Deal With Communication Problems In Your Relationship

Communication is the underlying fiber that keeps any relationship intact. Both partners must be willing to express their needs, thoughts, and desires, and both must be attentive and willing to listen to each other. A communication lapse will happen at some point in most relationships, but there are things you can do about it.

Find below eight effective tips to deal with communication problems with your partner and help your relationship improve.

Handle Communication Problems With Your Partner

Limit Cell Phone and Social Media Usage

If most of your communication is with other people, you’re neither going to have the time nor the inclination to communicate with your partner. By the time you’re finished chatting on the phone and interacting on social media, you’re all talked out for the day.

What little communication you may have with your partner will be relegated to a few insignificant utterances between you with no real depth. Limiting cell phone and social media time will give you more opportunity to spend time listening to each other.

Send E-mails or Texts

Most couples live busy lives apart during most of the week. The few hours left at the end of each day may involve doing chores and tending to children. There just isn’t much time left for the two of you to communicate before you collapse, too exhausted for words.

It only takes a minute or two throughout the day to send a text message or e-mail back and forth, though. Those little communications tell the other person you care. They may be the very things that spur more conversation between you when you get home, taking precedence over other duties.

Plan Time Away Together

Just the planning of a getaway provides for the two of you to increase communication. The excitement it engenders, along with talking about where you want to go and compromising on different ideas for activities, will naturally force quality communication.

The vacation will allow the two of you to spend time away from things and people that keep you apart, giving you the time you need to reopen lines of communication that have been interrupted.

[Read also: Keep Romance Alive In Your Relationship]

Schedule Times to Communicate

Setting aside a fixed time for some down-to-earth conversation is another way to decrease communication gaps. Even if it’s just once a week, an hour of togetherness when you can discuss issues that are bothering, you can significantly help.

Sharing thoughts and feelings will improve the relationship. Little things won’t fester until they become bigger problems. Getting annoyances out in the open on a regular basis is healthy and necessary.

Evaluate Your Communication Quality

Even when partners do take the time to talk to each other, people can easily misinterpret what you mean to convey. Although it can be because of what you say, it’s also the way you say it that can make a difference.

Be clear in what you want to convey, not leaving your partner to assume what you meant. Say what you mean and mean what you say. Express yourself in a manner that doesn’t reveal displeasure in your body language or your facial expressions.

Show Genuine Interest

When one of you is telling a story that doesn’t particularly interest the other, though it might take more effort to listen, it is critical that you do. The person’s story may reveal something about the way your partner feels about an issue.

People change too, and it’s a subtle process. Too many people grow apart when they suddenly realize their partner is not the same as when they met. Being attentive along the way will help you grow together.

[Read also: 9 Signs Of A Boring Relationship]

Avoid Habitual Complaints

Although complaining is a way of communicating, it can be destructive. Even when complaints are not directed at your partner, they can be overwhelming to listen to on a regular basis. Listening to too many complaints may cause your partner to think they’re the reason for them even if you haven’t indicated that.

It can also make your partner feel helpless to make you happy. It’s okay to complain once in a while, but when it becomes one of the major ways you communicate, it’s time to stop.

Agree to Get Counseling

When communication problems in a relationship are deeper than the ones noted here, it’s time to consider having a third party intervene. If criticism and blame have pervaded communication for too long, these may be difficult to overcome without some professional intervention.

Counseling can greatly help many communication problems in a relationship that would have otherwise caused the partnership to dissolve.