Does fear derail your communication?

If you’re in a relationship, or have ever been in one, you know that communication is key to its success. Numerous studies have identified communication (or lack thereof) as one of the top reasons for couples therapy, as well as one of the primary reasons for break-up and divorce. In fact, most couples that come to LIFE Marriage Retreats cite poor communication in their high stakes, conflict-based conversations as a key contributor to the breakdown of their relationship.

There are many tools to help improve communication in a relationship – but perhaps the most important thing that couples need to understand about healthy and productive communication is that any skills and tools must rest on a strong foundation of principles to be effective. In other words, the crucial component lies not in simply changing our communication strategies, but also in changing our hearts.

Fear and Potato Salad

Imagine you make a potato salad for an upcoming neighborhood block party. You make it the day before, using high quality, fresh ingredients – just like your grandmother used to. But when you walk into the kitchen the following day to grab the salad, to your dismay you realize that you left it out overnight, and it’s been baking in the hot sun for hours. What do you have now? That’s right – you have rotten potato salad. It may look fine, but if anyone eats it, they run the risk of getting sick.

So what do you do? How can you reconstitute the spoiled potato salad? Can you slice more boiled eggs, and neatly layer them on top with a sprig of parsley? No, because the rotten potato salad will overcome whatever you lay on top of it in your attempt to make it pretty.

The point is, sometimes we all have rotten potato salad in our hearts as a result of past experiences that have caused pain, and a fear of repeating those negative experiences. In our high-stakes communications with our partner, we often fear that they’re not truly hearing us. We resent their lack of validation and empathy. We feel hurt and disrespected by their unkind words, or their body language. We hate not finding lasting resolution to never-ending issues.