial concerns and worries while you rush to a wedding or just before going to bed is inadvisable.
Clear, creative and productive thinking is much easier if some time is set aside to brainstorm and solve problems.
Perhaps meeting for lunch or setting aside time before the evening meal would be useful.
Develop a list of specific problems. Bringing up old, unsolved problems and other unrelated concerns can produce a great deal of frustration and impair problem solving. For example, if you’re going to discuss discipline problems with your children, don’t divert the conversation to concerns about in-laws or financial worries.
If the discussion starts heating up, take a break for a few minutes before things get out of hand.
Get a drink of water, use the restroom or walk around the block if necessary. Time out is a very powerful and useful technique.
Avoid accusatory and derogatory statements about your spouse.
“You sound just like your mother” or “you know most of this is your fault so why don’t you admit it,” demolishes any chance of carrying on a rational conversation and results in hurt feelings and a shutdown in healthy communication.
New problems of forgiveness and guilt may then arise and detract further from the ability to solve a problem.
Avoid overgeneralizing, catastrophizing and mind-reading when trying to solve problems.
For example, stating “you continually yell at the children, always spend too much money or play golf all the time” may be exaggerations and detract from your ability to stick with more factual situations.
Likewise, statements such as “if our children don’t dress better they won’t have any friends” or “whenever we’re late for a function everyone thinks we’re rude.” These distorted thoughts interfere with focus of problem solving.
In a healthy marriage your spouse is your best friend. Ask yourself how you would want to solve a problem with your best friend.
Most good friends don’t yell and scream at each other for very long if they are going to remain friends.
