Improve Your Communication In Relationships

A healthy relationship takes a lot of time and effort to make and maintain, as many different factors shape it. The biggest and most important building block of all of them is communication. How and how often you communicate with your partner matters the most. In this blog, we are going to discuss how you can improve your communication skills with your partner to make your relationship healthier, better, and longer.

Acknowledge The Poor Communication You Have:

Poor communication comes in different shades, the darker the shade the worse it gets.

There are a lot of ways to notice that you have poor communication with your partner and the telltale signs are as follows:

1. Passive Aggressiveness:

These things usually come out as jokes or as indirect messages during a conversation or any sort of punishment that you might face for no reason but to send a certain message to you.

2. Avoiding Confrontations:

Pushing your problems away won’t solve them but will make them bigger and more critical. If you and your partner often avoid conflict that means that there is an obvious communication problem between the two of you that needs to be addressed and fixed immediately.

3. Aggressiveness:

Such as raising your voice, using harsh language and verbal abuse, criticizing, and blaming. All of the above are red flags that you should consider avoiding.

How to Make The Change?

1. It’s Not a Competition:

Many couples fall into this rabbit hole because competing is in our nature so when we lose, it hurts our ego. The first thing you need to keep in your mind is that winning a debate, proving a point, in other words, winning the battle, is not the point. It’s ok to be wrong because you’re not a robot that never makes mistakes, you’re not perfect, and neither is your partner. Set your ego aside and allow yourself to embrace and acknowledge your mistakes and take responsibility for the bad things from your end because that’s the only way to grow as an individual and as a couple. Mistakes are our greatest teacher, talk about them maturely.

2. Know When to Speak and When to Listen:

As much as you want to make a statement or give your point of view about a matter or an issue during a conversation or an argument, sometimes that statement can wait a bit longer just until you make sure that you’ve listened to your partner’s full opinion and side of the story. Timing is very important in communication because it does make a difference.

3. Compromise and Sacrifice:

Even if you’re single, life can never go exactly the way you want it to be, so why force it on your partner like it’s their job to make your world perfect? You are sharing your life with this person and that’s why you call them “your partner”. Sharing life with someone means that a lot of compromises and sacrifices have to be made on both ends to keep this relationship going. It doesn’t sound like a communication-related thing, but it is.

4. Little Things are Devilish:

The smallest things that bother you about your partner and that often go ignored are the most dangerous things to a relationship. Let’s say your partner makes a certain noise when they drink water. The first few times will be mildly infuriating to you, but within a long time, that noise can be enough to make you break up with your partner. As crazy as it sounds, it’s a hundred percent true. Confront these small annoying things with each other now and then to keep that volcano asleep.

5. Keep Your Partner Updated:

If you’re going to be late tonight if something came up out of nowhere and you have a lot of things on your plate so you won’t be able to see your partner today, leave a message or a note. Giving those details to your partner shows that you care about them and that you’re thinking about them. It shows that you don’t want them to be worried and that you want to be with them but you’re not currently there for a reason.

6. Check on Each Other Throughout Your Day:

Giving your partner a call or sending them a message to check on them and see how their day is going is more important than most people think. It’s a sort of affection. Showing your partner that you care about them and that you’re there if they needed any kind of support. That you’re being present for them.

7. Boundaries Should Be Set in Stone:

Boundaries are boundaries, you have to explicitly explain them to your partner so they know what’s ok with you and what’s not. Most of the time one part gets punished for crossing a line they never knew about, so that’s exactly why I said explain explicitly.

8. Understand Your Feelings Before Addressing them to Your Partner:

Going to a conversation feeling too upset or angry can only lead to a pointless heated discussion between you and your partner. Before addressing an issue that is upsetting you, process the issue with yourself first, and calm yourself down so you can be reasonable and open-minded about the argument you’re about to have. This way, you would get out of the discussion with some positive things and resolutions to the problem.

Avoid The Following for a Healthier Communication:

1. Raising Your Voice:

Screaming won’t solve anything, and any sort of violent behavior can never be the answer. All that yelling does is destroy your partner’s confidence and respect for you, and it causes serious emotional harm to them. Process your anger more healthily, and if it ever gets out of hand, you can always consult an anger management expert.

2. Walking Away From an Argument:

Walking away from your partner in the middle of an argument shows weakness and immaturity on your side and it instantly destroys any point you might have made during the argument. It is childish behavior that will decrease your partner’s respect for you.

3. Always Talking About Past Mistakes:

Keep the past in the past, what happened happened and now you’re in whatever you’re going through, so just keep all your focus on that. People evolve and no one can be who they were and behave exactly like they did ten or even one year ago. The past is not a good base to build on, keep it in the present.

Finally:

Building and maintaining a healthy and strong relationship takes a lot of good and effective communication so always make sure to keep yourself well-educated about healthy communication and well-aware of how healthy yours is.