Communication and Mutual Problem Solving

In my Family Relations class this week, we learned a lot about communication. I hear from many couples that one of the most important things in keeping a marriage healthy is to have healthy communication. When I began this week, I had to questions. Is good communication enough to keep a positive marriage? How can we accomplish positive communication skills?

One thing that I think is important to remember is that there are many different forms of communication. Sometimes, even though we think we are communicating effectively, we may not be. Tone, nonverbal and body language, and the connotation of what we say can all have an effect on how our communication comes across to the people that we are talking to.

When passing your thoughts and feelings to someone, we generally follow the same pattern throughout. First, we encode the message to the person we are talking to, meaning we are giving off or explaining the message that we want to convey. The second step is communicating through a medium. This can be done from face-to-face talking, texting, media, and other forms as well. This step is one of the most important steps, as it is when we convey what we are putting across. The third step is decode, which is what the person who you are sending the message to does. This is an important step because the results may be different based off of what the sender conveys. If the sender, for example, is sarcastic, boring, or angry when talking to the listener, they may feel that the person is not interested in talking to them. However, on the other hand, if the sender is using had gestures, gently touching the person’s arm, or making eye contact, the listener feels as if they are important and that the person is interested in talking to them.

Along with this topic, there are definitely problems of communication. It is important that we understand them and ensure that we are not falling into the trap of corrupt communication. One of the more obvious problems is noise. This is something that can be easily fixed just by changing the setting of where we are talking. Another problem we come across is media. This is a problem because it cancels out important aspects of communication such as nonverbal communication, eye contact, and being focused on what the conversation is about. This can be a problem because things can be taken the wrong way when speaking through text or other forms of social media. In fact, nonverbal communication makes up 51% of communication. When taken away, communication is less than 50% accurate of what is needed to have a mutual conversation. Another thing that can serve as a problem to communication is misunderstandings. This is relevant in many aspects of our life. For example, when sitting at a dinner table with your spouse, and they say they are fine if you ask them what is wrong, it may come off as them being mad or upset with you. However, it could just be that they have a headache, they are tired, or that they are really fine. Another example can be that you told your roommate that you did not want to go to dinner that night with them. The roommate may take it as you not wanting to be with them, but in reality you could be having family struggles or simply do not have enough cash. I encourage you that when you are put into these situations, to change the phrasing to “I am okay, I just do not feel vey well. Thank you for asking, I really appreciate that,” or “thank you so much for inviting me to dinner with you, but I do not have money right now to go.” Just a simple change in the phrasing can help communication be stronger because it avoids causing inaccurate emotions.