4 Main Communication Mistakes That Can Wreck Your Relationship
In every relationship, the first and major area where the people that are involve in such relationship, do have problem, is the issue of communication.
Communication is the bedrock of every relationship and anyone who doesn’t know how to communicate effectively, will find it very difficult to get along with people.
There’s a Chinese proverb that says; troubles come from the mouth. This is an indication that, having the ability to control your mouth, can help you to avoid lots problem in your communication with anyone around you.
Once you know how to communicate effectively, you’re going to enjoy your relationship to a larger percentage. But lots of people think learning to communicate effectively is hard, the truth is, it’s not hard once you have the willing heart.
Brian Tracy define communication as skill that anyone can easily learn, he said, communication is just like riding a bicycle or learning to type. If you’re willing to work at it, you can speedily improve the quality of every part of your life.
The four main communication mistakes that can wreck your relationship as a couple are;
1. Using a universal statement when talking with your partner
A universal statement is the kind of statement that generalizes a person’s character or behaviour in a negative way. The most common of these universal statement are; always, such a, every time, never, again, so and everyone.
Here’re examples of how these words are used to portray someone character negatively. “You’re SO difficult to relate with”, “You ALWAYS forget to close your mouth when yarning”, “You NEVER remember for once….” “You’re SUCH A difficult person”, “You’ve come around here AGAIN”, “EVERY TIME you forget to get this done”, “EVERYONE knows that you’re the issue.”
Because this universal statement tend to point out the negative part of the person being spoken to, it makes the person feel hurt, humiliated and try to close up any communication with whose use the universal statement for him or her.
2. Using the “YOU” language plus directives
When communication is full of certain type of YOU language plus directives, such communication is ineffective. Examples of the kind of YOU language include; “you have to”, “you need to”, “you’d better”, “you should, you are”
Here are examples of YOU language plus Directives;
“You have to visit your daughter’s school…”
“You need to go out now…”
“You better stop this attitude…”
“You should understand my point…”
“You are not good enough…”
The truth is, most of us don’t like to be told what to do. And when using YOU language with directives, we are directly telling our partner what to do in an improper way, in the sense that, such communication bring about defensiveness which might lead to conflict in most cases.
There are other ways to communicate effectively without using YOU language plus directives. Think about it.
3. Getting soft on issues but touch on your partner (persons)
When you’re communicating with another person, there are two things involved; the person and the issue or something you’re talking about.
In effective communication, there’s need to separate these two things (Issue & Person) that are involve when you’re relating to someone. You need to learn how to be soft on the person but tough on the issue.
But often times, it is the opposite that do dominate, getting tough on the person and soft on the issue is never an effective means of communication. When this happens, the communicator literally gets personal by being tough on the person and ignoring or minimizing the issues by being soft on it.
Here’s a very good example;
Ineffective communication: You never clean up this morning; you’re just good for nothing.
Effective communication: I notice you did not wash the dishes this morning.
You can see the difference between being effective and ineffective in the manner at which the communication is carried out in the above two statement.
Getting touch on person and soft on issue often arouses a negative feeling from people, who are likely going to take your words personal, and they will get angry, hurt and become resistant or resentful. Both point 1 & 2 above; come together when you’re being tough on person and soft on issue.
4. Nullify feelings
Nullifying a person’s feeling will always bring lots of resentment and anger in any kind of relationship. This happens when you recognise an emotion of a person, either positive or negative but you chose to invalidate, minimize, nullify or negatively judge the feelings.
For instance, if you invalidate someone positive feelings, the strength of the person’s relationship with you will automatically decrease. No matter the type of relationship you’re having with the person (cordial, romantic or friendship).
If you invalidate someone negative feelings, the negative feelings will get more intensify and may linger on for a very long time, thereby diminishing your relationship with the person.
Just take a look at the few examples;
“What bothers you, are nothing before me”
“You accusation has no basis, it is unfounded.”
“You’re blowing things way out of proportion.”
“You’re too emotional over this simple issue.”
“So what if you got a B in math? I used to get A’s all the time.”
“Why are feeling on top of the world? Your improvement really means very little things to me.”
Think about this again.
If your relationship lack communication that are effective, the good news is that as long as you’re willing and your partner also is looking forward in the same direction with you, there will be great improvements as far as you both sustain that willingness to communication effectively and take into cognisance the 4 main communication mistakes that can wreck your relationship.
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