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Life Ways Part I - Steps to a Happier Marriage
Is Lack
of Communication
So many families are torn apart these days. Many are caught in the cold, swirling waters of divorce, while even more share lives of grudging tolerance and mutual boredom. Why? What happened to the hope and promise so alive in those couples on their wedding days? More importantly, what can they do to restore the love they once enjoyed? This is the first in a series of articles focusing on marriage, the internal pressures tearing at nuclear families, and effective methods that can be employed to support and rebuild relationships. Authors Dan and Anne McMenamin have dealt with difficulties in their own twenty-two year marriage and are working to help others with similar problems in a family-support peer ministry called Retrouvaille. Dan Many marital difficulties are rooted in unmet expectations and poor communication on the part of one or both of the spouses. Most of us base our expectations on values, judgments, and roles formed in reaction to our circumstances as children and adolescents. We might think, for example, that husbands would always be the sole provider while wives remain at home. Or we might think that fathers should handle matters of discipline while mothers provide nurturing support. Our general behavior pattern might be controlling or passive. Some people, due to circumstances in their families of origin, have controlling personalities. Others are more passive. As we act out these pre-conceived roles, conflict often results when our spouse's role or reaction to us doesn't mesh with our idea of "appropriate" behavior. Then, too, we usually consider our roles and reactions appropriate, so we don't communicate our expectations effectively, and the conflict between our marriage partner and us deepens. Some of us have never communicated well since our wedding day. Others started out okay, but then gradually compiled a list of "touchy" subjects to avoid because these particular subjects might cause stress in the marriage. The list might include subjects like use of money, spare time, children, sex, division of housework, health issues, and so on. The list grows, and after some number of years discussion is limited to family business, such as what's needed from the store or what time the kids need to be picked up at the skating rink. Gone are the long discussions we used to have about hopes, dreams, and feelings. Men, especially, have been taught that showing emotions is weakness. This training might make a great businessman, soldier, leader, or poker-player, but it does little to foster the intimacy needed to maintain a marriage. We need to communicate our emotions to our spouses because a deep understanding of one another's emotions is a basis for long-term intimacy. Our inability to share feelings is one reason for today's high rate of failed relationships. Many of us deny or suppress our feelings. If we don't know what our feelings are, how can we communicate them? Accepting and understanding our feelings is a productive step toward communicating them and rebuilding emotional intimacy between our marriage partners. The first step we'd like to take with you in this series is to begin to be aware of our feelings and to describe them. Ann What was your first feeling today? Were you fuzzyheaded? Weary? Miserable? Suffering from a lack of sleep? Energetic? Eager? Anxious to start the new day? My first feeling today was relaxed and free. I had the day off! Slowly I turned off the clock and back into the pillow. My muscles relaxed. Ah! The joys of staying in a comfortable bed a little longer! These joyful, free, relaxed feelings were my first emotions today. Emotions are spontaneous inner reactions to the world outside. No one can plan to feel a certain emotion. They just occur. Emotions are not a moral issue. An emotion isn't right or wrong. The manner in which I act on my emotions, however, is a moral issue. Minutes ago, two of my darling children in almost adult bodies fought over who deserved the first shower tonight. Somewhere in my stomach a painful twisting began as their voices rose. Every shout brought increased tension. Now I had two choices: I could a) enter the foray with fists striking to the left and right, my voice raised even louder than theirs, or b) I could quietly insist that a reasonable compromise be reached between the warring parties. Thus, the way I decide to act on emotions can be either positive or negative, either right or wrong. Emotions are not thoughts. For example, I may think that Dan isn't paying enough attention to me. This is a thought or judgment. After more thought I may decide that my judgment was correct or incorrect. If I say I feel that Dan should pay more attention to me, I'm still expressing a thought. I could take out the word "feel" and replace it with the word "think", and it would still make sense. But if I say that I feel lonely when Dan isn't paying enough attention to me, I can't replace the word "feel" with the word "think" here. It doesn't make sense. I can, however, replace the word "feel" with the word "am". Consider this a way to test yourself in the next few weeks. Express your thoughts, judgments, and opinions with the words "I think". Reserve the word "feel" for an emotion like frustration, pleasure, disappointment, elation, guilt, hope, terror, relief, pain or peacefulness. Dan Unlike Anne's experience this morning, I woke up tense. I'd overslept and had to skip breakfast to make my train. I already knew the day was going to be like a zoo, with a full appointment book and a report due very soon. My tense feeling was typical of my "on-deadline" responses. My stomach and upper-arms were tight, my hands were cold, and everything seemed to be in my way as I rushed around. I was hungry but didn't feel like eating a decent meal, preferring instead to grab a bagel and cream-cheese downtown. I drank too much coffee, and the caffeine made matters worse. By lunchtime I felt weary, as though I'd already put in a ten-hour day. My shoulders drooped and my eyelids seemed heavy. Okay, it was a rough morning; we all experience them sometimes. What were the feelings I experienced, though, and how can they be described? I described them as tense and rushed-cold hands, tight muscles and stomach, weary-drooping shoulders and heavy eyelids. Other feelings might be described as bright or warm like sunshine, or cold and dreary like a rainy day. Anger might be thought of in terms of temperature or color. One form of anger is hot and either red or orange, while another might be ice-blue. Fear might seem like icy fingers on our spine, or we might have gut-related feelings like butterflies or knots in our stomachs. A feeling of relaxation might remind us of smelling flowers, of warmth, or of being near the ocean. The key here is to try to determine, as best as you can, what your particular feeling is, and how that feeling is manifested in terms of bodily sensations or metaphors related to color, temperature, smell, or sounds. We invite you now to look at this a bit over the next few weeks. For five minutes each day, try to take something which happened and jot it down on paper. After a few deep breaths to relax, try to focus on the feelings associated with this incident, and how your mind and body perceived them. Jot these bodily reactions down as well. Try to be as descriptive and poetic as you can in describing your feelings. Remember that you don't have to justify your feelings; feelings aren't right or wrong, they simply exist. In a month, you will be much more able to understand and accept your feelings. This is foundational to enhancing communication between a husband and wife. A word of caution: if you are experiencing frequent feelings of intense rage, despair, or loneliness, or if the strength of your feelings seems inappropriately intense for the issue, there may be underlying causes which need resolution. Many of us carry emotional baggage from our childhoods or from unresolved conflicts in our relationships. If your feelings frequently cause you great pain, it's appropriate to seek competent counseling. Reaching for this kind of help isn't weakness; rather, it's a positive step taken in faith and courage. In the next article, we'll be sharing a technique for communicating feelings and ideas to your spouse with a structured and distraction-free tool called "dialogue." Many marriage-support programs teach dialogue, and literally millions of couples have used it to help strengthen their inter-personal communication. You can, too, so try to build a foundation now by learning to recognize and describe your feelings. We can't replicate the atmosphere of a Retrouvaille or Marriage Encounter weekend in an article or even a book, but a working appreciation of dialogue can be learned. The more you work at it, the better it gets.
Copyright © 1999-2003, Daughters of St. Paul. All Rights Reserved.
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