Creating the Marriage of Your Dreams: Lesson Four

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• Lesson One
• Lesson Two
• Lesson Three

Open Communication

By Rabbi Pamensky

Why do we fear open communication? What are we really afraid of? We all know that it is far more difficult to undo the damage of deceit then to talk honestly upfront with our spouse. Open communication is the first step in stripping yourself to your spouse and letting them peer behind your mask.

Life Lesson: Deceiving Others Is Really Fearing Yourself

Communication skills are a vital component of any relationship counseling, but when you think about it, they are really just techniques for you to employ during various states of dysfunction. Communication skills are needed when you can only hear your own voice during a conversation and not the person that you are talking to.

It makes sense that if you learn to quiet your own voice, you would automatically be communicating. There would be no barriers to overcome and no skills to learn. You would just be open to what the person is saying and curious about what their intention is.

So why does our own voice so often drown out the other persons in a conversation? What elevates that noise in our own thoughts so much that we cannot hear what the other person is saying?

There was a couple, the Browns, that recently came to me for counseling who were talking at each other; there was just no listening. Each one thought that they needed to elevate the intensity of their words to get heard, which in turn forced the other to dig in their obstinate heels and ratchet the intensity up a notch. Pretty soon their home was an unbearable place to be in, with all the yelling, shouting tears and the inevitable stretches of silence.

They came into my office and sat on the couch, slightly faced away from each other, each with their arms crossed. They just sat their waiting for the other to begin, to fire the first shot. The silence was extremely uncomfortable but their thoughts were screaming at each other so acutely that I thought their brains were going to pop.
Imagine if I would have taught them a communication skill at this time. Could they have performed the skill? Of course. Could they have employed it well enough to begin communicating? Of course not! They were too wound up inside. Everything their spouse would have said would have been heard with extreme prejudice. Can you imagine if I gave them a technique to try at home in the heat of battle, what chance would they have use it effectively? A very slim chance.

That is the problem with skills; they look great on paper, make a lot of sense in counseling, and work well when you don't really need them. But when the emotional daggers begin flying, very few people have the wherewithal to stop themselves and say, "Hey, why don't we try active listening skill #17, part b. I think it might help us communicate better."

The Browns were literally fuming on my couch. I started to speak to them about some universal principles of thought and emotions. We began to understand how people in general block their spouses voice from being heard because of their own stresses and insecurities, and how in this state of mind there is not really any listening anyway. Their screaming inner voices began to quiet as they understood that they were a function of their own thoughts and not from their spouses actions.
Pretty soon we were having a really nice, open discussion. They were speaking to each other, listening to each other and hearing each other. They were even using their own marriage as examples of the principles were were discussing. They were really communicating.

They did not need skills at this point. They were open and curious, and listening with honesty and humility to what their spouse was saying. They were feeling heard for the very first time.

Communication is not complicated. It is simply the ability to communicate with a quiet mind, without agendas or expectations. You just have to be in the conversation, and not in your head.