Photo by Yuliia Kaveshnikova - Getty Images
Silent Fighting Couple
A couple sits in silence after a fight.
“The cause of troubled marriages is that couples don’t communicate enough,” the expert insisted to an audience of counselors.
His proposed remedy? Spouses and partners should set aside time daily for “talking about their relationship.” In that he was preaching to the choir, most of the assembled bought his pitch. After all, communication is the psychotherapist’s equivalent of a physician’s aspirin.
“Have a long heart-to-heart and call me in the morning.”
The next presentation I attended, which was about parenting, repeated this mantra.
“If you’re not communicating with your child as much as possible, you’re endangering the relationship,” we were told.
Just Talking?
According to that expert, even teenagers want more heart-to-heart talks with their parents, all appearances to the contrary. Her three keys to a successful child-parent relationship were “communication, communication and more communication.”
Just about everywhere one listens, there is some expert peddling meaningful discourse as a cure for most interpersonal ills. Whether it’s within a family, workplace, sports team or even the halls of Congress, we are told there are few disputes or misunderstandings that cannot be resolved by more talking.
But I just don’t buy it.
While there clearly are instances where people are better off when they have more discussions, there are many scenarios where the opposite seems true. When it comes to verbal communication, there is far more than just talking involved. One must also consider the emotional tone of the exchange, as well as the mannerisms and mindsets of the respective parties. Consequently, it’s not so much that we communicate, but how we communicate.
Stay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.
Many Misunderstandings
We put a lot of stock in words as vehicles of meaning, as we should, but they sometimes fail to deliver. Messages are not so much inside of words as they are wrapped around them, emerging through facial expressions, tones of voice, gestures and the emotional states of the folks involved. Which is why purely written communication, like texting or emails, provides fertile ground for misunderstandings.
In a world drowning in talk, it is increasingly rare to encounter discussions that actually bring us closer together. More often, our excessive use of words, coupled with an over-emphasis on speaking rather than listening, creates divisions between us, not bridges.
Today, our lives are drowning in communication, but it hasn’t brought us closer together, as the current state of the body politic demonstrates. Sociologists have identified loneliness as a major issue across broad swaths of the population, and all the blah-blah-blah spilling out of mouths and media can make that condition worse, not better. We zone out.
I’m not just referring to acid-tongued talk show hosts, narcissistic politicians and social media hate mongers. Even in a well-meaning exchange where two people struggle to rekindle friendship or passion through verbal communication, words can tear them asunder as much as bind them together.
In some relationships, the desperate embrace of talking as a panacea suggests the absence of genuine affection and trust which, when present, may require few verbal confirmations. We struggle to pull each other closer by saying the right things and often fall short because we aren’t conveying the right emotional message.
Many times, the most authentic and moving form of communication consists of a few well-spoken, sincere words (not a flood of them) followed by heavy doses of listening. What’s more, much of what is meaningful and loving that passes between people doesn’t involve words at all.
A look, a touch, a kind gesture, loyalty, a thoughtful act . . . these and other non-verbal messages can “speak” far more than any statements, no matter how honest or eloquent.
Sometimes it’s better to spare or minimize the talk and simply be truly present, engaged and genuine. We need to show, rather than simply say, that we care.
For more, visit philipchard.com.
