Learning to Talk

                                                          by Tara Wentworth

 

 

Do you remember your child’s first word?  You encouraged him or her with your own words of affirmation, a smile, a hug.  Each new word expanded his ability to communicate his needs, desires and yes, frustrations!  Sometimes his words were hard to understand – maybe mommy “got it” and then had to “interpret” for everyone else!

Learning a foreign language is like starting all over again – first a few vocabulary words, then grammar and after a while, understanding of whole concepts.

When a man and a woman get married, they have to learn a new language, that may be “foreign” to both of them.  They have to learn how to communicate.  This coming week for our Ten Great Dates night, the theme will be Learning to Talk.

A study was done to determine the average amount of communication between a husband and wife in a typical week.  The average of every word spoken was only seventeen minutes a week!  The question was proposed – why do we stop talking to the one we chose to spend the rest of our lives with?  Certainly intimacy cannot be attained in a marriage where couples cannot communicate well with each other.

David and Claudia Arp, authors of Ten Great Dates, explain three patterns of communication that every couple needs to understand and which ones to use in a successful, growing marriage.  Pattern one is called “chatter” or surface conversations.  It is a part of healthy conversation which we all use every day to communicate, but it is shallow and not sufficient for intimacy in relationships.

Pattern two is called “confrontive”.  It is an attacking style of communication that does not lend itself to a healthy relationship.  When this style of communication becomes a pattern, it weakens and can ultimately destroy a marriage.  We must learn different signals to alert our partner that we are feeling “attacked” so that they can back off and deal with that issue in a different way. 

Pattern three is called the “compassionate” pattern of communication.  This is the pattern to be used for a growing, healthy, alive marriage.  With this type of communication marital bonds can be deepened and differences resolved.

Realizing too, that tone of voice (sighing, nagging) and non-verbal communication (shrugs, stares, glares) play an even bigger part in the overall way you are trying to communicate and can send a totally different message than what you are actually saying out of your mouth.

All of us, single, married, young and newly married or married for forty years, could benefit from learning how to communicate in a way that considers the other person’s feelings.  When we are dealing with problems of issues, we want to get to the real issue or problem without attacking the person involved.  Marriages are under tremendous pressure and attack.  We need to learn how to communicate with the people we love, especially our spouse, in a godly way.  It will be worth the effort!

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